Okay, I understand that I'm three for three when it comes to Ansay's novels, and reviewing them as Among the Best Books Ever, but really. I actually shelved three other books that are due before this one out of an intense need to read every Ansay novel possible. This one was marginally harder to get into than the others -- I think, honestly, because it starts with the least sympathetic character, and one who then takes off and isn't seen again. The difference between River Angel, which I loved, and Vinegar Hill and Sister, which I adored, is probably that the other two Ansay novels I've read are most closely attached to the female protagonists, and River Angel moves from character to character so swiftly that, while a reader attaches to each, he or she can't really connect wholly with any one. It seems, for the first 100 pages or so, that you're going to align yourself with the child's unwillingly adoptive mother, who is a great, solid, unexpected character -- but then the narrator moves to show you the crabby teacher, the aging Police Chief, the wayward daughter. I think there's a value in forcing a reader to connect with characters he or she may have ignored or held in contempt, at first -- but I did feel like River Angel needed a stronger thread, a character who would resonate throughout, and then beyond, the story. Without it, the novel moves from vignette to vignette, like Crash, if Crash didn't make me wish that narrative cinema had never come to be (whic: it does.)
