Book Review: Green Angel
How will we react when the worst happens? Will we curl up and despair? Or will we rise up and endure?
The answer to that question lies at the heart of Hoffman’s deceptively slender novel Green Angel. Taking equal inspiration from not only traditional fairy tales, but also the September 11 attacks, Hoffman spins a story of loss, grief, and grace.
The setting is very much like our own world, but with hints of a deeper reality. Green is a sullen teenager with one remarkable trait, a talent for gardening that borders on magic...she hears the needs of plants, she can speak to them and encourage them to grow, and soon she surpasses everyone she knows as an authority on all things green. Hoffman never quite tells us whether this is literal magic, or if this is all an elaborate metaphor for Green’s talents, and that is the point. The whole book is metaphor and magic.
One day, following an argument, Green remains at home while her parents and sister head to the city to sell their crops. That is the day that a sudden and violent attack destroys the unnamed city, covering the earth with choking clouds and darkness for weeks. It also alters the pattern of life for all the survivors.
Her grief at the loss of her family begins acutely, coupled as it is with her own regrets at how she parted with them. However, she must also face the awful new world she lives in: blighted crops, looters, suspicious neighbors, and a hopeless future. Her choices are simple. She can give up, starve and die. Or she can try to survive.
Green’s path back toward living follows that of a mythic warrior. She journeys through darkness, she meets animal companions, she encounters a witch and a robber band, she works magic. Hoffman’s true genius is in making this mythic journey believable, still anchored in the real world. Green is amazing not because she’s different from regular people, but because she isn’t. It is possible to read this story as one without magic, and it still works.
The language of the book is a list of aspirational words: lyrical, symbolic, careful, haunting. Hoffman shows such care in her writing; words and phrases are placed in such ways that they echo after the initial reading, and bring up associations with traditional myths to deepen the story. Which is to say, Hoffman is a damn fine writer, all the more so because you can read the book at several levels and enjoy it at each one. You don’t have to be a Jack Zipes-type to appreciate Green’s story. You just have to have a spare hour.