Visiting Angel by Paul Wilson

Visiting Angel Reviews

• 
  Zoe

  I found this book to be too disjointed, 'bitty" and downright confusing. I think the plot could have been impressive if only it was done entirely differently. Others have rated this highly and it is more likely that I simply didn't try hard enough to "get" it than it being a bad book. Ah well.
• 
  Shalini

  This book was recommended on Radio 4's A Good Read by the talented children's writer Julia Donaldson. It is so full of humanity that it is easy to ignore a couple of factual inaccuracies on Sexual Infections and HIV, as well as what would be gross professional misconduct by a health care worker woven into the story to make it fit.
• 
  Linda Scarbrough

  A gently-paced, sorrowful yet uplifting story with redemption at its core. Do I believe in angels? Possibly. This beautifully-written book allows you to think that they come in all guises. Recommended.
• 
  Sadie Bermingham

  The Visiting Angel was given to me as a present by a friend whose opinions I regard highly and it did not disappoint. I read it just after Christmas on the back of a slab of George R. R. Martin and in need of a novel that was not blood and guts, swords and sorcery. (Not that I have any problems with the aforementioned B&G, S&S... I just felt like a break!)
  
  Paul Wilson's comparatively slender tome was just the thing I was waiting for. It tells a story of possibilities and hopes, dreams and lies; the story of the life of Patrick, orphaned as a child, whose only lynchpin at the grim orphanage he found himself in was his older brother Liam. On their release from the home, he believed that Liam had gone to America and become a novelist, but his pride in his brother is tempered by sorrow on learning from his brother's friends that Liam has died, though no one can tell him how or why.
  
  Patrick is working at a half-way house for people trying to recover from mental health issues when he is called to an emergency at the local hospital and has to coax in a man who is sitting on a window ledge, apparently threatening to jump. His fear of heights is briefly overcome by the shock of recognition as he looks into the face of his dead brother Liam. But the man on the ledge says that this is not his name and asks to be called Saul.
  
  The story then shifts to tell the tales of Sarah, a woman struggling with the pressures of her job in the NHS looking after vulnerable people, and the tragic loss of her only daughter a few years earlier; and that of Saul, who is convinced that he is an angel and has a mission to undertake on earth that he has to complete in a few days' time though he is not sure what that mission might be.
  
  As the backdrop to their stories, a little girl has been abducted from a local estate and feared killed and one of Patrick's vulnerable ex-patients, Edward, has been arrested on suspicion of taking the child. Patrick is consumed by his need to prove Edward's innocence and also to learn if Saul is truly his dead brother Liam, and if so, what has brought him to believe he is an angel.
  
  To tell any more would spoil the intriguing and unexpected denouement of Wilson's powerful and heartwarming tale. To discover that, I recommend that you read it for yourself.
• 
  Sarah Mayor Cox

  A couple of years ago now a wonderful bookseller in Melbourne (sorry mental blank) told a collection of literacy coaches who were working with Jan Buckland that 'Angels are the new Vampires!'. 'Thank goodness' I thought because I've never got over the fright of seeing the film 'Count Yorga Vampire' which a friend's older brother was watching (without permission!!!) on my parents TV. Hideous film, still sleep even on the hottest night with the sheets right up around my head so that Vampires can't bite my neck (let's not go there with the inconsistency of sheets keeping out vampires - let's pretend they're garlic impregnated sheets shall we? and then move on). And so I have never been able to read a vampire book, although I did try to read Twilight - really I did!!! And I did manage to watch part of a Twilight movie on a plane recently - the one where the werewolves have a fight with the vampires - and I love werewolves, so I could focus on the not the pasty-faced vampires.
  
  But Angels, well, what's not to love - especially not the Pullman sort of Angel, the ones where we can explore the dark and light side of ourselves. So bring on the Angels. I have added this book to my pile of Angel books to read, after Angel Creek, a re-read of Skelling (cos I read it too fast the first time) and Fallen. Looking forward to it, although the way I'm going with al the books in my pile of to-reads I may have to read it in Heaven - or when I return as an Angel sometime post 2060!
• 
  Avid Reader

  Do you believe in angels? For the afternoon I spent reading this novel, I believed hard.
  
  I also believe in good people, and the support worker protagonist Patrick is good people. So is sexual health nurse Sarah. As Patrick, Sarah and Saul tell their stories they also tell the sad and upliftng stories of people whose lives could use some help from an angel.
  
  Flashbacks to Patrick's childhood give vivid and believable vignettes of the cruelties children inflict on each other, the naivity of a boy trying to fit in, and the fierce protective love of his big brother who can't protect him when their world shatters.
  
  Particularly enjoyed the penultimate chapter: crossing the void was beautifully written and nailbitingly tense.
• 
  Kim

  Love Paul Wilson's books and have had to wait for quite a while for him to finish this one - he talked about what he was writing next at a readers' day in Derbyshire several years ago and this is the book - well worth the wait but hopefully it won't be as long a wait for the next one!
• 
  Caroline

  Full of pain, beauty and hope. This book reminds us that, no matter what your past, you can strive to be good and find happiness.