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River Angel
In April 1991, in a little Wisconsin town about a hundred miles southwest of the town where I grew up, a misfit boy was kidnapped by a group of high school kids who, later, would testify they'd merely meant to frighten him, to drive him around for a while. Somehow they ended up at the river, whooping and hollering on a two-lane bridge. Somehow the boy was shoved, he jumped, he slipped—acounts vary—into the icy water. The kids told police they never heard a splash; one reported seeing a brilliant flash of light. (Several people in the area witnessed a similar light, while others recalled hearing something "kind of like thunder.") All night, volunteers walked the river's edge, but it was dawn before the body was found in a barn a good mile from the bridge . . .
The owner of the barn had been the one to discover the body, and she said the boy's cheeks were rosy, his skin warm to the touch. A sweet smell hung in the air. "It was," she said, "as if he were just sleeping." And then she told police she believed an angel had carried him there.
For years, it had been said that an angel lived in the river. Residents flipped coins into the water for luck, and a few claimed they had seen the angel, or known someone who'd seen it. The historical society downtown had a farmwife's journal, dated 1898, in which a woman described how an angel had rescued her family from a flood. Now, as the story of the boy's death spread, more people came forward with accounts of strange things that had happened on that night. Dogs had barked without ceasing till dawn; livestock broke free of padlocked barns. Someone's child crayoned a bridge and, above it, a wide-winged tapioca angel.
A miracle? A hoax? Or something in between? With acute insight and great compassion, A. Manette Ansay captures the inner life of a town and its residents struggling to forge a new identity in the face of a rapidly changing world.
The owner of the barn had been the one to discover the body, and she said the boy's cheeks were rosy, his skin warm to the touch. A sweet smell hung in the air. "It was," she said, "as if he were just sleeping." And then she told police she believed an angel had carried him there.
For years, it had been said that an angel lived in the river. Residents flipped coins into the water for luck, and a few claimed they had seen the angel, or known someone who'd seen it. The historical society downtown had a farmwife's journal, dated 1898, in which a woman described how an angel had rescued her family from a flood. Now, as the story of the boy's death spread, more people came forward with accounts of strange things that had happened on that night. Dogs had barked without ceasing till dawn; livestock broke free of padlocked barns. Someone's child crayoned a bridge and, above it, a wide-winged tapioca angel.
A miracle? A hoax? Or something in between? With acute insight and great compassion, A. Manette Ansay captures the inner life of a town and its residents struggling to forge a new identity in the face of a rapidly changing world.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
13 people are currently reading
307 people want to read
About the author
A. Manette Ansay
22 books154 followersA. Manette Ansay grew up in Wisconsin among 67 cousins and over 200 second cousins. She is the author of six novels, including Good Things I Wish You (July, 2009), Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club Selection, and Midnight Champagne, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as a short story collection, Read This and Tell Me What It Says, and a memoir, Limbo. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, and two Great Lakes Book Awards. She lives with her daughter in Florida, where she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Miami.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
December 1, 2009
Okay, I understand that I'm three for three when it comes to Ansay's novels, and reviewing them as Among the Best Books Ever, but really. I actually shelved three other books that are due before this one out of an intense need to read every Ansay novel possible. This one was marginally harder to get into than the others -- I think, honestly, because it starts with the least sympathetic character, and one who then takes off and isn't seen again.
The difference between River Angel, which I loved, and Vinegar Hill and Sister, which I adored, is probably that the other two Ansay novels I've read are most closely attached to the female protagonists, and River Angel moves from character to character so swiftly that, while a reader attaches to each, he or she can't really connect wholly with any one. It seems, for the first 100 pages or so, that you're going to align yourself with the child's unwillingly adoptive mother, who is a great, solid, unexpected character -- but then the narrator moves to show you the crabby teacher, the aging Police Chief, the wayward daughter.
