(2010) The Loneliness of Angels

Offering a richly nuanced portrayal placing Haiti in a global context as a place of ethnic and cultural complexity, this novel explores the role of spirituality in Caribbean life and culture. Told through multiple voices in a nonlinear fashion, the narrative unfolds through the perspectives of a Haitian-Syrian merchant, Ruth, who recounts her young adulthood and final days as she intuits her imminent death; Catherine, a professional pianist living in Paris who travels home to Haiti upon hearing of her Aunt Ruth’s murder; Rose, Catherine’s mother, an empath, who is believed to have committed suicide in Canadian exile in reaction to the worst years of the Duvalier regime; Romulus, a once famous Konpa singer and an addict, who, released by rebels from a Port-au-Prince jail searches for his redemption; and Elsie, an Irish, working-class seer who emigrates to Haiti in 1847 in search of a new mystic who will guide them all. Traversing the terrains of Port-au-Prince middle-class life, working-class French Canada, expatriate Paris, the peat bogs of famine stricken Ireland, and tracing lives that cross boundaries of time and place, this is a deeply absorbing portrayal of a fragmented community whose deepest connections lie in a shared sense of spirituality.

Reviews for Loneliness of Angels (2010)

“A major new work in Caribbean fiction.”
– Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award Jury

“The Loneliness of Angels is ambitious…an important document of contemporary Haiti as affected by its recent history and its connections with the outside world.”
– Al Creighton’s “Arts on Sunday,” Sunday Stabroek, Guyana (September 25, 2011)

“The Loneliness of Angels reframes migration…as movement that both marks the people and history of the Caribbean and links to something beyond, what [Chancy] has recently called ‘the ability to conceive of a world greater than ourselves and greater than the islands of our origins.’ ….With [this novel] Chancy has exploited and expanded the novel’s form to leave her readers with memorable characters and compelling stories…”
– Sarah Barbour, “The Movement of Migration,” The Caribbean Writer Vol. 25 (Summer 2011)

“Anthems, songs to angels, a character’s obsession with Chopin — music provides spaces of reprieve within the painful memories captured by this novel….[Ruth]’s a fascinating figure [revealed] in a gripping first sentence — ‘Ruth smoothes the plastic covering her memory table as if she is trying to undo wrinkles in time’….The character Rose is even more compelling…The chapter devoted to her is worth the price of the book.”
– Winnipeg Free Press, 4/7/10