Alice Hoffman has a gift of creative writing, but there is not much substance here in "The Third Angel". About 2/3 of the way through, I felt this book was just pulling me down, down, down and for no good reason-- and toward no particular end. No message to make the dreariness of these stories about unhappy people worth the time to read them, other than the fact that life is random in what it dishes out, and that lots of people make stupid choices. How depressing! This I can get by listening to the nightly news. Also, most of the time I did not identify with the main characters in the 3 phases of the book. My own mother died of cancer while I was a young girl but nothing about the illness or death of a mother rang true for me. Perhaps this book feels more true for those who mourn the death of a spouse or child; other themes in the stories."The Third Angel" was a concept that was not very clearly impressed into my mind. I would have liked more development on that concept. It may have helped the book a lot.
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