Maltese Angel

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Ward Gibson knew what was expected of him by the village folk, and especially by the Mason family, whose daughter Daisy he had known all his life. But then, in a single week, his whole world had been turned upside down by a dancer, Stephanie McQueen, who seemed to float across the stage of the Empire Music Hall where she was appearing as The Maltese Angel. To his amazement, the attraction was mutual, and after a whirlwind courtship she agreed ...
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Overview

Ward Gibson knew what was expected of him by the village folk, and especially by the Mason family, whose daughter Daisy he had known all his life. But then, in a single week, his whole world had been turned upside down by a dancer, Stephanie McQueen, who seemed to float across the stage of the Empire Music Hall where she was appearing as The Maltese Angel. To his amazement, the attraction was mutual, and after a whirlwind courtship she agreed to marry him.

But a scorpion had already begun to emerge from beneath the stone of the local community, who considered that Ward had betrayed their expectations, and had led on and cruelly deserted Daisy. There followed a series of reprisals on his family, one of them serious enough to cause him to exact a terrible revenge; and these events would twist and turn the course of many lives through Ward's own and succeeding generations.

THE MALTESE ANGEL displays Catherine Cookson at her towering best in this immensely powerful novel which spans more than three decades, from the 1880's through to the First World War, and reaffirms yet again the author's standing as the best-loved and most widely read of today's story-tellers.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Attempting to compress a sizable chunk of history (1886-1921) into this saga, Cookson (The Rag Nymph) ends up with a lackluster panorama of an inbred English village lumbering slowly and painfully into the 20th century. When honest, hardworking farmer Ward Gibson forsakes his childhood sweetheart to marry a woman from outside the village, he sets in motion a macabre series of events that will touch the lives of gentry and townsfolk alike. His rejected girlfriend goes mad and murders his wife, but there is no sympathy for Ward, who continues to suffer the hostility of the clannish villagers. When his young daughter is raped by three local drunks, Ward is again ostracized; his unique and terrible revenge only exacerbates an enmity that persists through the next generation. The local gentry, the Ramsmores, are abruptly thrust into this grim morass when young Gerald Ramsmore befriends the harshly treated child born of the rape. The high point of the novel, a stirring and impassioned set piece, concerns Gerald's courageous yet devastating participation in WWI, but it's poorly integrated into the rest of the story. Cookson has created one of the most loathsome villages in English literature here, but the tribulations of its unpalatable mlange of aristocrats and commoners are disjointed, sometimes unconvincing and stretched too thin. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate. (Nov.)
Library Journal
Cookson's (The Rag Nymph, S. & S., 1993) latest historical novel opens promisingly enough with the surprise marriage of farmer Ward Gibson to 18-year-old Stephanie McQueen, a dancer known as "The Maltese Angel." An enraged local girl, Daisy Mason, who considered herself engaged to Ward, opens a campaign of harassment that begins with arson and ends with Stephanie's murder. After Ward has Daisy carted off to a mental ward-for which the villagers condemn him-events continue apace. Cookson employs every plot device available here yet fails to develop a single character. The novel's "happy" ending seems absurd, given the uniformly grim and depressing events that precede it, and those readers determined enough to finish this long tale of (mostly self-inflicted) misery won't care anyway. Not recommended, but sure to be requested by Cookson's many fans. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/94.]-Elizabeth Mellett, Brookline PL, Mass.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780786203864
  • Publisher: Macmillan Library Reference
  • Publication date: 2/28/1994
  • Series: A Large Print Romance
  • Pages: 739
  • Product dimensions: 5.78 (w) x 8.78 (h) x 1.53 (d)

Meet the Author

Catherine Cookson lived in Northumberland, England, the setting of many of her international bestsellers. Born in Tyne Dock, she was the illegitimate daughter of an impoverished woman, Kate, whom she was raised to believe was her older sister. She began to work in the civil service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married a local grammar school master.

Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer, in 1968 her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award, her readership quickly spread worldwide, and her many bestselling novels established her as one of the most popular contemporary authors. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998, having completed 104 works.

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