The Angel’s Cut By Elizabeth Knox (Victoria University Press $35)
Clap if you believe in angels. Those whose hands are coming together will no doubt be delighted with a sequel to Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck, her aesthetic tale of an ethereal being who wants to get down and earthy.
In this instalment, Knox switches her setting from the French wine region of Burgundy to the equally stylish Hollywood in the 1930s. The angel Xas, having had his wings cut off by a vengeful Lucifer, is defying his earthbound state by acts of derring-do in the exhilarating new field of aviation, an obsession that leads him to his next great love: the Howard Hughes-like character Conrad Cole.
Xas is drawn by Cole's fire and aerial ambition, although Cole uses him, as he does everyone else. And there's the age-old problem for angels with human lovers: mortality. It seems angels, like the rest of us, never learn.
The other main character is Flora, a film editor maimed by horrific burn injuries. Xas ends up as Flora's live-in companion and caregiver of Flora's child from an unlikely Hollywood liaison. A lesson in a different kind of love for the angel and another reason to keep hanging about on earth.
Knox uses the imagery of cinema, as she did wine-making in its forerunner, and impresses with her knowledge. Who is ultimately in the director's chair is left for a final twist.
But for a fantasy to be effective, it needs to offer a consistency and inner logic that makes you willing to go along for the ride. The problem here is that despite the theological depths Knox wishes to explore in her imaginative deconstruction of the good-evil duality, you can't help asking awkward questions of a much simpler kind.
Most distracting is the angel's sexuality. Why does an angel need sex but not food or sleep? Lucifer's surprise fact that angels have no digestive systems raises anatomical questions that don't bear thinking about.
The angel's indestructibility is also a worry. Xas seems to have a habit of getting turfed out of airships and planes mid-ocean and, with one exception of a handy fishing boat, you wonder how he gets back to shore.
One of the most interesting questions the book poses is how fallible humans could retain their identity in the perfect world of heaven. In an interview with Kim Hill on RNZ National, Knox said she gets questions from readers puzzled by her theological position and thought this was because she had not yet worked it out for herself. Honest answer but again, the book would be stronger for a more consistent thesis.
However, you have to admire the panache with which Knox disregards the dictum to write about the world you know best. She also brings her trademark lyrical descriptive powers to bear, although sometimes would be better to rein them in. For example, we learn Lucifer smells of "warm anise, and cold apples". Is this an Archangel, you wonder, or an air freshener?
But as for Xas, I have to agree with the character who finds him "Xasperating". Beautiful, spiritual, animal in sexuality but in no other way, and a great help around the house. Yes he's definitely a fantasy, but one that's just a bit hard to believe in.
Frances Grant is an Auckland reviewer.
