On this day in 1912, the author Elizabeth Taylor was born. Over the course of her life, she wrote dozens of short stories and a dozen novels. Angel is my sixth, and I was delighted to read it for #NYRBWomen25.

Angelica Deverell — the “Angel” of the title — is an unrelentingly self-important, self-dramatizing novelist who never quite sees herself or others clearly. As a child, she spins tales for her friends (“Every day they listened to the story of Paradise House. It was more vivid to them than the mean streets into which the crescents and terraces dwindled and which lay nearer to their own homes.”), but her taste for fantasy soon gets her into trouble. Undeterred, she embraces the power of her superior perspective and sits down to write her first novel. What follows is a portrait of a vain, difficult, and often deluded author.

And yet Taylor never slips into caricature. She grants Angel a strangely moving dignity, shaping her life not through sweeping scenes but through small, precisely observed episodes that span from childhood to old age. Remarkably, this never feels episodic.

I also admire how Taylor resists the urge to “correct” Angel. She allows her to remain as she is: a woman who sees the world through a distorted but unwavering lens, determined to teach others the bitter truths she believes she alone understands. It’s often exasperating — and somehow, deeply touching.

Of course, Angel doesn’t live in a vacuum. Taylor, as always, has an extraordinary sensitivity to the lives that orbit her central character: Angel’s weary mother, her publisher, her devoted (and ultimately imprisoned) friend, her husband, her neighbors. Their stories are heartbreaking in quiet, understated ways, and Taylor manages to pack so much feeling into such seemingly small moments.

While I didn’t love Angel quite as much as some of Taylor’s other novels, I found it compelling throughout. It’s a novel that lingers — not because of its plot, but because of the ache we feel for the people caught in the orbit of this unyielding, unforgettable woman.