Scan barcode
A review by booksaremysuperpower
Blue Angel by Francine Prose
3.0
(2.5-3 stars)
A quote from the movie "Jewel of the Nile" popped into my head as soon as I finished "Blue Angel": "Well, you got your book," said by Michael Douglas' character Jack Colton, to which Kathleen Turner's character Joan Wilder replies, "I got a lot more than that." For anyone unfamiliar with this classic adventure epic, Turner plays a frustrated Romance novelist struggling with severe writer's block, prompting her to leave her lover Jack (and the rocky patch in their relationship) behind while she plays journalist for a fictional dictator in North Africa. Things quickly turn dangerous and sketchy, and Douglas hightails after Turner that results in a wild chase across some stunning African desert scenery. At the end of the film, Turner and Douglas have just escaped a spectacular death scene (reimagined by the evil dictator from a scene in one of her previous books) and Douglas points out to her that she finally has a story to tell. Turner, of course, realizes that she also got the man of her dreams.
Ted Swenson, at the end of "Blue Angel", also now has a story to tell. He, unlike Joan in "Jewel", just lost everything of value in his life in order to tell it.
"Blue Angel" is a tried (maybe tired?) and true satire of not only an unfulfilled creative writing Professor's life, but also what happens when art imitates life and vice versa. For the first half of the book, I was scratching my head wondering how this seemingly simple and overused story became a National Book Award finalist. As a fan of Prose's "Reading like a Writer", I knew in my heart that she was much too talented and smart to write such a book as "Blue Angel", which is filled with cliche after cliche. Or is it?
I can completely understand why this novel threw readers for a loop and why it got such relatively poor Goodreads reviews. For all of Prose's craft and literary technique to create a story that is not what it seems, while it may have charmed the awards committee it did not endear her to her readers, myself included. There is something almost inaccessible about this story. Where the book finally got me (or where I finally got the book, I guess) was at the very end. As Swenson surveys his surroundings at the end of his hearing for sexually harassing a young student at the University, he sees the deer in the distance, hears the silence in the snow, feels the stillness in the air and for the first time, the character is living in the present moment.
How many of us sleepwalk through our own lives? Do we ever truly see the person sitting in front of us, or are we usually looking just slightly left of one shoulder, consumed with our needs and desires and regrets? This is what I think Francine Prose was getting at in the larger picture of her story. And these are interesting ideas to ponder, especially with Swenson's relationship with wife Sherry and his daughter Ruby. Here Prose explores how we sometimes gnaw at our pain and failings until it becomes too much to bear. The author chooses to use Ted's toothache as a metaphor to overexplain this point, though its final explosion was one of the funnier parts of the book.
We could see Ted's demise from page one, and I have to believe it's not an accident. We are begging him to wake up to his own life. And just as his agent pleads with him to forget his imagination and write what he knows and what he's experiencing right now (his affair with Angela), Ted finds himself at exactly this crossroads.
A few things that bothered me: The revelations during the sexual harassment hearing were somewhat confusing. At one point Ruby's ex-boyfriend (Max?) accuses Swenson of sexually abusing her. Was there supposed to be some truth to this? This section left me uneasy because it came out of nowhere and then it's never resolved.
Also, by satirizing the horrific awfulness of a campus beginning fiction writing class (Lena Dunham did a similar thing with her portrayal of Hanna's experience at the Iowa writing residency program in the show "Girls"), Prose inadvertently opens her novel up to the same criticism her student characters face with their own manuscripts. I felt a bit like character Claris when I read the dialogue between Angela and Swenson outside of the video store when she says, "Oh, I'm just out to get some Tampax." Like Claris, I wanted to point out that no girl I have ever met is so cavalier about getting period supplies that she would make a formal announcement. Not only that, but no girl or woman calls it by the brand name Tampax. So there, Francine.
My grandmother adored this book, and while I liked bits of it (and laughed out loud a few times) this isn't a novel I would highly recommend. Perhaps I needed to re-read "Reading like a Writer" to get more out of it.