I think there's a value in forcing a reader to connect with characters he or she may have ignored or held in contempt, at first -- but I did feel like River Angel needed a stronger thread, a character who would resonate throughout, and then beyond, the story. Without it, the novel moves from vignette to vignette, like Crash, if Crash didn't make me wish that narrative cinema had never come to be (whic: it does.)
The difference between River Angel, which I loved, and Vinegar Hill and Sister, which I adored, is probably that the other two Ansay novels I've read are most closely attached to the female protagonists, and River Angel moves from character to character so swiftly that, while a reader attaches to each, he or she can't really connect wholly with any one. It seems, for the first 100 pages or so, that you're going to align yourself with the child's unwillingly adoptive mother, who is a great, solid, unexpected character -- but then the narrator moves to show you the crabby teacher, the aging Police Chief, the wayward daughter.
I think there's a value in forcing a reader to connect with characters he or she may have ignored or held in contempt, at first -- but I did feel like River Angel needed a stronger thread, a character who would resonate throughout, and then beyond, the story. Without it, the novel moves from vignette to vignette, like Crash, if Crash didn't make me wish that narrative cinema had never come to be (whic: it does.)
December 23, 2008
This novel is about faith, of a conventional sort and a more supernatural variety. In A. Manette Ansay's tale, a mysterious death turns a town upside down and tests longtime relationships. Ansay's musings about faith are the best part:
"It is meaningless to hold the yardstick of fact against the complexities of the human heart. Reality simply isn't large enough to hold us. And so the sky becomes a gateway to the heavens. Death is not an end but a beginning."
"The greatest act of faith was learning to live with the incomplete picture, to endure the injustice, ugliness, evil that welled from the void like blood from a wound."
"Over the years she had moved away from the sharp-cornered lines of her schoolgirl catechism, searching for warmer cadences, something more graceful, closer to love. Raising a child had taught her the purest sounds of devotion, how words are merely the residue meaning leaves in our mouths. ... And that was Faith -- the mind's surrender to the stunned and terrified wonder of the heart."
All that being said, I don't see angels everywhere. And I've never made a pilgrimage to Conyers, GA.
I liked the novel for the most part. But I thought Ansay gave too much of her story away in the author's note. It would have worked as an afterword, without letting all the air out of the balloon at the get-go. The fact that the publisher picked up the note and used it on the inside cover made it a worse sin. DON'T READ IT TILL YOU'VE FINISHED THE BOOK. I also thought a couple of characters were one-dimensional: the evil, grasping developer and the town cop, to name two. It's still worth reading, especially if you like to ponder the big questions.
"It is meaningless to hold the yardstick of fact against the complexities of the human heart. Reality simply isn't large enough to hold us. And so the sky becomes a gateway to the heavens. Death is not an end but a beginning."
"The greatest act of faith was learning to live with the incomplete picture, to endure the injustice, ugliness, evil that welled from the void like blood from a wound."
"Over the years she had moved away from the sharp-cornered lines of her schoolgirl catechism, searching for warmer cadences, something more graceful, closer to love. Raising a child had taught her the purest sounds of devotion, how words are merely the residue meaning leaves in our mouths. ... And that was Faith -- the mind's surrender to the stunned and terrified wonder of the heart."
All that being said, I don't see angels everywhere. And I've never made a pilgrimage to Conyers, GA.
I liked the novel for the most part. But I thought Ansay gave too much of her story away in the author's note. It would have worked as an afterword, without letting all the air out of the balloon at the get-go. The fact that the publisher picked up the note and used it on the inside cover made it a worse sin. DON'T READ IT TILL YOU'VE FINISHED THE BOOK. I also thought a couple of characters were one-dimensional: the evil, grasping developer and the town cop, to name two. It's still worth reading, especially if you like to ponder the big questions.
January 1, 2016
Vinegar Hill by Manette Ansay was a best seller courtesy of Oprah's Book Club. It's a dark tale, set in a small town in America's midwest, where life is defined by rural decay and an avenging God.
