This one sounds so hilariously saccharine - I wonder if it would be worth sporking?

California Angel

Some books seem to promise a good read on the surface. They hint at original plots and complex characters, only to lure you in and disappoint you. You keep reading, hoping for something (anything) to justify the expenditure of your time, but eventually it dawns on you that the cover or the blurb is all the good you’re going to derive from the experience. Some books are like that.

But some advertise their wretchedness from the start. Everything proclaims an emetic in print, though in this case, the author seems to believe that she has achieved something profound with this pitiful pandering to New Age phenomena. While the religious right may not thank her for her misdirected gullibility, they would surely recognize a comrade-in-arms when it comes to spitting on skeptics, which was the reason I decided to review this novel.

California Mary Sue

Nancy Taylor Rosenberg previously wrote some moderately interesting suspense novels, though judging from the author’s interview at the back of California Angel, none of these novels were delivered into the world by flights of angels flocking around the author and pouring inspiration into her like beer into a frat boy. That probably explains their readability. Angels, after all, are not known for their authorial abilities, no matter what other stupendous powers they may possess. Still, at least Ms. Rosenberg makes it clear that this novel is her own personal wish-fulfilment fantasy, inflicted upon the world like John Travolta’s Battlefield Earth, and just as pleasant to observe.

There’s so much despair these days, I think we all dream of waving a magic wand and making it go away.

Right after our pumpkin turns into a coach. The author revels in her own gloom-and-doom mentality to the point where, when she was taking care of a terminally ill child, she “sensed death’s presence hovering over her”. Considering the author’s personality, this was probably a merciful escape for the child, but Ms. Rosenberg bravely banished death itself by telling a story, which at once filled the room with warmth and joy (and raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens). Instead of devoting herself to fighting death on behalf of terminally ill children everywhere, however, the author seems to have settled for some self-glorification in the form of California Angel. I can only assume that paying the bills is not as easy as staving off death’s presence.

Further evidence – if any was necessary – that the main character is the author’s self-insert comes from the interview. Although Ms. Rosenberg didn’t intend for Toy Johnson (who in their right mind names their child “Toy”?) to resemble her, it happened anyway. Down to the fact that she’s described as a “strikingly beautiful woman” on the back cover, I assume. Toy “sort of blindly follows wherever her heart leads her”, which makes me imagine her bumbling along, falling into a ditch and being carried off to the local homeless shelter like a bag of laundry. But since this review will be much longer if I don’t get started, let’s begin with the first such mystical, magical, mushroom-inspired experience. A family with an autistic child goes to church, where they see a woman wearing a California Angels T-shirt. With a halo on it. Gee, I’m still not really clear on who’s the good guy here. Couldn’t this woman have on a pair of large white wings, and maybe descend from the rafters while organ music blares? Ms. Rosenberg – sorry, I mean the woman – is described in the overly flowery, worshipful terms usually reserved for the heroines of lurid romance novels.

Her eyes were distinctly green, not blue-green or gray-green or hazel, but the very essence of green.

Let’s just call her Helen of Toy and move on. After the mother of the autistic child has noted the woman’s “lovely face” and “dimple” and all the other exquisite features that the mothers of autistic children naturally notice about other people in church, the woman spends five minutes sitting next to the autistic boy, and he’s cured. He tells her that he loves her. This sets the tone for the rest of the novel; good people adore Counselor Toy, while evil people doubt her or even (gasp!) ask her to provide evidence for her claims. How stupid of them. As Ms. Rosenberg points out, “miracles come to those who believe”. You know, just like Santa Claus only comes to children.

Having performed her good deed for the day, Toy simply walks out and vanishes, presumably back to the school where she works. Pale, soft, delicate and simple, she comes off as a human meringue (prior to the oven – so she’s not even half-baked). And she refuses to talk about school shootings, because such discussions “create negative energy. I think when you talk about bad things all the time, it’s almost as if you will them to happen.” Gosh, I guess a lot of people must have been talking about that tsunami before it happened. This evidently created enough megawatts of negative energy to reach the sea floor and push a great wave of water towards the land, thereby wiping out all the people who caused the problem in the first place. So I guess there is some justice in Ms. Rosenberg’s universe. But lest Toy come off as more of a flake than anything Kellogg ever produced, a friend asks if she’s still giving money to a girl with leukemia despite her husband not approving. Toy doesn’t reply, perhaps because that would create negative energy (whereas going behind Mr. Toy’s back doesn’t, for some reason). No matter what Mr. Toy thinks, Toy has to listen to her heart, and what’s money anyway, because all you need is love. And possibly marijuana.

