Angel Harp by Michael Phillips

Product Description
Widowed at 34, amateur harpist Marie “Angel” Buchan realizes at 40 that her life and dreams are slowly slipping away. A summer in Scotland turns out to offer far more than she ever imagined! Not only does the music of her harp capture the fancy of the small coastal village she visits, she is unexpectedly drawn into a love triangle involving the local curate and the local duke.

The boyhood friends have been estranged as adults because of their mutual love of another woman (now dead) some years before. History seems destined to repeat itself, with Marie in the thick of it. Her involvement in the lives of the two men, as well as in the community, leads to a range of exciting relationships and lands Marie in the center of the mystery of a long-unsolved local murder. Eventually she must make her decision: with whom will she cast the lot of her future?
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Overall, this book was a wonderful read and I think you should give the story a chance! It’s probably the longest book I’ve read so far in
2011. Canadian harpist Marie is widowed and suffering from depression. She recalls how she used to daydream with her deceased husband about visiting Scotland. She takes a summer off from teaching harp lessons to visit Scotland. When she arrives in a small town in Scotland, she finds a place she wants to stay for awhile. She rents a cottage and takes long walks, sitting on her favorite bench, playing the harp. During these excursions she manages to meet a preacher/curate (Iain), a duke (Alasdair), and an old religious man (Ranald) who enjoys playing the fiddle and talking about God. Marie soon finds that she’s the subject of interest in the small Scottish town, especially when she begins dating both the duke and the curate. There’s also a sickly girl named Gwendolyn whom Marie befriends. Gwendolyn and her Aunt Olivia create a strange twist to the story – a twist that’s co-mingled with Iain’s and Alasdair’s lives.

After about the first fifty or sixty pages, the story moved pretty well. The scenery on the Scottish coastline was vivid, and I wanted to see that pretty water and those dolphins myself. The characters were real and I felt that I really knew the people in this small town. Marie’s connection to her harp is real and stunning, kind of like the connection that most writers have with their writing and creating stories. She plays the harp for solace and she enjoys teaching others her craft. The love triangle was interesting, too, and you were surprised at what happens when you read this story.

Although there was much to love about this book, I saw some things I would’ve liked to change:
#1. I would’ve cut off the first fifty or sixty pages of the book when Marie is still in Canada, suffering from her loneliness and depression. While reading this part, I grew very bored. In this section, there was NO DIALOG…at all! It was just Marie’s depressing thoughts about being by herself and missing her husband. I almost didn’t finish the book because of the way it started out. I’m glad I didn’t stop reading and kept at it, giving the book a fair chance. If I’d stopped reading, then I would’ve missed a good treat of a story.

#2. Dialect. I had NO IDEA what the common folk in Scotland were saying…at all! In writing, I’ve always been taught that dialect should be used sparingly. This author uses dialect for most of the townspeople. I understood conversations between Marie and the curate and duke – they spoke without the annoying dialect. I know there’s a glossary in the back of the book, but, when I’m reading a novel, I’m not going to look at a glossary to figure out what somebody is saying. As a matter of fact, it’s rare for me stop and look up much of anything while reading a novel, I’m reading to be entertained, and it’s too bothersome to stop and figure something out.

#3. I’ll admit that I skipped pages, several times. Sometimes, the author rambled about God and beliefs and salvation. An example of this is when Marie is talking to Ranald and Ranald gives her a brief religious history of Scotland…in dialect. I skipped over this. Passages like this were boring to me, if I want a brief religious history about Scotland, I’ll go to a history book and read about it myself. I don’t want to read so much detail about it in a novel.

Over all, this book was a good read and the author is a good writer. I think you should give this book a chance – don’t give up too quickly like I almost did. The author did do a great job in showing Marie’s spiritual journey. Marie has a strong struggle with her faith – her faith has weakened considerably since her husband’s untimely death and as a result, she no longer goes to church. That is, until she meets Iain and her life takes a drastic turn.

Oatcakes photo courtesy of Undiscovered Scotland – click on link for recipe. If you try it, let me know how it tastes.

As I do sometimes with book reviews, I wanted to mention a food item featured in this novel. The characters kept mentioning oatcakes. I’d never heard of oatcakes until I’d read this novel. I know I’d said I don’t usually stop and look things up while reading a novel, but I did finally look up oatcakes because everybody kept eating them for breakfast, lunch, teatime, nighttime, etc. I finally had to look it up on the internet. I found a few recipes and I’m thinking about making them myself. It seems that oatcakes are Scottish and that they eat them over there a lot. I’m assuming they harvest a lot of oats over in Scotland, hence the appeal of oatcakes. You can eat them plain or with butter and jam, or meat or cheese. The Scottish reminded me of the British with their tea time and their foods, which would make sense considering the history of the Scots.

Many thanks to Faith Words for providing me with a free review copy of this book.

I’ll top of this blog post with few questions: Have you ever eaten oatcakes? If so, did you like them? If you’ve eaten them, were they store-bought or homemade?
~Cecelia Dowdy~