The Garden of Angels
Venice was occupied by the Germans in WW2 for only 20 months (September 1943 to April 1945), but the occupation lay heavily upon the city. The action in The Garden of Angels takes place in the first winter of the occupation. The central character is Paolo Uccello, a reclusive and recently orphaned teenager left alone to manage the near-bankrupt family weaving business, with one remaining employee in a near-derelict palazzo. He is drawn into sheltering two fugitive partisans who suck him into a vortex of violence and death. The story is structured as a testimony bequeathed by the dying Paulo to his grandson (or is he?) many years later. At first this is simply a framing device, but after the old man’s death, it takes on a life of its own to carry the story to its conclusion.
The plot is strong, tense and intricate with an unexpected twist in the tail, and the sense of place is haunting and powerful, but the abiding strength is in the characterisation, not only of the principal characters but also the secondary actors, Fascists, Nazis, policemen, partisans, priests, Jews and ordinary Venetians trying to survive. You may feel that we are sated with novels about occupied Europe in WW2, but don’t miss this one.