Mr. Toy (or, to give him his proper name, Stephen) seems to be concerned about the debts he incurred while attending medical school, but Toy wants their money to go to people in need more desperate than theirs. There’s nothing wrong with generosity – provided it’s your own money you’re being generous with. Toy, of course, rises like a helium-filled blimp above such petty details. The most important thing to her is helping children, because when she was younger, she went into cardiac arrest and dreamed that she helped a young boy in some way. Therefore, the cardiac arrest occurred for a purpose. Ever heard of Pangloss, Ms. Rosenberg, or would reading Candide produce so much negative energy that your aura would flicker like a candle in the wind? Personally, my sympathy was all with Stephen after reading about his wife’s bedside manner when consoling the girl with leukemia.

"Death is beautiful, painless, magical… It’s living that’s tough. Death is our reward.”

Sheesh, why not just hand her a syringe of morphine and let her undergo the wonderful, glorious process of dying? And after that you can confess and experience your own Disneyland in the electric chair. As if she didn’t come off as vapid enough already, Toy giggles and tries to change the subject when her husband tries to question her about the money she’s spent. Finally she decides to save all children, everywhere, though how she plans to do that is beyond me – also beyond her and beyond the author. But she knows that she’ll somehow harness her psychic powers, because she’s an “intelligent, rational person”. The author repeats this twice in two paragraphs, and it’s less believable each time. Still, there goes Toy on her crusade; too bad that her obsession with kids makes her the female equivalent of Michael Jackson, right down to the thin pale look.

Won’t someone please think of the children?

Since she’s so intelligent and rational, Toy prays each morning, despite being “uncertain what she actually believed”. I think the author’s trying to eat her cake and have it; while not wishing to offend anyone of any particular religious persuasion by choosing sides, she still wishes to show our heroine’s deep and sublime connection to a Higher Power. Or maybe expecting Toy to consider religions logically (or consider anything logically) would be like asking a gibbon to do quantum physics. Stephen is an agnostic, but that’s anathema to Toy.

She couldn’t go through her entire life believing in nothing.

So she goes through her entire life believing in everything. She’s also a rabid environmentalist who “wore the same clothes several times before washing them”. I hope she didn’t apply the same philosophy to underwear. Considering that she also refuses to turn on the air conditioner when the temperature is over a hundred degrees, she cannot be pleasant to live with (unless, in authorial fiat, her sweat smells of Opium).

By the way, I’m sure you can guess what Toy wants most in life; too bad adoption doesn’t exist in this La La Land. Toy dresses in a lime green pantsuit (making a change from her usual uniform of a California Angels T-shirt) and the author assures us that she “had never looked more beautiful”, though I’m sure that she will continue to never look more beautiful on subsequent occasions, right up till the self-vindicating anti-climax. Then she flies to New York without cash or a change of clothes (though considering her habits, she doesn’t need one), goes to sleep and dreams about saving a boy from a fire.

Toy’s roommate realizes that she isn’t breathing (Toy, not the roommate) and finds that her hands are burned. When Toy awakens in hospital, the doctors want to keep her there for further tests, but Toy tells them “fiercely” that she’s fine and wants to leave. She’s also angry that they called her husband. I mean, haven’t they read the book? Don’t they know she’s always right?

The man was a doctor, no different from Stephen. He couldn’t understand the joy the dream had brought her. He would mar what Toy secretly felt was a miraculous event, try to fit it into the narrow and restrictive realm of science.

The doctors get not even a word of thanks, but Toy’s roommate, being more open to the supernatural, is greeted with smiles and gratitude.

“You’re a hero,” Toy said, never looking more radiant than she did at that moment. Her eyes were the deepest of green, like priceless glowing emeralds.

