Third Angel

I just looked at my post list and thought... I didn't post on that yet?! Shows you how busy my summer has been lately.

This novel consists of three stories connected by the same characters and places over different periods of time, beginning with the most recent events and going backward. It is is about unrequited love and betrayal and how life and death can affect three people in very different ways.

Hoffman's characters are all linked to the Lion Park Hotel in London, England. The book begins as Maddie comes to London from New York to attend to her sister, Allie's wedding. Recently the two sisters have grown apart, and Maddie is determined not to like Allie's too-handsome fiancé Paul Lewis. She is surprised that her sister, usually so practical and smart has fallen for such a selfish man like him. But regardless of her intentions, Maddie finds herself attracted to Paul and they have a brief affair.

Maddie later discovers that Paul is dying of cancer and only had an affair with her because he wanted Allie to get so angry she would leave him, and would be free of him. It is too late for that though because Allie and Maddie both love him.

In the next part of the book we follow Paul's mother, Frieda Lewis, who is only nineteen (it is now 1966). She comes to London from Reading to work at the Lion's Park Hotel. Frieda refuses to follow the path of her father, who is a doctor. She breaks away from everyone's expectations for her and works as a maid rather than going to university to study medicine.

She falls for an ambitious singer named James while working at the hotel. He has spent his life battling pain and when we meet him he has taken to snorting heroin with his rich fiancee Stella to block out his troubles. But it is Frieda not Stella who becomes James' muse. Frieda writes him some songs, and they feel an immediate connection. I admit I had a hard time understanding how it was that James still ended up with Stella instead of Frieda, but these experiences drastically impacted Frieda's life.

In the last portion of the novel, twelve-year-old Lucy Green (future mother of Maddie and Allie) arrives in London in 1953 with her father Ben to attend the wedding of Bryn, her stepmother's sister. This is where the story finally comes full circle and we learn the mystery surrounding the events in room 707 and the importance of the drunken Teddy Healy, who hangs around the hotel every night.

When I reached the end of the novel I felt that I had a new understanding for the characters and how they ended up the way they were. I actually read this book twice and I enjoyed it more the second time.

This is a story about Love. The sad part of the novel is that everyone falls in love with the wrong person, or with the right person but too early or too late. We see that love may be simple, but it is definitely not rational.