Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Quiet Belief in Angels by R. J. Ellory
I have finished reading A Quiet Belief in Angels by R. J. Ellory . This novel is a thriller, a very dark and moody thriller. This book was featured in the Richard & Judy 2008 Book Club and I am glad that I bought it. Roger John Ellory is British and was born in Birmingham but this book is set in America. In character with the American scene all the words are spelled the American way and the time frame is from 1939 to 1967. Roger's use of vocabulary is huge, this is not tabloid writing. The book is written solely from the angle of the lead character Joseph Vaughan. As a reader you have many, many doubts as the story unfolds. You get some dark, very dark thoughts and it is very easy to jump to conclusions as to who is murdering the little girls. With the exception of the pages numbered 215 to 218, this book is not graphic in it's detail. It is a very haunting book that keeps you wondering all the way through. The most powerful part of the book is the pages 215 to 218 which simply add to the reader experience and these pages come as rather a shock. This is a dark, emotional novel that is expertly told. Roger leads you along in a rural location as though you are living there, when suddenly Joseph Vaughan moves to New York and you feel shocked at the relative claustrophobia of living in a huge, busy city. I vote this book a hit!
Many people wondered what went through Ian Huntley's mind when he killed two 10-year-old girls - Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman - in the case known as the Soham murders. Maybe pages 215 to 218 of A Quiet Belief in Angels will help the reader understand what went through Ian's warped mind. Judge for yourself, I still vote this book a hit for many reasons. This is a quality read that haunts the reader and forces you to question your prejudices. You are shown just how easy it is to feel bad and think the worse of people. You understand how stranger danger can grip a community, when in the end you just do not know who you can trust.
I will now end this post by quoting pages 215 to 218 of A Quiet Belief in Angels, sweet dreams everyone!...
Tears were not enough.
Little girl crying would've brought many a man to the brink of compassion, but not this one.
What a friend we have in Je-sus-
Praying in her mind perhaps.
On the vic-tory side, on the vic-tory side, no foe can daunt us, no fear can haunt us-
Words going round in her mind. Eyes tight closed like winter shutters.
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, give me oil in my lamp I pray-
Smell of something like something dead. Smell of shoe leather, or something that smelled like leather, and after the sudden shock of being snatched, after the moment's expectation for laughter, that this was a game, just a game, just a fun game-
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear-
Like hide an' seek, catch-as-catch-can, ollie ollie oxen freeeeee-
But realization dawned snap! Sudden like a door slam. Bang! One thing, now another, and then understanding that the pressure she felt around her neck, the fact that the other hand went beneath her skirt and touched her where she wouldn't have dared to touch herself, was never part of any game she remembered.
And then her breathing faltered.
Hitching, catching in her throat, and understanding that whatever was happening wasn't supposed to happen in any kind of world she'd imagined.
Feeling of hands - one around her throat, one beneath her skirt, and the smell of liquor, the smell of tobacco, the smell of leather or something like leather...
Struggling now. Muscles tensing. Nervous system charged with electricity, snapping inside her like machine she once saw at the State Fair. Big silver globe, and sparks crackling away from it, and someone touching it and all their hair goes wild and haywire... and kids laughing, and the man standing there with his hair like cotton candy... and the smell, the brackish tang and hiss of energy releasing...
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning... keep me burning 'til the break of day-
And everything inside her screaming that she had to get away, run away, run like the wind, run like lightning across the field to home.
But the arms around her, holding tight, holding her ironbound and unrelenting, and the sensation of pressure increasing against her chest, her throat, and finding it harder and harder to breathe, and colors flashing behind her eyes, and wanting to scream, wanting to scream like she'd never screamed before, scream like a fire siren, like a great swooping bird of prey descending, like a wild horse, its mane flying behind like the colors of a hundred armies, unfurling and snapping in the wind... screaming like a little girl terrified for her life...
Eight years old. A quarter mile from home.
Opened her eyes a fraction. Could see the dip and the sudden rise of the hill, the way the road wended east then northeast then east once again, and back of the rise to the right, back there where the tall tree stood with its shorter brother, was her house.
Had it not been for the dip and rise she could've seen the house, her house, from where she'd been walking when he came out of nowhere.
Smelled like blackness, smelled like dark and deep. Smelled old; older than God and baseball.
Smelled like Jesus and nowhere to be seen.
A man behind her, arms like tree trunks, a man who smelled like he'd done this before.
And then she started crying, and that's when he hit her, hard, smack!, and the sound was like a whip, and the pain that lanced through the side of her head was like the time she fell from a tree and bloodied her nose and bruised her cheek, and felt the sound of the earth colliding with her head for three weeks in her right ear.