Wow, if only all cardiac-arrest patients looked so gorgeous, the ambulances would be crashing into each other to get to the scene. Anyway, it’s good to know that my prediction came true (hopefully that won’t make Ms. Rosenberg want to write about me, though). Hey, want to bet that Toy will have further episodes of never looking more lovely? In the meantime, though, she finally figures out why she didn’t have wonderful dreams prior to this. It was Stephen the Skeptic, somehow blocking her ability to save children in her sleep. I question the power of the supernatural if it can’t overcome one person, but maybe Stephen was Just That Evil. I mean, cynical. So Toy flees the hospital barefoot lest he arrive and squish her lovely new hobby with his vile tendency to ask questions she can’t answer.

Toy orders a cup of coffee in a local diner, even though she has no money (maybe she can dream herself into a bank), but a police officer pays her bill and escorts her out. He calls her an angel, because of her T-shirt – you know, the one that we’ve heard about non-stop from the front cover to the back – so I guess he’s the hero. The cop takes her to an emergency room where they find that the burns on her hands are infected. Wait, you mean the doctor was right when he asked her to stay in the hospital further? Who would ever have thought it? I mean, a doctor, being right, about medical science. Truly, this is a mind-boggling plot development.

Stephen finds her in the emergency room, and Toy starts babbling about how she was burned saving a child. Being the nasty skeptic that he is, Stephen starts asking where this fire was. There was none in New York, but when they watch TV, they learn about a fire in Kansas where a boy was rescued by an unknown woman. The boy, according to his mother, “keeps crying for his angel”, and this is taken as perfectly normal behavior. After all, who wouldn’t cry for me, Argentina – I mean, who wouldn’t cry for Toy, except mean ol’ sciency men? Stephen points out that Toy might have had a slight transportation problem, getting to Kansas and back in a few hours, but she keeps insisting that she was there and she saved the boy. The most important thing to her is that miracles happen and she has the magic, and she can fly, if only she gets enough angel dust. To convince Stephen, Toy does provide some evidence. Her hands have nearly healed (does this mean she’s Wolverine?), but rather than pursuing that point, she starts rambling about near-death experiences and astral projection.

“Maybe angels and miracles do exist. Why not? What do we know?”

We know absolutely nothing, Madame Cleo. We are all babes in the wood, unaware of any facts whatsoever, with nothing to do but wait patiently for someone to tell us what to believe, and how much we should pay for the experience.

“There could be angels everywhere. Some of them could even be perfectly normal people like myself.”

Man, talk about your delusions of sanity. For some reason, Stephen doesn’t find it marvelous to have his wife thinking of herself as an angel. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong about a protagonist with a special power, but Toy is so saccharine that she could cause cancer in laboratory rats, and as we’ll soon see, all good people adore her and all skeptics are crushed by her. But on with the story. Stephen tries to make her see that she could not get to Kansas and back quickly enough, but she tells him that maybe she “flew on gossamer wings”. Is that the latest addition to the standard Kotex? Then she starts giggling uncontrollably because that “felt good, natural”.

Perfectly normal person, of course.

After she’s finished laughing like a lunatic, Toy then sojourns into megalomania, declaring that she’s different from everyone else (you said it) and she has been dispatched on missions of mercy to help children.

“It’s like my whole existence on earth has finally been validated.”

There’s something very creepy about her fanaticism and the fact that her life was so empty and unfulfilled before her save-the-children episode. Stephen reiterates that she is a “rational, intelligent person”, but sinc he’s the evil anti-Toy, she asks for a separation, saying that she wants to stay in New York. Stephen’s the one who remembers her job at the school in California; won’t someone please think of those children too, or will Toy astrally project herself into the classroom there?

The more the merrier

In line with her usual pattern, Toy leaves the hospital without letting her doctor know, and then tries to collect witnesses to her presence in New York when she was playing firefighter in Kansas. However, when she learns the friendly cop’s name, she’s told that he’s dead.

*checks the title of the novel*

Yes, he’s the hero for sure. Of course, in a startling coinc—miracle, she bumps into him moments later and he assures her that the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, though he doesn’t put it quite so wittily. And of course he believes every word she says, without asking for any verification whatsoever. I mean, was that ever in doubt? He also suggests that she look for TV footage of the fire and tells her she looks very pretty in her California Angel T-shirt. Man, the chemistry between them is like watching a glacier move, though it’s better than the scene where the videotape shows her saving the boy, and she behaves accordingly.

