There's a sort of melancholia to Tracy Chevalier's writing. It certainly suits her stories; though none of them are "doom and gloom and the apocalypse is coming" dark--they all have reasonably hopeful streaks somewhere in there--they all hold a sort of... life sadness, I guess. Repression is a theme throughout every Chevalier book I've ever read--sexual repression, repression of spirit, repression of one's wants and needs, whether romantic or not. "Falling Angels" circles around that theme even more than "The Lady and the Unicorn" or even "Girl with a Pearl Earring", I think.

"Falling Angels" like "Lady" encompassing many different perspectives. As usual, Chevalier handles this quite well. She also, as usual, presents a cast of well-rounded characters. All of them are flawed, some quite tragically so. She also returns to her pattern of dark secrets and the Socially Disadvantaged Female. I could never decide whether to like or despise Kitty Coleman. I don't think that I was supposed to lean towards either. Chevalier writes in a way that makes you understand her characters, even when you disagree with them.

The scent of death hangs heavily over this novel--one of the main characters, Simon, is a young gravedigger--and it more than pays off. Chevalier also plays with the relationship between sex and death, in a literal and metaphorical sense.

Chevalier also tackles the women's suffrage movement. She doesn't beat us over the head with the Righteous Fist of Feminism. Look, if you're reading a Tracy Chevalier book, you probably don't need to be told that women deserve equal rights. She portrays the suffragettes as human beings, capable of mistakes. One in particular--trying not to spoil the ending--is quite flawed, and I appreciate that. Furthermore, Chevalier doesn't make caricatures of the opposition, or Kitty's somewhat cold husband. Everyone here is a human being. That is the novel's greatest strength.

This one isn't a beach read. It gets pretty dark at one point; one plot point in particular sickened me, and almost turned me off of the book. But it's worth getting through, and I'm glad I read it.