The Wine of Angels, Phil Rickman

After my last reading experience, this was refreshingly brilliant. It is extremely absorbing, paced wonderfully and very atmospheric. The characters are also interesting, as well as believable, so this book is highly recommended. Warning: it is hard to put down.

The Wine of Angels follows the (mis)adventures of Merrily Watkins, female Church of England clergyperson, and daughter Jane, who has more Pagan inclinations, as the pair move to Ledwardine where Merrily has been appointed priest-in-charge. Nothing is simple for a woman priest, as she is alternately feted as a sign of progress in the church and hounded as an abomination, while trying to write sermons and suffering from nightmares about the third floor.

Action centres on a creepy apple orchard which surrounds the Vicarage and churchyard, and once surrounded the whole village. The story begins with an ill-fated attempt at Wassailing in said orchard, involving shotguns, which results in blood all over the place. Things get progressively stranger from there; Jane has a transcendental experience in the orchard while very drunk on cider, and Merrily starts hearing noises in the Vicarage at night, and getting lost in its empty rooms.

There is a brilliantly realised cast of supporting characters, including Collette Cassidy, Jane’s sexually precocious teenage friend, Lol (Laurence) Robinson, an erstwhile rockstar who appears to be afraid of teenage girls and listens to too much Nick Drake, and Lucy Devenish, the local wise-woman who runs a gift shop that doubles as a shrine to apples. There is also a good cast of villains, including Dennis Child, the small creepy organist who has a thing for female priests, James Bull-Davies, the local squire who loves Tradition and thus really doesn’t have a thing for female priests, Karl Windling, bassist, entrepreneur, and chief tormentor of Lol, and Alison Kinnersley, Wanton Woman.

One of the book’s greatest successes is that does not become apparent until the very end whether it is discussing human crimes or supernatural occurrences, and even then the line between the two is delightfully blurry. The novel evokes the feelings of unwelcome strangers living in a village steeped in ancient secrets, and investigates what happens when these secrets are blown open. Overall, it seems to argue that change is a good thing, but explores the implications of change in the context of tradition.

There is a reasonable amount of death, sometimes in unexpected places, some of it involving sheep, but none of it is gratuitous. There are some disgusting moments as well, but again, all within the realms of the acceptable (and I’m really squeamish).

The final twist is chilling, but in the end all is resolved as well as it can be, and the denouement causes the characters to grow rather than breaking them. It actually takes a while for the story to conclude itself, but the suspense and pacing are managed so well that is definitely doesn’t get boring, it just becomes incredibly hard to put the book down (so make sure you have no plans when you start reading the last fifty pages or so). The ending is satisfying, but not artificially neat, and although it is the first book in a series, it doesn’t leave any annoying mysteries that would compel you to start the next book immediately. But I did that anyway, because I enjoyed the experience of reading this one so much.