Then she ran around the hotel room chugging like a train (chugging what? Methanol?—QoS), completely out of her mind with joy.

Or with Ecstasy. That night, she dreams of rescuing a girl who’s been shoved down a drainage ditch by wannabe pedophiles (I say wannabe because I think Ms. Rosenberg couldn’t bring herself to depict actual child molestation. That might have been beyond even the awesome powers of Toy to fix). After convincing the child that she is a guardian angel, and being assured that “You’re so pretty” in return – just what I’d expect a child to say after being abducted by a pedophile and dropped into a drainage ditch – she gets into a taxi with the child. Then everything goes black, the usual modus operandi of her super special guardian angel powers. And she wakes up in the hospital yet again. Even if the staff were not aware that she’ll make a run for it at the first opportunity, and that she doesn’t appreciate medical attention, they’re set straight on this when she tells them to remove the tubes connecting her to the “awful machines”. The doctor explains that they’re worried about her heart’s tendency to stop beating, and they want to insert a pacemaker, but of course Toy refuses, because if her heart doesn’t stop, how will she help the children? I mean, this is Guardian Angels 101. Your heart has to stop before you can astrally project your angel self. You just have to hope that someone will get you to a hospital before your brain cells start dy… wait, that would explain a lot, actually. The doctor calls her a “beautiful young woman”, to assure us that even cold callous scientists feel the amazing gravitational pull of Toy’s stunning glory, and she leaves.

Science had once again triumphed over the spirit, she thought bitterly. Dr. Esteban and his colleagues had managed to turn a handful of miracles into a hodgepodge of awful diseases.

Doesn’t she know any other adjectives? What does she do all day in that school? Toy returns to her hotel room, where good ol’ Joey turns up and calls her his angel, just in case we’d forgotten what she was supposed to be. He then takes her out for coffee, and tells everyone there, “Meet my pretty angel,” which strikes me as being silly at best and nauseating at worst, but hey, he’s the hero. He’s got to idolize the auth—the heroine, and agree with her no matter what she says. When she tells him about the pacemaker operation, he recounts a story of some relative who died on the operating table, the moral being that You. Can’t. Trust. Doctors. Or the feds, for that matter, since when she returns to her hotel, the FBI arrests her for suspicion of murder and arson.

Torched by an Angel

Toy kicks and yells, this being the rational, intelligent thing to do when you’re arrested. Or is it just what angels do? The FBI’s theory is that Toy set the fire and tried to kidnap the boy, then fled back to New York and tried to kidnap a girl instead, to compensate for her inability to have kids. But they too marvel at how lovely Toy is and what pretty hair she has. The defence attorneys all but drool over how sweet and innocent she looks, until the sycophantic love-fest becomes too much for me and I contemplate jumping up and down on this book. Fortunately we cut to yet another heart-stopping episode for Toy (which amounts to a wakefulness-stopping episode for me) and when she returns to consciousness, her parents tell her that a pacemaker has been inserted. Toy asks them why they let the doctors do that – indeed, what caring parents would allow a doctor to save their child’s life? Stephen takes most of the blame, though.

“You had no right to let them butcher me, put some machine inside my body.”

I don’t know what’s worse, the medieval terror of technology or the sheer ingratitude. Stephen asks her what he should have done instead. “Let me die,” moans Toy, sounding like the titular body part of The Brain that Wouldn’t Die. Except minus the brain.

After being reminded a few more times that Toy is “radiant and gorgeous” and that children everywhere kiss the ground she floats over, we cut to Toy’s attorney, Miles Spencer, arriving at the hospital. A crowd of picketers is outside, holding signs saying “Free the Angel”. Because, alas, the amazing abilities of angels do not include the power to free themselves. Miles turns out to be one of those sad, barren people who don’t believe in angels, meaning that Toy has to set him straight. Suddenly making the brilliant deduction that “you don’t believe, right?” she succeeds in making him turn pale, and in making me wonder what kind of law school he attended. Then she glimpses his aura, which reeks with “aggression and cynicism, greed and malice”. You know, everything one associates with defence lawyers, or agnostics, or both. At this point, any attorney should point out that this is hardly a productive use of anyone’s time, but Toypower triumphs over all as usual.