Started crying, and he smacked her, and she knew it was a he because no-one but a man could have held her so tight, and no-one but a man had such iron muscles and rough skin and callused hands.
Crying sound was swallowed by the darkness of evening, and every thought she had was more terrifying than the previous one, and when she realized what he was going to do it felt like her blood ran quiet and still in her veins.
Down on the ground now, hand across her throat, other hand tearing at her clothes, rending cotton and lace and a peach-colored satin trim, tugging the bowed pink ribbons from her hair... and she felt the press of cool air on her skin, and the ground beneath her head, the dampness of earth, breathed the smell of dead leaves and broken twigs, heard the labored breathing over her, her eyes screwed shut in the make-believe wish that if she didn't see it then it couldn't happen.
But it did.
Colors behind her eyelids like kaleidoscopic whirls, and the sound in her ears of blood rushing through her... frightened blood, blood trying to escape.
Hit her again. Smack! Stinging redness on her cheek, and opening her eyes, and through her tears seeing the light in his eyes - deadlight, redlight - and white teeth, and smelling his rancid, fetid breath, and feeling the roughness of stubble as he pressed his face against her stomach, as his hands buried themselves, as fingers pushed inside her and made her hurt like she'd never imagined anyone could be hurt, that someone could hurt that much. But they could.
And then deciding to lie still, barely breathing, barely thinking, barely hoping anything at all now, as he does things , bad things... things that men don't do to little girls...
Pain inside her. Lancing pain. Pain like her insides are being pushed up into her throat. Sensation of choking, and then the hand across her throat starts to increase its pressure, and feeling her eyes swelling inside their sockets, eyes fit to burst, and the sound of blood like a thunderstorm, like a black train, like those galloping horses across acres of night fields.
Struggling now, and as she struggles the weight and pain increase, and then she knows she's going, slipping away into somewhere cool and safe, where such things can't be felt any longer, and she welcomes the impending silence, the sense of motionlessness, the feeling of calm that invades every inch of her body.
Senses the man standing over her, a single pink ribbon in his hand. He pauses, and then he buries the ribbon in his pocket.
And then it all goes away.
All of it.
A feeling of nothing, of emptiness, a breeze like summer.
Figured she would have been a child a little longer.
That much at least.
Copyright R. J. Ellory Publications Ltd 2007.
I have finished reading A Quiet Belief in Angels by R. J. Ellory . This novel is a thriller, a very dark and moody thriller. This book was featured in the Richard & Judy 2008 Book Club and I am glad that I bought it. Roger John Ellory is British and was born in Birmingham but this book is set in America. In character with the American scene all the words are spelled the American way and the time frame is from 1939 to 1967. Roger's use of vocabulary is huge, this is not tabloid writing. The book is written solely from the angle of the lead character Joseph Vaughan. As a reader you have many, many doubts as the story unfolds. You get some dark, very dark thoughts and it is very easy to jump to conclusions as to who is murdering the little girls. With the exception of the pages numbered 215 to 218, this book is not graphic in it's detail. It is a very haunting book that keeps you wondering all the way through. The most powerful part of the book is the pages 215 to 218 which simply add to the reader experience and these pages come as rather a shock. This is a dark, emotional novel that is expertly told. Roger leads you along in a rural location as though you are living there, when suddenly Joseph Vaughan moves to New York and you feel shocked at the relative claustrophobia of living in a huge, busy city. I vote this book a hit!
Many people wondered what went through Ian Huntley's mind when he killed two 10-year-old girls - Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman - in the case known as the Soham murders. Maybe pages 215 to 218 of A Quiet Belief in Angels will help the reader understand what went through Ian's warped mind. Judge for yourself, I still vote this book a hit for many reasons. This is a quality read that haunts the reader and forces you to question your prejudices. You are shown just how easy it is to feel bad and think the worse of people. You understand how stranger danger can grip a community, when in the end you just do not know who you can trust.
I will now end this post by quoting pages 215 to 218 of A Quiet Belief in Angels, sweet dreams everyone!...
Tears were not enough.
Little girl crying would've brought many a man to the brink of compassion, but not this one.
What a friend we have in Je-sus-
Praying in her mind perhaps.
On the vic-tory side, on the vic-tory side, no foe can daunt us, no fear can haunt us-
Words going round in her mind. Eyes tight closed like winter shutters.