River Angel has a similar feel about it. Life in Ambient is changed forever by the return of Shawn. Shawn is a bad boy, a man with a history of broken relationships, a man with wonderlust in his bones. When he turns up with his young son Gabriel on the family doorstep one Christmas Eve, his sister-in-law senses is reluctant to offer hospitality, sensing trouble despite feeling pity for the plump, obsessive child.
As the story enfolds, we discover the discontents of the townsfolk. The barren wife, divorced by a husband desperate for children. A widow and her daughter, left in financial troubles following the death of her husband in a hit-and-run incident. A teenage girl, pressured by her peers, and so on. Their lives are all touched by the tragedy that plunges the small community under the media spotlight.
I was totally absorbed by this story. Like Vinegar Hill, it's not a comfortable read, but if like me you've read and enjoyed any of her other novels, I would recommend this one. The cover blurb compares her to Jane Smiley, and I can see why.
My only complaint is that it's inspired by a real story, and uses the same time frame. I don't have a problem with this, but I wish that information had been put at the end, rather than in an author's note at the beginning, where it's a bit of a spoiler. If you can resist the temptation, skip it!
River Angel has a similar feel about it. Life in Ambient is changed forever by the return of Shawn. Shawn is a bad boy, a man with a history of broken relationships, a man with wonderlust in his bones. When he turns up with his young son Gabriel on the family doorstep one Christmas Eve, his sister-in-law senses is reluctant to offer hospitality, sensing trouble despite feeling pity for the plump, obsessive child.
As the story enfolds, we discover the discontents of the townsfolk. The barren wife, divorced by a husband desperate for children. A widow and her daughter, left in financial troubles following the death of her husband in a hit-and-run incident. A teenage girl, pressured by her peers, and so on. Their lives are all touched by the tragedy that plunges the small community under the media spotlight.
I was totally absorbed by this story. Like Vinegar Hill, it's not a comfortable read, but if like me you've read and enjoyed any of her other novels, I would recommend this one. The cover blurb compares her to Jane Smiley, and I can see why.
My only complaint is that it's inspired by a real story, and uses the same time frame. I don't have a problem with this, but I wish that information had been put at the end, rather than in an author's note at the beginning, where it's a bit of a spoiler. If you can resist the temptation, skip it!
August 3, 2010
Rather slow moving. A young boy, Gabriel, and his father travel across the country to the town of Ambient, where his father grew up. They arrive at his uncle's house and Gabriel meets his uncle and grandfather for the first time, together with his uncle's wife and her 2 sons. Returning from midnight service, Gabriel discovers that his father has left. It's Christmas Eve.
This book touches on faith, the faith of an individual, the faith in a community and how people wrestle with everyday life while they maintain their faith. There is a belief that an angel hovers around the river running through Ambient, but while some children claim to have seen the angel, the adults outwardly dismiss this as folk lore. But is there an angel and how does she decide who to help? As Gabriel bumbles along, his passive nature and bulk make him the target for bullying from and some children, including his own cousin and a deep dislike by one of his teachers. He's deeply religious and is drawn to the river .... he seeks the river angel, even if his search takes an unexpected turn.
This book touches on faith, the faith of an individual, the faith in a community and how people wrestle with everyday life while they maintain their faith. There is a belief that an angel hovers around the river running through Ambient, but while some children claim to have seen the angel, the adults outwardly dismiss this as folk lore. But is there an angel and how does she decide who to help? As Gabriel bumbles along, his passive nature and bulk make him the target for bullying from and some children, including his own cousin and a deep dislike by one of his teachers. He's deeply religious and is drawn to the river .... he seeks the river angel, even if his search takes an unexpected turn.
July 2, 2008
Based very loosely on a real event in Wisconsin. Story of a boy ridiculed by many and a vagrant with his dad. Is the boy killed by teens? Body found in barn but not in the river where he drowned? Disturbing.
