No Angel Came

Don Crosby is a journalist in Durham, Ontario.

Bernard Eamon Donnelly, a young and exuberant artist living in the
tranquility of conservative rural Southwestern Ontario, leaves behind
his bride of a few months to participate in an exhibition of new
contemporary art in Paris and Brussels. During his odyssey, he is drawn
into the bohemian lifestyle of the European artist, becoming enmeshed in
a steamy love triangle, and barely surviving an encounter with urban
guerrillas. Not surprisingly, upon returning to his Ontario home, he
finds himself at odds with an outmoded ethical system with which he has
little in common anymore.

Boyle, who has been a painter for many years, has endeavored to stay
true to his own artistic principles, sometimes sacrificing a fast-moving
plot for the development of good ideas, which makes the novel difficult
to get through. We hear too much of his egotistic protagonist (which is
admittedly autobiographical), at the expense of a fuller development of
secondary characters. Yet Boyle’s first novel remains a sincere and
stimulating portrait of self-discovery.