Miss Garnet's Angel

Product Information

What parallels and distinctions might we draw between the lives of Julia and the Monsignore? Although they’ve both been given, for much of their lives, to starkly different philosophical ideologies, what fundamental beliefs and traits do the two of them share? What sort of a man was Julia’s father? What picture of him emerges to us through Julia’s intermittent recollections? What was the germ for Julia Garnet’s story? What is it that drew you to Venice and the Book of Tobit as the setting and occasion for your novel?

Julia Garnet is a lovely creation-inspiring, affecting, charming, utterly believable. Is she based on any real-life models? Julia Garnet, a retired teacher who has never been in love, seems to belong to that group of disappointed women trapped in the bleak lives that Anita Brookner's readers know so well. But Miss Garnet, soon Julia to everyone she meets, is more robust and adventurous. And she's not exactly conventionally middle-class either: she's a communist and an atheist who disapproves of wealth, religion, and sensual beauty. But much changes when Harriet, the teacher she's lived with in London, dies and Julia decides to go to Venice for six months. There, as she steps off her water taxi at the Campo Angelo Raffael to move into the apartment she's rented, she notices, high up on the Campo's church, statues of an angel, a boy, and a dog. She soon learns that they represent the story from the Apocrypha of Tobias and the Angel Raphael, who exorcised the demons from Tobias's wife Sara (the ancient story is told in sections paralleling the changes in Julia's life). Formerly shy and reserved, Julia now makes friends with her landlady and her son Nicco; an American couple; a charismatic monsignor; and the handsome Carlo, an art historian with whom she falls in love. As she explores Venice, she meets the mysterious twins Toby and Sara, who are restoring a 14th-century chapel where they've found a painting of the Angel Raphael. When both it and Toby disappear, Julia, though by now disappointed in love, rallies to find the painting, help Sara, and live to the full in the city that has taught her how "to learn and enjoy." I am always reading Shakespeare —and, in fact, at present also the Bible, which I am trying to read all through. I am writing on The Book of Common Prayer, so I’m also reading the Prayer Books —so I’m surrounded by what y family call my ‘holy books’. Then I’m reading a lot of poetry for my nest novel —and also quite a bit of philosophy (which I may write about soon). I read almost no contemporary fiction. The last novel I read was Chance by Joseph Conrad. I’m a great devotee of Conrad —when one thinks he wrote not even in his second language but his first, the mind boggles. It makes anything I do seem very unimpressive! And I love detective stories —especially the old-fashioned ones. By the time she was at university in the early 1970s she said she had, "crushingly high standards" in writing. "The people I loved were Jane Austen, Conrad, James and Dostoevsky. I felt you had to be in that sort of range. I couldn't just write any old book, so I thought about writing as something separate to earning a living."Venice is a city of Angels but, perhaps more than any, Archangel Raphael is an abiding presence. Identified with healing and with the protection of travellers, he is a fitting avatar for Miss Garnet's adventure and on her first attempt at navigating the complex paths that lead everywhere and nowhere in Venice, she stumbles upon a rather obscure and little known church, the Chiesa San Raffaele. Led by innocent curiosity, she trespasses on an art restoration project - or perhaps I should say a transformation project because conventional, unimaginative Julia Garnet is about to be changed forever. Julia Garnet is, among other things, a woman struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by her father’s censure and abuse. How successful, finally, has she been in doing so? Well, this may disappoint you but I have no regime whatsoever. I write only when the fit (and it is a kind of fit) takes me —and that might be for ten days on the trot —or not at all for a month. once a book gets going I seem to want to be at it all the time. it’s like a love affair —irresistible —the book is like a secret lover, nothing else is of such interest. Perhaps because of this I write, when I do, very fast. I wrote Miss Garnet in nine months —but, as I am always saying —it took over twenty years to mature in y mind —most of the ideas I want to write about have been mulling about somewhere inside me, linking up with other ideas, for many years. Physically, I write on a, now, quite aged laptop and I have no plan at all other than a kernel of the idea. That grows inside me and then seems to flow down my arms —or not; and if not I stop till they do. In the end, I think this is someone who actually does write better than Dan Brown trying to write something similar to The da Vinci Code or such, but running up against the same problems: the straining of credulity chief among them. While I welcome this in cheezy mystery fiction, I expect something better from this sort of book. Consider the way the author’s narrative establishes dual meanings for “blindness”: as a physical, unalterable condition on one hand, and as a more abstract reference to one’s capacity for empathy, love, or self-awareness on the other.

Beauty intrigues us much as a brilliant magician does. Can we trust our senses to give us an accurate picture or are we being subtly deceived? What would happen if just for a moment we suspended our disbelief and let ourselves feel wonder? What would it be like not having to understand something intellectually but actually entering into it, becoming part of the story instead of the critic? Level-headed Julia Garnet succumbs to the charming story of Tobias from the Old Testament Book of Tobit told in paint by the renaissance artist Giantonio Guardi and finding new life at the hands of Toby and Sara, the almost-twins and art restorers Julia discovers in the Church of San Raffaele.The story of Tobit, Tobias, Azarias (Raphael in human form), an unpaid debt, a dog, a giant fish, and a beautiful but tragic bride is unlike anything else in the Judaic Old Testament. We find no jealous, narcissistic Jehovah here. Missing are the blood and gore, the stories of deceit and revenge, the anger and judgment of an implacable god. Here we see the other face of the divine: the gentle strength, the patient wisdom and, ultimately, the blinding radiance of pure spirit. Introspective, gentle and beautiful are words that describe this. The main character Julia Garnet is an elderly lady who has held herself tightly controlled through most of her life, but upon the death of her friend and roommate through the past 30 years she embarks on a journey to Venice, where she is captured by its beauty and magic, and not least the angel Raphael, depicted in paintings and sculptures around the historical city, seems to have a special grasp on her.

Need Help?

We cannot commission desire,” Julia reflects at one point, referring not only to herself but also to Carlo. To what degree, and on what grounds, does Julia come to feel a sense of solidarity with Carlo, of all people? Explain. I read this novel when it was first published. That was in the year 2000! This is a novel that has really withstood the test of time and it is a book I often suggest to people who are off to Venice. Reading it offers an even greater cinematic experience of the city (is that even possible?). It is a gentle story, told with charm and detail, that carries the reader along at a thoughtful pace. This is the story of Julia, now in retirement, in many ways an unremarkable woman – and yet. She chooses to spend 6 months in Venice, exploring the city and its treasures, gaining a variety of friendships and experiences. As the time passes, she learns to re-evaluate some of her core beliefs and to trawl her deeper soul in quiet contemplation.