Angel Down

Kraus (Whale Fall) delivers a vivid tale, composed of a single sentence, about an angel’s appearance on a French battlefield near the end of WWI. American infantryman and card sharp Cyril Bagger is ordered by ambitious Major General Reis to investigate the source of an unearthly shrieking that’s driving members of their company insane. Dispatched with Cyril are four other misfits—innocent, underage Arno; brutish Popkin; “squirmy, squirrelish” Goodspeed; and seriously shell-shocked Veck. The quintet finds an angel in the form of a Madonna figure, wrapped in barbed wire and emitting a “breathtaking” beacon of light. Determined not to turn the angel over to Reis, whom they assume will use her to advance his career, they desert, ducking artillery fire and bickering as they vie for the angel’s attention, believing she’s capable of granting their wishes. Kraus ramps up the tension with the relentless cadence of his prose, offering no breaks from the action but finding room for glorious lyrical flights (“and so Bagger sits up with vision aswirl and shoos away the filthy pelt of air, the pigeon-gray smoke and eyeball-white fog”). With this vigorous narrative, Kraus breathes new life into the war novel. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts. (July)