Don't Mess With Angels

This is, in effect, a tale of two sisters. Alice, the narrator, is thirteen and totally convinced that she will never match the academic distinction of Sarah, seven years her senior, who is absorbed in her scientific studies at university. These stories involve regular visits to a graveyard where, on a particular grave, Sarah plants nettles in order to test their potential as cleansing agents of the soil polluted by the embalming fluid leaking from decomposing corpses. But Alice also has a reason for visiting this particular grave: it serves as a sheltered and isolated meeting place for her and not-quite-boyfriend Nicky. The sisters' lives, which initially seem to be pursuing completely different courses, come into violent collision when an ancient legend surrounding this favourite grave and its occupants begins, quite frighteningly and almost literally, to rise from the dead. It all amounts to a satisfying enough story of its kind, toppling occasionally into melodrama. And beneath the Gothic effects there is an interesting psychological portrayal of two young women's growth to mutual understanding and respect.