As of that second, he was totally convinced that the woman he was representing was a mystical, magical creature. He was so convinced that he was ready to hold up a sign and join the growing crowd on the street.

Since it’s now obvious to Miles that Toy can save him from eternal damnation but won’t (because he’s just not worthy), he shuffles out sadly. Way to go, Toy, psychologically emasculating your own attorney, but my guess is that she’ll effortlessly cow everyone else in the courtroom the same way. During the extradition hearing, it’s clear that Miles is now thoroughly angel-whipped; one “stern look” from his client is enough to make the blood drain from his face as he hastily acquiesces to whatever she wants. But probably the most excruciating scene to read is the one featuring Lucy, the little girl whom Toy rescued from the pseudo-pedophiles.

A beautiful little girl suddenly streaked down the aisle

OK, I can see what the pedophiles liked about her.

and leaped into Toy’s arms…. Lucy was rubbing her hands all over Toy’s face and hair. Then she started kissing her. She placed wet, sloppy kisses on Toy’s nose, her forehead, the spot where she had a dimple in her chin. “My pretty angel.”

My poor stomach. Lucy immediately starts asking questions, and the judge lets her do that, even bending over backwards for her to insult him.

“Are you going to send my angel away…? That isn’t very smart. I thought judges were supposed to be smart.”

Yeah, well, I thought children were supposed to behave themselves in courtrooms, but Ms. Rosenberg teaches you six impossible things before breakfast, and any number after it. Being as much a mouthpiece of the author as Toy herself, Lucy goes on and on about how angels know everything and can do anything. Finally she calls the prosecutor “stupid… disgusting and mean”, thereby putting him in his place (the bottom of Ms. Rosenberg’s mental trashcan) and then makes sure to tell Stephen off as well, by handing him a heart-shaped locket Toy once had.

“See, she doesn’t need a heart any more, but you sure do.”

While Stephen sat there with an astonished look on his face, fully aware that he had been chastised by a mere child (no way! I’ll bet she’s <drumroll> an angel!—QoS), Lucy tossed her blond curls and walked straight out of the courtroom.

Yeah, take that, Stephen! Dissed by a girl. I’ll bet you’re really sorry you became a surgeon/an agnostic/a Toy-doubter/all of the above now, aren’t you? The judge refuses the extradition request, and Miles is so overcome that he waives his fee, which makes Toy giggle. Then, while she’s waiting to meet the press, Joey shows up and asks her to leave with him, so they slip out, “giggling and making silly faces at each other”. Man, this is a match made in Bedlam. They climb up a convenient hill from which they can see the whole world, and this kick-starts the last rusting synapses in Toy’s head; obviously, Joey must be an angel too. And they match each other in looks.

Joey’s eyes were the bluest of blue. Toy’s were the greenest of green.

Yes, yes, we get it, she’s a thing of beauty and a Toy forever. And she should fit in just fine with her new bestest friend and with god (whom they call the Boss), since, as Joey explains, the Boss likes to keep ordinary people guessing. But he calls it “faith”. So everything’s fine. And as they prance along to a huge tent where the daily luncheon is hosted for a giggling crowd of angels, Toy spots Margie Roberts, the girl with leukemia, except that now Margie’s “so beautiful, so strong, so happy”. Isn’t she dead, though, to be an angel? It’s great to know that dead people forget all about the loved ones they left on earth; apparently Margie’s only concern was to meet her precious Toy again, as opposed to communicating with her parents or anything silly like that. But hey, at least Toy’s child-fixation is finally reciprocated.

Conclusion : Toy Snory

Much like any christian fundamentalist novel, this whole book is set up to ram a single point down the reader’s throat with as heavy a hand as possible. The bad characters are agnostics (I think the author quailed at using the other A-word), while the cloying Toy is the Rayford Steele of this novel, the author’s puppet who needs no convincing at all to believe in the author’s pet fantasy, because, after all, she is the author. Or at least a younger, cooler, better-looking version of the author. Not one to downplay her achievement, Ms. Rosenberg claims that “California Angel is a parable”. It is, indeed; it is the parable of the man who builded his house on sand and was washed away with the flood. And remember, just because Balaam’s ass talked, doesn’t mean that yours should attempt the same feat.