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, give me oil in my lamp I pray-
Smell of something like something dead. Smell of shoe leather, or something that smelled like leather, and after the sudden shock of being snatched, after the moment's expectation for laughter, that this was a game, just a game, just a fun game-
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear-
Like hide an' seek, catch-as-catch-can, ollie ollie oxen freeeeee-
But realization dawned snap! Sudden like a door slam. Bang! One thing, now another, and then understanding that the pressure she felt around her neck, the fact that the other hand went beneath her skirt and touched her where she wouldn't have dared to touch herself, was never part of any game she remembered.
And then her breathing faltered.
Hitching, catching in her throat, and understanding that whatever was happening wasn't supposed to happen in any kind of world she'd imagined.
Feeling of hands - one around her throat, one beneath her skirt, and the smell of liquor, the smell of tobacco, the smell of leather or something like leather...
Struggling now. Muscles tensing. Nervous system charged with electricity, snapping inside her like machine she once saw at the State Fair. Big silver globe, and sparks crackling away from it, and someone touching it and all their hair goes wild and haywire... and kids laughing, and the man standing there with his hair like cotton candy... and the smell, the brackish tang and hiss of energy releasing...
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning... keep me burning 'til the break of day-
And everything inside her screaming that she had to get away, run away, run like the wind, run like lightning across the field to home.
But the arms around her, holding tight, holding her ironbound and unrelenting, and the sensation of pressure increasing against her chest, her throat, and finding it harder and harder to breathe, and colors flashing behind her eyes, and wanting to scream, wanting to scream like she'd never screamed before, scream like a fire siren, like a great swooping bird of prey descending, like a wild horse, its mane flying behind like the colors of a hundred armies, unfurling and snapping in the wind... screaming like a little girl terrified for her life...
Eight years old. A quarter mile from home.
Opened her eyes a fraction. Could see the dip and the sudden rise of the hill, the way the road wended east then northeast then east once again, and back of the rise to the right, back there where the tall tree stood with its shorter brother, was her house.
Had it not been for the dip and rise she could've seen the house, her house, from where she'd been walking when he came out of nowhere.
Smelled like blackness, smelled like dark and deep. Smelled old; older than God and baseball.
Smelled like Jesus and nowhere to be seen.
A man behind her, arms like tree trunks, a man who smelled like he'd done this before.
And then she started crying, and that's when he hit her, hard, smack!, and the sound was like a whip, and the pain that lanced through the side of her head was like the time she fell from a tree and bloodied her nose and bruised her cheek, and felt the sound of the earth colliding with her head for three weeks in her right ear.
Started crying, and he smacked her, and she knew it was a he because no-one but a man could have held her so tight, and no-one but a man had such iron muscles and rough skin and callused hands.
Crying sound was swallowed by the darkness of evening, and every thought she had was more terrifying than the previous one, and when she realized what he was going to do it felt like her blood ran quiet and still in her veins.
Down on the ground now, hand across her throat, other hand tearing at her clothes, rending cotton and lace and a peach-colored satin trim, tugging the bowed pink ribbons from her hair... and she felt the press of cool air on her skin, and the ground beneath her head, the dampness of earth, breathed the smell of dead leaves and broken twigs, heard the labored breathing over her, her eyes screwed shut in the make-believe wish that if she didn't see it then it couldn't happen.
But it did.
Colors behind her eyelids like kaleidoscopic whirls, and the sound in her ears of blood rushing through her... frightened blood, blood trying to escape.
Hit her again. Smack! Stinging redness on her cheek, and opening her eyes, and through her tears seeing the light in his eyes - deadlight, redlight - and white teeth, and smelling his rancid, fetid breath, and feeling the roughness of stubble as he pressed his face against her stomach, as his hands buried themselves, as fingers pushed inside her and made her hurt like she'd never imagined anyone could be hurt, that someone could hurt that much. But they could.
And then deciding to lie still, barely breathing, barely thinking, barely hoping anything at all now, as he does things , bad things... things that men don't do to little girls...
Pain inside her. Lancing pain. Pain like her insides are being pushed up into her throat. Sensation of choking, and then the hand across her throat starts to increase its pressure, and feeling her eyes swelling inside their sockets, eyes fit to burst, and the sound of blood like a thunderstorm, like a black train, like those galloping horses across acres of night fields.
Struggling now, and as she struggles the weight and pain increase, and then she knows she's going, slipping away into somewhere cool and safe, where such things can't be felt any longer, and she welcomes the impending silence, the sense of motionlessness, the feeling of calm that invades every inch of her body.
Senses the man standing over her, a single pink ribbon in his hand. He pauses, and then he buries the ribbon in his pocket.
And then it all goes away.
All of it.
A feeling of nothing, of emptiness, a breeze like summer.
Figured she would have been a child a little longer.
That much at least.
Copyright R. J. Ellory Publications Ltd 2007.
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