Thanks to the publisher for providing me an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review. The Day the Angels Fell will be available on 5th September.
“Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.” – Cornelia Funke
The most exasperating pitfall of children and Middle Grade books is when authors underestimate their young readers. They underestimate their emotional depth, their comprehension of love and loss, their intelligence, their ability to carry themselves with composure. Children are so used to being overlooked, they observe and surmise a lot more than adults would expect.
On intelligence
For the entire middle third, I was not sure whether the author thinks his readers are that incompetent to not be able to piece together the blindingly obvious clues or if he wants his characters to seem that incompetent. Because my eight-year-old cousin would figure it all out stat. And Sam, our protagonist, was already 11 years old. Besides, his best friend was supposedly smart. Realistically, she would have figured it all out stat too. The only silver lining was that it provided some unintended eye-rolling humour.
If Smucker really wanted to make his book longer, instead of dragging on the dramatic irony for chapter after chapter, he could easily have developed the relationship between the elderly Sam and the young son of his tenant. When the novel ended, they still barely had any rapport, and in a book attempting to tackle the loss of innocence, it was an unfortunate waste.
On emotional depth
Even more frustrating was how severely Smucker underestimated children’s cognisance of death. Yes, denial and fluctuating emotions are very realistic reactions. But Smucker’s contrived execution of Sam’s wilful blindness and moral dilemma did little to make him relatable – only forced and unsympathetic. He was mature enough to immediately understand how eternal life, without perpetual youth, would be torture. But the next moment he was bewilderingly desperate to give his mother such a life.
A more convincing and meaningful arc would have had Sam not recognise this tortuous consequence until later, perhaps after he came to terms with his anger and guilt (with a little help from Abra and Mr Tennin). Or the angels’ story could have been revealed later. Since Sam remained in denial for most of the book anyway, his primary dilemma could first have been deciding who to trust (after all, in the real world, distinguishing between good and evil is rarely packaged with such obvious pointers) or a much harder time finding the three materials (the symbolism of which could also have been better considered).
Instead, any intended poignancy was lost. A shame, because some elements of The Day the Angels Fell were reminiscent of the acclaimed A Monster Calls. What Patrick Ness understood was that his preteen readers can grasp more than the inevitability and finality of death. Instead, his character grappled with guilt – guilt over being tired of mentally clinging on to his mother, tired of feeling duty bound to dredge up more vain hope each time she tried a new treatment. Maybe many adults are doubtful that a child’s comprehension of death could be nuanced enough to factor in society’s implied ‘acceptable’ stance on cancer and death (i.e. the former should always be fought and the latter always avoided at all costs), let alone that the same child could be burdened by it. That’s frankly a little condescending, isn’t it?
Bottom line
The Day the Angels Fell had potential, but turned out to be a disappointing misunderstanding of its own target audience.
Rating: 2/5
Christy Lau 