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 enlarge | Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.08
You Save: $10.92 (44%)
New (35) Collectible (1) from $14.08
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 2836
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307393852
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307393852
ASIN: 0307393852
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080721215920T
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Complete Bore June 29, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was the first novel I have read by Hoffman, and I have to say I was completely bored to tears. The plot may have had some potential in the hands of another writer, but the writing style used was just completely and utterly dull. The whole thing was a sleeper and written with no emotion whatsoever. I forced myself through it in the hopes that at some point something would change and Hoffman would out some sort of emphasis or excitement somewhere! But no, nothing. I'd rather watch paint dry. I would not recommend this book to anyone!
 wow.. June 27, 2008
Oh my Gosh! I just finnished this book today and let me tell you..it was AMAZING! I absolutely loved it. All three parts were gripping and by the end of the book I was hanging on every word. This is my new favorite!
 Hoffman's style seems to change with each book June 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I liked the stories and the plot very much, but what's with the writing style? For me the whole book read like a children's book. Short sentences, not enough detail, description or feeling... I don't see how anyone can actually like this type of writing. I enjoyed her writing in her book "The Ice Queen" much much more.
 "Love is ancient and mysterious, and you can't mess with it." June 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Unrequited love and betrayal interlaces its way though Alice Hoffman's three-pronged contemporary ghost story. The Third Angel is about how life and death - and that shady place in between - can affect three people in remarkably different ways. A literal smorgasbord of finally wrought observations, Hoffman's characters are linked to the Lion Park Hotel in Knightsbridge, an argument in Room 707, and the shocking ramifications of an affair that went horribly wrong.
The book begins as Maddie grudgingly arrives in London from New York to attend to her sister, Allie's wedding. Recently the two sisters have grown apart, with Maddie quite dismissive of Allie's too-handsome fiance Paul Lewis, surprised that her sister, usually so practical and smart had fallen for such a vacuous man like him. But attraction of course is a very strange thing; indeed it has a life of its own. When one night at dinner, Maddie looks over at Paul, she feels something go through her and there's a moment of doubt, the thud of the pulse, "the quick image of the disaster to come."
Maddie views heartbreak is a game and nothing more, a little flirting behind Allie's back, but when she discovers that Paul is dying of cancer, this unforeseen circumstance causes her to question her loyalty to her sister, and also for Allie to question her commitment to Paul. Meanwhile, Paul's mother Frieda Lewis is only nineteen when in 1966 she comes to London from Reading to work for four months at the Lion's Park Hotel. Frieda refuses to follow the path of her father, happy to pursue a measure of independence working as a maid rather than going to university to study medicine.
When she unexpectedly becomes infatuated with James, an ambitious pop singer, she identifies a kindred spirit, for James is also the odd man out. This vulnerable and brittle man has spent his life battling pain, lately snorting heroin with his wealthy girlfriend Stella to block out most of his troubles. But ironically it is Frieda not Stella who becomes James' promised muse, Frieda giving him an excuse to unburden his soul. Both of them end up bound to each other by equal parts adoration and affection, their mutual feelings proving to be much deeper and more urgent than either of them expected.
Only when the bookish and taciturn twelve-year-old Lucy Green arrives in London in 1953 with her father Ben to attend the wedding of Bryn, her step mother Charlotte's sister, does Hoffman's multi-layered narrative come full circle and we learn the mystery surrounding the events in room 707 and the significance of the drunken Teddy Healy and why he hangs around the hotel every night. It is Teddy and Lucy who have the most connection to the events that took place in 707, the eventual meeting signifying a total connection of thought and emotion. Part of the attraction of Lucy is that she's extremely aware for her age and she spends a lot of time wondering why people were put on the earth and how she might right the wrongs of the world.
All of Hoffman's characters are plagued by the irrationalities of love: Maddie and Allie are almost torn asunder by their conflicting desires for Paul; Frieda finds herself encapsulated by London of swinging sixties, with her thick black eyeliner, miniskirts, and blue jeans with hoop earrings, all to attract James, her one true love. Even Lucy, believes in love letters, in romance and in destiny, becoming a go-between for the dashingly handsome Michael Macklin when he asks her to deliver letters to Bryn, Charlotte's sister, the woman he's ultimately in love with.
Throughout the course of this novel, these people are forced to bear enormous personal loss, but they also discover the colossal power of love and acceptance where love often has nothing to do with the here and now and where the "third angel" of mercy and tolerance constantly watches over them. As Lucy's story brings the narrative full circle, many of the peripheral characters undertake a reevaluation of their lives, especially the broken-down Teddy Healey as he laments his actions on that fateful night and the woman he ultimately lost to death. Mike Leonard June 08.
A Good Summer Read June 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If I fast-forward 50 or 60 or 100 years, I envision The Third Angel being taught in a literature classroom in which the professor is discussing a literary technique called Hoffmanism, where an author writes her book so that it can be read either front to back or back to front. It is the character Allie in The Third Angel who discusses that she wrote her best-selling children's book, The Heron's Wife, in that way. And it is author Hoffman who so eloquently does it in The Third Angel. Based on the reviews by Amazon readers, I can see that some readers want to relate to the characters, and some readers just read for beautiful prose. The Third Angel delivers on both accounts. I plan to re-read it next summer, only next summer I will read Part III first, then Part II, then Part I.
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