Up the Creek Book Club

Reviews

• "I read Falling Angels in an afternoon. The next day, I sat down and read it again. For several days afterward, I found myself revisiting its people and places, as if I'd just returned from travelling. This is Tracy Chevalier's singular gift: through the particular perspectives of a few finely drawn characters, she is able to evoke entire landscapes...Chevalier manages to delve beneath what we think we know about turn-of-the-century Britons -- there are no stock characters here, none who are perfectly comfortable in the niche society has assigned them." (Janice P. Nimura, The New York Times Book Review)
  
  
• "...a thoughtful exploration of the ways people misread each other by being trapped in their own perspectives. " (People)
  
  
• Spanning the years 1901 to 1910, this book by the author of Girl With a Pearl Earring begins at a New Year's party, where several guests engage in wife swapping. Richard Coleman, thinking jealousy might motivate his lovely wife, Kitty, to let him back into her bed, decides to participate. But Kitty, who has become emotionally and intellectually restless, remains unimpressed with her husband. One day, during a visit to a nearby cemetery, the Colemans meet the Waterhouses, owners of the family plot next to theirs. Despite their class differences, Kitty's five-year-old daughter, Maude, becomes friendly with the Waterhouses' self-dramatizing elder daughter, Lavinia, with whom she begins to spend time exploring the cemetery grounds. Meanwhile, Kitty, who feels increasingly trapped in her marriage, meets suffragette Caroline Black. Kitty's passionate decision to join the feminist cause changes her life but ultimately leads to tragedy. Told from alternating points of view, this moving, bittersweet book flaunts Chevalier's gift for creating complex characters and an engaging plot." (Ann Collette, Book Magazine)