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The trouble with angels >> Anne Tyler's A Patchwork Planet looks under the halo by JULIET WATERS
Thus the horror as I finished the second chapter of Anne Tyler's latest novel, A Patchwork Planet. "Jesus, not more fucking angels," I was heard to say before deciding nevertheless to forge ahead. Despite my contempt for angels and the people who believe in them, I gave the book a chance, partly because I had started to like the narrator, Barnaby Gaitlin. And partly because Anne Tyler is one of the most reliably charming American novelists, even if she isn't one of the most exciting. The Accidental Tourist is still the classic eccentric suburban romance. And the ending of Breathing Lessons, which won the 1988 Pulitzer, still pops into my head from time to time. In the end I'm glad I stuck it out with A Patchwork Planet, since it's ultimately an anti-angel novel. But it takes a lot of forging ahead before the reader realizes this. There are way, way too many chapters in the book where it's looking like Barnaby, the 30-year-old black sheep of a wealthy philanthropic Baltimore family, is going to be saved by his angelic middle-aged girlfriend, a loan officer named Sophia. The problem being that while Barnaby is an interesting enough character to keep this novel going, Sophia is so dull you long for someone to sneak up and strangle her with her halo. Barnaby comes from a long history of believers in angels. Great-grandfather Gaitlin made his fortune from an idea he claims was given to him by one. And now it's the tradition for every Gaitlin male to have an encounter with an angel and publish an account of it. Of course, now these accounts will probably be lost amongst all the other angel merch. "It used to be," says Barnaby's mother, "that angels were unusual, but now they're in every bookstore; they're on every calendar and wall motto and needle-pointed cushion; they're little gold pins on every lapel. Ours will be lumped right in with all those tacky newcomer angels." A Patchwork Planet opens just a few weeks before Barnaby's 30th birthday, and it's understandable why he's looking for an angel. He's never quite achieved redemption from the sins of his youth. As a teenager he used to break into houses with some juvenile delinquent pals. But while they were stealing money and stereos, Barnaby's compulsion was to steal diaries, letters and personal mementos. Unfortunately, he was the only one who ever got caught, and the weirdness of his burglary made him something of a local media sensation, much to the shame of his family who have never forgiven him. Since then Barnaby has been haunted by a bad-boy self-image which has led him into and out of a marriage with a priggish girl-next-door type and has estranged him from his daughter. Everywhere Barnaby turns there's some woman he's disappointing. This despite the fact that Barnaby seems to actually be a fairly decent hard-working employee at Rent a Back, an on-call handyman service for elderly clients. Then he meets Sophia, who is the one person who seems endlessly impressed by what he's achieved as a chronic underachiever. For a while her encouragement seems to give him the boost he needs to start getting his life together. But slowly the coerciveness beneath her glow of unconditional love starts to become more and more visible. And gradually Barnaby starts to discover what she has at stake in maintaining his immaturity. In the end, the trouble with angels is that they have a weird way of undermining one's faith in oneself. What redeems A Patchwork Planet is that it doesn't end with the miracle of Barnaby's salvation, but with the miracle of his encounter with someone who is his weird and wonderful equal. And while I feel a bit guilty for hinting at the ending, it may be the only thing that will give an intelligent reader faith that this novel is worth believing in. A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler, Viking, hc, 288 pp, $32
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A few years ago, angels infested the offices of the Mirror. Sadly, not actual angels who might have had some power to change our pathetic lives. I'm talking about the angels in the piles of picture books, story books, reference books and novels about angels that were the pre-millennial rage back then. It got so bad I declared myself officially allergic to the creatures.