Wild Oats and Wings

The Angel's Cut by Elizabeth Knox is a grown up fairy tale and like the fairy tales for the little ones unpicks the dark seams of the human heart. The angel Xas is back from The Vintner's Luck and this time is in Hollywood, flying stunt planes for the movies. His immortality is a burden and Sobran the love of his life is long lost to time. He becomes infatuated with Cole, a narcissist movie mogul. Xas is deeply damaged by Lucifer's removal of his wings; the stubby remains of these become a secret he hides from his maniacal lover. Cole has all the manias: nymphomania, megalomania and probably a few more that haven't been discovered! He treats Xas and his other lovers appallingly.

Xas befriends two fabulous women: Millie a "coloured" stunt pilot whose dream is to establish a flying school for "coloured" pilots" (banned from learning to fly in "white" flying schools) and Flora, a former actor now editor, damaged terribly by a fire that has rendered her unable to have sex easily by the unfortunate location of her scars. Nevertheless she has a child with another narcissist movie maker Connie, the birth of which kills her.

It's a book about modernity. Its amazing how the world has changed since The Vitner's Luck where Xas was Sobran's lover for life. An elicit love for sure, but a stable one. This stability is gone in The Angel's Cut. The view of heaven and hell, of God Xas and Lucifer is also fascinating, especially the idea that the souls that go to heaven are happy but lose their selfhood. I am still thinking about this book. It is a wonderful evocation of our dreams and disappointments.

I also read Hungry Woman in Paris by Josefina Lopez. I loved her movie Real Women Have Curves, and was attracted by the forbidden fruit style cover in my local book shop. Canela is running from that vague ennui after a broken engagement and ends up in Paris at a cooking school almost by default really. She's a very passive character and this applies to her relationships with men - she falls into whatevers on offer, sowing some wild oats rather vividly! As a Mexican-American, she is drawn to the outsiders in Paris, the Arabs and also a Chinese woman refused service at the Louis vouitton shop. She meets very few French people other than her teachers, the chefs for whom oral sex seems de rigeur with one's creme anglaise. It's a novel, obviously, but what i found most interesting is that she's writing about out her world - the outsider's perspective is very interesting. Interesting, too, is that the ennui follows her to Paris and follows her home. It wasn't a simple go to Paris, fix your life tome like one or two others.