Green, Angela 1949(?)

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GREEN, Angela 1949(?)

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1949. Married; children: two. Education: Attended Kings College.

ADDRESSES:

Home—South Nutfield, England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Peter Owen Publishers, 73 Kenway Rd., London SW5 0RE, England.

CAREER:

Writer. Worked in marketing and as a public relations consultant.

WRITINGS:

Cassandra's Disk, Peter Owen Publishers (London, England), 2002.

The Colour of Water, Peter Owen Publishers (London, England), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Angela Green became a writer after first enjoying a career in marketing and public relations. Times Literary Supplement contributor Margaret Stead wrote that her debut novel, Cassandra's Disk, "uses Greek myth as a springboard for a contemporary fiction that blends the real with the fantastical. The novel also takes the form of a metafictional puzzle, Borges-style."

The story opens with Englishwoman Cassandra Byrd writing the story of her life on a laptop as she waits in a mental institution on the island of Ithaca for cancer to claim her. Cassandra had been the first born of twins, a dark, homely child whose fair and lovely sister, Helen, was her mother's favorite. Cassandra carries her childhood behavior of the "Big, Bad Baby" into adulthood, and although the twins are in a constant state of rivalry, they are also bound to each other. It is their classicist father, Feargal, who exerts a tender influence on the twins, but after he dies, their mother marries a man who sexually abuses Helen. Cassandra kills him, and the girls, now fifteen, are taken in by a wealthy Greek actress and former lover of their father.

Helen becomes an actress, and Cassandra a photographer in the style of Diane Arbus. Helen has no trouble attracting men, while Cassandra seduces hers, and in the end Cassandra wants only one man, the famous war photographer who has married her sister. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that in Cassandra's Disk, "there are lingering questions of identity throughout, but the probing coexists with flashier, fleshier passages."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer said that "the narrative is significantly enlivened by Cassandra's brassy style, and Green keeps the dramatic developments coming at a brisk clip." Spectator's Patrick Skene Catling called Cassandra's Disk an "exceptionally clever, vivacious account of sibling rivalry."