August 7, 2014
It was interesting to learn more about small mid-west towns of the US. Full of religion.
March 18, 2020
Never could quite figure this one out. Heavy boy is bullied and appears that he is pushed off a bridge to his death by high school in crowd boys.
January 19, 2022
Review to come tomorrow.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2014
Friends who read my reviews here know it's rare for me to give a book five stars, but this one deserves every one of them!
I love books that raise huge religious questions and don't answer them, whose approach to the questions is ambiguous and contradictory. This book does that beautifully. Some of the questions are: Does God have a plan for our lives? What is the relationship between organized religion and personal faith? Is prayer effective? Do angels exist, and do we have guardian angels who protect us?
People who answer these questions in a wide variety of ways populate this book, and all of them are believable, beautifully drawn and detailed, and convincing. The lying teenage girl, the Catholic priest, the sloppy and hard-drinking Grandpa, the tender-hearted police chief, the jaded high school teacher, the polio survivor, the bullied child... no bad guys here, just people doing what occurs to them to do--sometimes well-motivated, sometimes clueless and cruel.
The town itself is another believable character in the story. Ambient, Wisconsin is a small town suffering from the Interstate bypass not far away, and the usual influx of big box and fast food places closer to the highway which draw people away from the dwindling downtown. It's a bit shabby and depressed, but it's still holding on, and you can't help rooting for the town as well as caring for its residents as this beautiful but perplexing story plays out.
Don't read this one if you're looking for answers.
I love books that raise huge religious questions and don't answer them, whose approach to the questions is ambiguous and contradictory. This book does that beautifully. Some of the questions are: Does God have a plan for our lives? What is the relationship between organized religion and personal faith? Is prayer effective? Do angels exist, and do we have guardian angels who protect us?
People who answer these questions in a wide variety of ways populate this book, and all of them are believable, beautifully drawn and detailed, and convincing. The lying teenage girl, the Catholic priest, the sloppy and hard-drinking Grandpa, the tender-hearted police chief, the jaded high school teacher, the polio survivor, the bullied child... no bad guys here, just people doing what occurs to them to do--sometimes well-motivated, sometimes clueless and cruel.
The town itself is another believable character in the story. Ambient, Wisconsin is a small town suffering from the Interstate bypass not far away, and the usual influx of big box and fast food places closer to the highway which draw people away from the dwindling downtown. It's a bit shabby and depressed, but it's still holding on, and you can't help rooting for the town as well as caring for its residents as this beautiful but perplexing story plays out.
Don't read this one if you're looking for answers.
March 29, 2017
Accurate picture of small-town Wisconsin inhabited by the older families of German immigrants, summer people from Chicago and the new folks who commute to the big city to work. Folklore includes sightings of ghosts and an angel who inhabits their local river. The women's prayer group shares all the best and worst of this little community while keeping their vow of secrecy, not to share what anyone of their members prays for with anyone outside their group. Families have problematic marriages, disobedient teenagers, drinking husbands, etc Too often, adults fail to notice the problems that surround their families....or, simply believe that they can pray for a solution without actually doing something about it themselves. The abandoned child, Gabriel, brings out the best of the community with it's good Samaritans as well as the worst, with those who judge the boy based on his father's bad behavior.
December 4, 2015
This was a well-written novel with some rather eclectic but well-drawn characters. I would classify the book as a coming-of-age novel, more-or-less, because even though a death takes places in it, it isn't a murder, so I wouldn't call it a real mystery or suspense novel. Regardless of its genre placement however, I would have to say that this is an interesting novel even though I found the story line to be a bit strange. This is more of a spiritual novel than a Christian one despite the fact that the book is full of "Christians" and focuses on the belief or disbelief in the supernatural and in angels specifically because the author states in her note at the beginning that she is not a believer and brings it up in her "coda" at the end just in case you missed her denial the first time. In any case, it was a fairly good albeit a sad novel.
