In Andras, the instrument maker, Saffie finds a damaged twin. Both are victims of the horrible experiment of Hitler's war: German Saffie has endured not only rape and torture but also the knowledge of her own family's Nazi sympathies. Hungarian Jew Andras has lost his family and his country. The two embody the horrors that Europeans visited on each other in the middle of the 20th century. They covertly embark on a five-year affair, during which their love comes to be sorely tested by the Algerian war for independence from France.

Huston's prose is cool, opaque, ironic and intensely romantic. Her style and her story both owe a great debt to Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a debt she seems to acknowledge explicitly: "Saffie is crushed, stifled, petrified by the ... how to put it ... the unbearable tenuousness of the moment ... Dizzy with inexistence, she clutches at Andras's arm--and he, misunderstanding, sets Emil down in a chair on the cafe terrace--turns to his lover--takes her in his arms and begins to waltz with her ... Ah! Thanks to Andras, the hideous unreality of the world has been held at bay once again, movement has turned back into true movement, instead of immobility in disguise." Kundera's preoccupation with Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return is clearly at work here too: the past, Huston warns us loud and clear, is never past. --Claire Dederer

Amazon.co.uk Review
From Nancy Huston, a Canadian writer who has lived in France for a couple of decades, comes a modest proposal in the form of a novel: maybe millennial fiction shouldn't look forward; maybe it should look back to the shames and sadness of the 20th century. The Mark of the Angel, Huston's US debut and a bestseller in France, tells the story of Saffie, a young German girl who takes a job as a housekeeper in 1957 Paris. Her employer, a brilliant young flautist named Raphael, falls hard for her, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he finds her "impassive" and "impenetrable." Hard-eyed Saffie seems to sleepwalk through life and, as if in a dream, she and Raphael marry and have a son, Emil. When Raphael sends her off to have his flute repaired one day, he little suspects what he's setting in motion. In Andras, the instrument maker, Saffie finds a damaged twin. Both are victims of the horrible experiment of Hitler's war: German Saffie has endured not only rape and torture but also the knowledge of her own family's Nazi sympathies. Hungarian Jew Andras has lost his family and his country. The two embody the horrors that Europeans visited on each other in the middle of the 20th century. And they covertly embark on a five-year affair, during which their love comes to be sorely tested by the Algerian war for independence from France.

Huston's prose is cool, opaque, ironic and intensely romantic. Her style and her story both owe a great debt to Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a debt she seems to acknowledge explicitly: "Saffie is crushed, stifled, petrified by the ... how to put it ... the unbearable tenuousness of the moment ... Dizzy with inexistence, she clutches at Andras's arm--and he, misunderstanding, sets Emil down in a chair on the cafe terrace--turns to his lover--takes her in his arms and begins to waltz with her ... Ah! Thanks to Andras, the hideous unreality of the world has been held at bay once again, movement has turned back into true movement, instead of immobility in disguise." Kundera's preoccupation with Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return is clearly at work here too: the past, Huston warns us loud and clear, is never past. --Claire Dederer

The seemingly simple style of this story could make some readers believe that it's just a 'pulp romance' novel -- there are, however, layers of psychological levels to the characters and a complexity in the way setting and storyline are entwined together that make this novel far from being simplistic or a 'pulp romance' novel. Saffie, the female protagonist, is a difficult character to read -- and agreeably unpleasant at times -- and that's why makes the story even more intriguing; we are not dealing with nice and 'normal' cardboard cut-out characters, where everything is beautiful and everyone holds hands at the end of the story.

This book is not a lovely love story, but a character study on how war tears down the fabric of human nature, how it effects everyone for years to come, even for genertations to come -- it a story about confusion, betrayal, jealousy and revenge. Nancy Huston has done a wonderful at showing how difficult it can be to deal with the world around us, and how sometimes human behaviour can be misinterpreted by those who live in a protected world.

'The Mark of the Angel' is a disturbing tale of passion and survival, which makes the reader reflect on the humand condition long after the book has been read. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.


A heart wrenchingly moving tale   December 18, 2000
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

An unputdownable book!! Saffie is a damaged German girl in post-war Paris. Against all the rules of a tough class system, Raphael falls in love with her even though she seems completely indifferent to him. Her life just follows a routine and she goes through the motions of being a wife and mother - until the day she meets her damaged soulmate, Andras. An absolute page turner. Very emotive and atmospheric - I could picture Saffie and Andras walking hand in hand along the Seine. An emotional rollercoaster, Huston makes it very easy to sympathise with each character. An absolute heart wrencher of a story that will leave you exhausted. If you liked Birdsong I think you'll like this too. Thoroughly recommended.