Reviews

A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory

liloulitdeslivres's review

Too long, so many explanations and unnecessary elements had to DNF it. 

islaofkiki's review

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

1.5

misterv82's review against another edition

3.0

Het verhaal zelf stelt niet altijd zoveel voor, het is de mooie schrijftaal die het boek interessant maakt. Het eerste en laatste stuk zijn goed maar het middenstuk wordt op den duur nogal langdradig en is teveel van hetzelfde.

marielle68's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

stephaniejnl's review

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

evangeline34's review

3.5

Dragged out a bit too much but still good 

orchid55's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

samanthawattam's review

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Joseph Calvin Vaughan, age 11 in July 1939 from Augusta Falls, Georgia now ‘old’ is the narrator who is looking back on his life to how fear permeated and destroyed a community when death came to visit.  We swap back and forth from glimpses of the present to tracing the events of his life that began with the death of his father.  It was a tumultuous time globally with the Second World War but the events at home overshadowed everything for those touched by this one man. 

 

This is not an Agatha Christie style whodunnit, yes of course they want to catch this faceless depraved man but we see the effect and the destruction of one man’s life Joseph Calvin Vaughan.  We barely go beyond knowing the victims’ names the novel doesn’t delve into their lives or their families whom we rarely meet, we don’t learn much of their grief but we know it’s there. 

 

I think it is very well written, descriptively very atmospheric, engaging and an intriguing story sometimes the language (for me) can be a bit heavy going as a sense of doom pervades the book from the start.  This is not a light read by any means but I certainly found myself drawn into the story. 

 

I would recommend but know it is a frustrating read at times and depressing not much let up and even when there are lighter moments you know they won’t last long!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, and Violence

Moderate: Confinement, Death of parent, and Sexual content

Minor: Suicide

kim_holloway's review

5.0

I loved this book! The book's tone is serious and incredibly sad, but I was so touched by Joseph's story that I have listened to it two times on my iPod.

charlottesometimes's review

1.0

I have no idea why everyone likes this book so much, as it's clearly crap. Not only that, but it takes an unnecessarily long time about being crap.

The protagonist, Joseph Vaughan, appears to be suffering from some type of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or at least that's the only explanation I can come up with for his turgid prose, literary pretensions and ability to focus the story resolutely on himself for a full 400 pages. The reader is told of roughly 30 murders (it's hard to be precise, as the uniformity of victim and circumstance leaves little material with which to differentiate them), a series of tragic deaths, a false imprisonment, the destruction of at least two families and the tale of Joseph's mother's descent into madness. All of this is related exclusively and entirely as it directly personally affects Joseph. All the most memorable facts from a child's history of Early-Mid 20th Century USA are trotted out as a backdrop to the fascinating life and terrible suffering of our hero. Civil Rights protests and a Holocaust of which the characters are oddly well-informed at a very early stage serve as stage-dressing to Joseph's single-minded obsession with catching the man apparently responsible for the death of every female he has ever met. A constant stream of girls and women enter his life as combination muse/breeding instrument, and are summarily dispatched for increasingly spurious reasons. At no time do we get any inkling of what any of these characters think or feel. They are essentially just extra building-blocks in the ever-growing and incredibly boring wall of pain and suffering that makes up Joseph's life.

To compound the all-round awfulness Joseph is that most horrifying of creatures, the protagonist-author. We are forced at regular intervals to read extracts of his turgid prose, as well as to hear the encouragements of all his friends, family and acquaintances as they eagerly await his production of the next Great American Novel. This confluence of the author’s and his protagonist’s narcissism results in several instances of such epic self-regard that I began to feel quite embarrassed to be privy to Ellory’s private ego-stroking.

Meanwhile the story drags on, its twee faux-American language and bloated self-love dragging it down at every turn. Finally the author, having obviously decided that the length and pomposity of his work has now reached a sufficient level for it to be declared classic, hurriedly bashes out a nonsensical dénouement, before concluding with a pathetically self-regarding ending in which Joseph is lauded as a Great American writer, presumably meaning that all those women and girls didn’t suffer in vain, as they are immortalised as weeping ciphers whose cries of pain provided the chorus in the operatic melodrama that was the life of Joseph Vaughan. The end.