October 18, 2017
Still a good book but definitely didn't speak to me like Vinegar Hill. A small town in Wisconsin in 1991 is hit by a tragedy and the sight of an angel is apparently seen at the scene of the body. The novel talks about a town divided half by the devout faith of believing in angels and half thinking that angels and religious faith should belong in fantasy. At the same time a topic close to my heart which is the dissolving of a small town and family run farms and businesses into strip malls and large fast food chain restaurants. Very enjoyable and A quick read to help me finish my book challenge.
January 23, 2018
Decent read, although there were a ton of characters and none were written about long enough to connect with. In that respect it was a bit choppy to me and not as fleshed out as it could have been. I recently re-read Vinegar Hill which prompted me to look into more of Ansay's books. I think she's a wonderful writer, but I will take a break from her books for a bit, though, as they all seem to be about religion...which I don't mind, but I also don't want to overload myself with that kind of thing. A little goes a long way for me.
March 3, 2012
The blurb for this book makes it sound like it focuses on a boy who drowns and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. That is true, but the book is so much more than that. A series of vignettes, like beautifully detailed miniature portraits, describe the inhabitants of the small town of Ambient, Wisconsin. Old and young, all with secrets behind the friendly smiles -- each person has a fascinating story to tell. I loved this book.
June 13, 2013
The book was a little hard to get into partly because each chapter has a different character narrating and partly because I did not like the first character. But a worthwhile read, the book moves in chronological order through the chapters coming closer to one event and slightly past the event. Not all characters are religious or come at religion in the same manner. Very easy to read one chapter and come back later. Overall I enjoyed the place the book took me.
July 18, 2014
Novel based on an incident rumored to have happened to have happen about 100 miles from the author's hometown. She spins the story as it could have happened and each chapter is told from a different and each chapter is told from a different townperson's perspective. The story becomes the thread that ties together description of life in a small town and the people who live there as suburban sprawl creeps into this town and changes their lives.
December 24, 2014
I definitely want to read more books by Mansay! This novel was more like a series of related short stories; I wasn't even sure how they were related until the 3rd or 4th one. The novel was inspired by true events, but every character is fictional. It's a very realistic novel, although a little grimly realistic. I probably baby liked irpt, in part, because it's not happily-ever-after.
June 15, 2011
This novel was kind of hard to get into. We already know what is going to happen in terms of the action of the story. The shifting point of view, however, is interesting and shows us each character's interpretation of faith.
March 20, 2019
I did not like this book. There were characters that were mentioned in one chapter and then not mentioned ever again. The commentary about tourists and commercialization of small/rural towns was a little bit heavy-handed.
April 7, 2008
We had the best Book Club discussion on this book because of all the symbolism. Ansay writes about some quirky subjects but she has such a beautiful way with words.
January 3, 2009
She thought about how she no longer remembered feelings so much as recalled what she had felt: She'd loved him, admired him, missed him. Valiant, empty words.
February 28, 2011
I have really liked all of her books that I've read. This one is interesting in that it thoughtfully shows many townspeople's conflicting views on a tragic event that has religious implications.
August 8, 2011
Very well written. Interesting. Different. I plan to read all of this author's books. She is good.
August 4, 2012
Read this one long while back, but remember liking it a bunch.
April 27, 2013
Good story about a small town, its people, and a kidnapping gone wrong..
April 9, 2014
A. Manette Ansay is a Midwestern Flannery O'Connor.
May 15, 2014
So good (again) that I am going to look for all other books by this author!
May 14, 2015
I'm really enjoying this author.
January 12, 2017
I love A. Manette Ansay's writing. I think she's writing soul mates with Kent Haruf. Both are invited to my fantasy literary dinner party.
August 14, 2017
I usually don't like religious books. But this showed both sides and showed the struggle. Very good writing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews