Coffee At Little Angels

This post first published August 23, 2011.

Author: Nadine Rose Larter
Published: May 2011
Publisher: Katalina Playroom
188 pages (eBook)
 
I was asked by the author to review her novel, Coffee At Little Angels a month ago. The cover is really cute and the story sounded like it would be something bittersweet to read, something that may make me feel warm and fuzzy inside by the end. What I actually ended up feeling was indifference when I finished it. I tried to like it, but I just couldn’t really get into the story.

The story takes place in South Africa, and involves eight characters who are all of the same circle of friends back when they were kids, living in a small town. The characters are all adults now (their 30’s, perhaps?), living in different places and haven’t spoken to each other for years now. They all receive word that their friend, Philip, has died in a hit-and-run and fly back to their small town for the funeral. It becomes clear that there’s a lot of unresolved issues between the friends and as the funeral nears, they learn to deal with them.

This story is most definitely character-driven than plot-driven. That’s kind of where my problem began. There are seven first-person perspectives in this book, and none of them felt very distinctive to me. When I read a chapter, sometimes I would forget whose perspective I was in, because all the perspectives sounded so similar. Each character’s voice was eerily similar to each other. The fact that this story is driven by the characters and their memories and problems with one another was kind of lost on me because I couldn’t even tell them apart sometimes. The fact that the perspectives switch with some frequency also made it difficult for me to distinguish them.

The relationships between the characters are drama filled. They haven’t seen each other in ages, but now having to see one another, their old high school drama comes back and the story had a lot of You left me for her and I never knew about this and You never told me that kind of stuff. It was interesting to read, but their problems never really made me feel emotional the same way the characters did. I really liked the idea of a bunch of friends reuniting after years of being apart, even if it’s something as morbid as a funeral, but somehow the drama didn’t have the effect on me that I wish it did … and I usually love drama-filled stories.

However, this story did have many redeeming qualities. Even though I couldn’t tell the characters apart much of the time, the story and the characters felt very real. I loved how they would run off on tangents when monologue-ing — there’s a bit of the  stream of consciousness effect happening here. And there are many, many wonderful and profound realizations the characters make that reveal the fragility and strengths of relationships.

There are good things about this book, but also things I wasn’t too crazy about. I think what it comes down to is a preference thing. Coffee At Little Angels ended up not really being my cup of tea, personally, but I did think it was overall okay.

My Rating: 2/5