Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier

First published 2001

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4.0(1,908)

On the day after Queen Victoria’s death in January 1901, the Coleman and Waterhouse families visit adjoining graves in a fashionable London cemetery. The Waterhouses preserve Victorian mourning customs, while Kitty Coleman resents the conventions that govern her marriage and social position. Their daughters, Maude and Lavinia, form a friendship among the tombs and include Simon Field, the gravedigger’s son, despite the class barriers separating their households.

As the children grow, electric light, motorcars and changing attitudes unsettle the world their parents inherited. Kitty’s search for purpose draws her into the women’s suffrage movement, where political action offers both freedom and danger. The novel follows the consequences for both families as private dissatisfaction becomes public rebellion and the transition from Victorian to Edwardian society disrupts assumptions about gender, death, class and respectability.