A quote from the movie "Jewel of the Nile" popped into my head as soon as I finished "Blue Angel": "Well, you got your book," said by Michael Douglas' character Jack Colton, to which Kathleen Turner's character Joan Wilder replies, "I got a lot more than that." For anyone unfamiliar with this classic adventure epic, Turner plays a frustrated Romance novelist struggling with severe writer's block, prompting her to leave her lover Jack (and the rocky patch in their relationship) behind while she plays journalist for a fictional dictator in North Africa. Things quickly turn dangerous and sketchy, and Douglas hightails after Turner that results in a wild chase across some stunning African desert scenery. At the end of the film, Turner and Douglas have just escaped a spectacular death scene (reimagined by the evil dictator from a scene in one of her previous books) and Douglas points out to her that she finally has a story to tell. Turner, of course, realizes that she also got the man of her dreams.
Ted Swenson, at the end of "Blue Angel", also now has a story to tell. He, unlike Joan in "Jewel", just lost everything of value in his life in order to tell it.
"Blue Angel" is a tried (maybe tired?) and true satire of not only an unfulfilled creative writing Professor's life, but also what happens when art imitates life and vice versa. For the first half of the book, I was scratching my head wondering how this seemingly simple and overused story became a National Book Award finalist. As a fan of Prose's "Reading like a Writer", I knew in my heart that she was much too talented and smart to write such a book as "Blue Angel", which is filled with cliche after cliche. Or is it?
I can completely understand why this novel threw readers for a loop and why it got such relatively poor Goodreads reviews. For all of Prose's craft and literary technique to create a story that is not what it seems, while it may have charmed the awards committee it did not endear her to her readers, myself included. There is something almost inaccessible about this story. Where the book finally got me (or where I finally got the book, I guess) was at the very end. As Swenson surveys his surroundings at the end of his hearing for sexually harassing a young student at the University, he sees the deer in the distance, hears the silence in the snow, feels the stillness in the air and for the first time, the character is living in the present moment.
How many of us sleepwalk through our own lives? Do we ever truly see the person sitting in front of us, or are we usually looking just slightly left of one shoulder, consumed with our needs and desires and regrets? This is what I think Francine Prose was getting at in the larger picture of her story. And these are interesting ideas to ponder, especially with Swenson's relationship with wife Sherry and his daughter Ruby. Here Prose explores how we sometimes gnaw at our pain and failings until it becomes too much to bear. The author chooses to use Ted's toothache as a metaphor to overexplain this point, though its final explosion was one of the funnier parts of the book.
We could see Ted's demise from page one, and I have to believe it's not an accident. We are begging him to wake up to his own life. And just as his agent pleads with him to forget his imagination and write what he knows and what he's experiencing right now (his affair with Angela), Ted finds himself at exactly this crossroads.
A few things that bothered me: The revelations during the sexual harassment hearing were somewhat confusing. At one point Ruby's ex-boyfriend (Max?) accuses Swenson of sexually abusing her. Was there supposed to be some truth to this? This section left me uneasy because it came out of nowhere and then it's never resolved.
Also, by satirizing the horrific awfulness of a campus beginning fiction writing class (Lena Dunham did a similar thing with her portrayal of Hanna's experience at the Iowa writing residency program in the show "Girls"), Prose inadvertently opens her novel up to the same criticism her student characters face with their own manuscripts. I felt a bit like character Claris when I read the dialogue between Angela and Swenson outside of the video store when she says, "Oh, I'm just out to get some Tampax." Like Claris, I wanted to point out that no girl I have ever met is so cavalier about getting period supplies that she would make a formal announcement. Not only that, but no girl or woman calls it by the brand name Tampax. So there, Francine.
My grandmother adored this book, and while I liked bits of it (and laughed out loud a few times) this isn't a novel I would highly recommend. Perhaps I needed to re-read "Reading like a Writer" to get more out of it.