REVIEW: Angela Has Wings
Nov. 13th, 2015 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllAngela Has Wings: Peter Ling and Sheilah Ward, A Girl novel, Longacre Press, 1960.
I had to look up to see whether Angela Wells was a regular character in Girl or if there was another Girl novel about her – it felt llke there must have been at least one book covering her training period. Wikipedia says that there was an Angela Air Hostess comic strip in Girl. (This article reveals that the authors were married and suggests that they, at least, didn’t write another spin-off novel.)
When I picked it up, I was thinking of the Shirley Flight and Vicki Barr mysteries, which come from around the same time, where our flight attendant heroine solves mysteries, usually involving passengers, while globe-trotting. It’s a subset of the genre where Our Heroine has an insert glamourous(ish) job that involves travel and is deemed an appropriate career for girls before getting married, usually a series published by Grossett and Dunlap or World Distributors – your Sara Gay, Sally Baxter and Cherry Ames.
But this book doesn’t quite fit that template.
There are a couple of mysteries that crop up in Angela’s line of work, but she doesn’t seek them out, and forgets for some time that her bosses are investigating someone using Wingways flights to smuggle gold because she has so many other matters on her mind. She’s more of a mother hen type than a detective. She dislikes causing hurt, even if that ultimately leads to more hurt.
The story actually begins on the ground, and I thought the opening chapter sketched out the tensions in Angela’s home life quite well. Her widowed mother doesn’t enjoy the best of health, but lets out rooms because of the money. She favours Angela’s more irresponsible brother, doesn’t love Angela’s ‘dangerous’ job, although it brings in funds. She’s also aggrieved that Angela is looking after an Alsatian for a boyfriend Mrs Wells doesn’t approve of. He’s in Australia, testing experimental planes, while here England is steady family friend Ron, pining after Angela. (As part of Angela’s job involves being away, the canine burden is perhaps a fair complaint.)
Despite the staunch support of cook/waitress Ruby, Angela is slightly under siege at home, where she’s expected to help out even though she often never quite gets things right as far as her mother’s concerned and she has quote a demanding job.
Although Angela always enjoys one moment when the reality and excitement of travel hit her, and is genuinely interested in her passengers, the drudgery of her work comes out in the book. It's stated clearly that she would leave the job to marry, although romance isn’t all that’s on her mind.
On her journeys, she’s assisted by vivacious Jackie, and has surprisingly little interaction with the cabin crew (going by the Shirley Flight and Vicki Barr books, at any rate). When new steward Dallison is foisted on them – he’s a chauvinist martinet - it adds strain, not to mention that caused by Max Fielding, a passenger with considerable charm whom Angela doesn’t feel comfortable around, but who keeps popping up on her flights.
It would have been nice if Angela had shown a little more backbone – at home, by being frank with Ron sooner that she doesn’t like him like that. The mysteries are overshadowed by Angela’s naiveté. However, all comes good at the end, after she faces her ironic fear of heights, and her brother grows up a little after being in grave danger. It’s telling that the ‘wings’ referred to in the title have nothing to do with Wingways or flying in an aeroplane.
I had to look up to see whether Angela Wells was a regular character in Girl or if there was another Girl novel about her – it felt llke there must have been at least one book covering her training period. Wikipedia says that there was an Angela Air Hostess comic strip in Girl. (This article reveals that the authors were married and suggests that they, at least, didn’t write another spin-off novel.)
When I picked it up, I was thinking of the Shirley Flight and Vicki Barr mysteries, which come from around the same time, where our flight attendant heroine solves mysteries, usually involving passengers, while globe-trotting. It’s a subset of the genre where Our Heroine has an insert glamourous(ish) job that involves travel and is deemed an appropriate career for girls before getting married, usually a series published by Grossett and Dunlap or World Distributors – your Sara Gay, Sally Baxter and Cherry Ames.
But this book doesn’t quite fit that template.
There are a couple of mysteries that crop up in Angela’s line of work, but she doesn’t seek them out, and forgets for some time that her bosses are investigating someone using Wingways flights to smuggle gold because she has so many other matters on her mind. She’s more of a mother hen type than a detective. She dislikes causing hurt, even if that ultimately leads to more hurt.
The story actually begins on the ground, and I thought the opening chapter sketched out the tensions in Angela’s home life quite well. Her widowed mother doesn’t enjoy the best of health, but lets out rooms because of the money. She favours Angela’s more irresponsible brother, doesn’t love Angela’s ‘dangerous’ job, although it brings in funds. She’s also aggrieved that Angela is looking after an Alsatian for a boyfriend Mrs Wells doesn’t approve of. He’s in Australia, testing experimental planes, while here England is steady family friend Ron, pining after Angela. (As part of Angela’s job involves being away, the canine burden is perhaps a fair complaint.)
Despite the staunch support of cook/waitress Ruby, Angela is slightly under siege at home, where she’s expected to help out even though she often never quite gets things right as far as her mother’s concerned and she has quote a demanding job.
Although Angela always enjoys one moment when the reality and excitement of travel hit her, and is genuinely interested in her passengers, the drudgery of her work comes out in the book. It's stated clearly that she would leave the job to marry, although romance isn’t all that’s on her mind.
On her journeys, she’s assisted by vivacious Jackie, and has surprisingly little interaction with the cabin crew (going by the Shirley Flight and Vicki Barr books, at any rate). When new steward Dallison is foisted on them – he’s a chauvinist martinet - it adds strain, not to mention that caused by Max Fielding, a passenger with considerable charm whom Angela doesn’t feel comfortable around, but who keeps popping up on her flights.
It would have been nice if Angela had shown a little more backbone – at home, by being frank with Ron sooner that she doesn’t like him like that. The mysteries are overshadowed by Angela’s naiveté. However, all comes good at the end, after she faces her ironic fear of heights, and her brother grows up a little after being in grave danger. It’s telling that the ‘wings’ referred to in the title have nothing to do with Wingways or flying in an aeroplane.
