Miss Garnett's Angel

I had somehow missed reading Salley Vickers successful first novel Miss Garnett's Angel when it was initially published in 2000, but a good book will always find new readers. A fairly easy read, as Salley Vickers' writing  and story telling flow beautifully, yet there is a lot to think about in this tale of Julia Garnett's stay in Venice after her retirement.   I felt sympathetic towards Julia Garnett, intrigued by her wishing to live in Venice for six months and interested in the people she meets and in several cases, comes to love during her stay.  
 I loved the descriptions of Venice, which made me recall the couple of visits I've made to that amazing place, the little squares with small bars and trattoria where we had lunch of just a snack and a beer, usually with a church on one side, the water buses, the walks alongside the smaller canals, many, many happy memories.
 The story of Tobias, Raphael, Sara and Tobit  I was a bit hazy on, but Salley Vickers re-tells it clearly and had me hunting out a Bible with the Apocrypha in it, to read it for myself. The comparison of the behaviour of modern day Sara and Toby with that of the story from the Apocrypha is fascinating, showing how human emotions and reactions to them don't change much.

  One message I take from this story is to all retired persons: get out of your no doubt comfortable rut and do something -anything - a bit different. I don't think this is the intended message of the book, but it is one that appeals to me, as I am writing this while sitting in our holiday home in the Cantal department of France, listening to an approaching thunderstorm, the house we bought after our retirement from work ten years ago.