Review: The Angel's Cut

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POSTED: 23 JULY 2009

Elizabeth Knox, The Angel's Cut

(Fourth Estate; 448pp paperback; $29.99)

In the Victorian fortified wine district of Rutherglen, they call the evaporation of liquid from the cask during cellaring 'the angel's cut'. Not that this has anything to do with Elizabeth Knox's new work of the same name, but the revelation in the novel that in 1838 the angel Xas's severed wings were wrapped in silk and secreted into oak barrels to produce a divine Grande Cru called Chateau Vully l'Ange du Cru Jodeau — 'the angel of the soil of Jodeau' — brought it to mind.

Yes, The Angel's Cut is a fantastical, bewitching tale. It is a sequel to Knox's The Vintner's Luck set in the previous century, which tells the magical story of Sobran Jodeau, a vintner from the village of Aluze who is visited one midsummer's night by an angel named Xas, a radiant and ravishing creature who changed his life forever.

This time around the story starts over the English Channel in 1917. Xas is in the air despite his flightless state — it is World War I and he is a navigator in a German zeppelin. It is a cloudy night and he is dropped in a basket to check for landmarks when his brother, the Archangel, swoops. Xas, parachuteless, leaps into the sea to avoid a meeting — he is still furious with Lucifer for the loss of his wings. Unfortunately for the Airship captain Hintersee's sanity, the telephone line from the basket is open, allowing him to overhear the not-so-angelic encounter.

Xas is unharmed ... he is an angel after all, and angels don't die. In a way this is part of Xas's dilemma. Because of a deal between Lucifer and God sometime after the Fall, Xas is free to come and go as he pleases between the earth, heaven and hell, But after his wings are removed he is tethered to the land, and in more regular contact with mortals. It is inevitable that he will be caught up in human emotional life and will come to care about some people. His growing disquiet over the unavoidable consequence — that these humans sooner or later will die while he must go on and on, is confronting to him. The conundrum, and Xas's responses to it, provide some interesting grist for discussion between Xas and Lucifer — and God, who according to the story, is always present.

At least as time goes on and mechanical flight becomes a reality, Xas can take to the air as a fearless stunt pilot and it is this that takes him to Hollywood where most of the story takes place during the years of the Great Depression.

Xas becomes tied up with movie folk, actresses and jazz clubs. The characters he meets are eccentric, bizarre, freakish and offbeat — quite appropriate for an angel. Connie Cole for example - the psychopathic Movie Director and destructive lover whose likeness to maverick film producer and multiple world air speed record aviator Howard Hughes is no coincidence. And Flora, former actress, film editor and burns victim who understands more about Xas than most around him.

As in The Vintner's Luck, Knox demonstrates an unconventional imagination that creates an entrancing and stimulating read.

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