Product Description
From the New York Times Bestselling
Author of The Third Angel

Alice Hoffman’s previous novel, The Third Angel, was hailed as "an unforgettable portrait of the depth of true love" (USA Today), "stunning" (Jodi Picoult), and "spellbinding" (Miami Herald). Her new novel, The Story Sisters, charts the lives of three sisters–Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.

What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks.

At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, The Story Sisters sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them. It confirms Alice Hoffman’s reputation as "a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled" (The Chicago Tribune).



From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (47)

A Jewel!
I admit, the Story Sisters is not a cheery book, but the way it is written is lyrical and so beautifully done, that you can't help but fall into the story and smile the whole time because Alice Hoffman just does it so well.I don't think the story was predictable at all, although bad things just happened to this family like a domino effect.That's what happens sometimes in life.Bad things happen, and sometimes, happen again and again as one unfortunate incident can trigger depression, which could trigger other bad choices on the part of those involved.Overall, if you look at the story as a whole, the ending was redeeming and tied things up nicely.It's certainly not a story if you are looking just for a laugh or something extremely light.It's a solid story and the characters were well developed and interesting.

I am now on to my next Alice Hoffman...Green Angel.I'll let you know how that one goes, but so far, I'm LOVING her style of writing and think that review will be favorable as well.

Morbid and Disappointing...sloppy end
I picked this bookup following a long history I have of buying a book I'm unfamiliar with for a flight.I liked the summary of the story sisters and thought that I was in for a page turner of magic and whimsy.

I could not have been more wrong....

The book started out great with the three sisters each distinctive and fascinating in their own right.After the accident (one of many as it turns out), it all went down hill.The story featured one tragedy after another.Horse/car accidents, drug addiction, divorce, overdoses, cancer, sexual molestation.I found myself exclaiming "Come on!!" on more than one occasion.Then just to pick your spirits up once in a while, the author would talk about tomatoes. Towards the end of the book when the ancient wise ones in Paris started catching "demon" moths, I knew I'd found the kindling for my next fire.

The story didn't know which direction it wanted to go in...a mystery, tragedy, fantasy.It was all over the place.I think Hoffman had successfully confused herself by the end.There's even an example on one page where she says a character (Phillip, I think) is a deep sleeper and then says he's a restless sleeper.That's talent.I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone usless they needed a serious downer.I don't think I'll be reading any more Hoffman.

The story of Elv...and her sisters.
I won't lie.At first, when I started reading this it was not my cup of tea.It incorporated a little too much fantasy world into the real world but it wasn't so nauseating as for me to put the book down completely.However, I felt it got in its own way and I decided to sell it on Amazon.com.

Then, I had nothing else to read in the car so I picked it up again and all of a sudden, about 75-100 pages in, it exploded with interesting material.I would say this story is more about "Elv and the conflicts between her sisters", but after a major event happens to change each girl's life, each of them slowly starts to abandon the fantasy world that Hoffman starts off writing about and learns to grow up and change with her environment.Even as I'm writing this I realize the intelligent move Hoffman made in dropping off the fantasy cloth one corner at a time.

There are three sisters in this novel, Elv, Claire and Meg.Elv is affected in the worst way by the event she experiences, (arguably because she experiences the worst of the events), and forays into the dark world of drugs and crime with her boyfriend, Lorry.Claire and Meg grow independently, triumphing over their personal adversities, but Meg still harbors a deep resentment for Elv's actions while Claire keeps trying to influence her that Elv isn't "really all that bad."

On top of this turmoil is Annie, the single mother to these three sisters who is trying desperately to keep her own life from falling apart, even when Elv goes missing and Annie is diagnosed with cancer.Pete is the detective Annie hires to search for Elv who ends up falling in love with Annie in the process.

This really is a good read and I advise you to not be put off by the strong fantasy elements in the beginning, if that is generally not your thing.Hoffman is a good storyteller when she gets to the meat of it and I believe that the book had to be set up in the way that it was for you to appreciate the tale that follows.

In the end, this is a story about little girls who were forced out of their pure innocence and into a cruel, dark world where nothing is as moldable as they had once thought.It's a heart-breaking tale of the ties that break when a family is led down darker paths.There are those characters that will rise above and there are those that will succumb to the sorrow.In the end, we can all hold our sisters, our mothers or even our loved ones a little tighter, embracing our love for them despite their faults.

Beautifully written
This was one of those books I read and could hardly wait to reread with a highlighter.There are so many amazingly beautiful phrases in this book.What a talented writer.

Good purchase
The book arrived on time and in excellent condition as the seller advertised. Love this book, a favorite always. ... Read more

Product Description
“Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer.”
–Jodi Picoult


Alice Hoffman is one of our most beloved writers. Here on Earth was an Oprah Book Club selection. Practical Magic and Aquamarine were both bestselling books and Hollywood movies. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and People magazine, and her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, and Self.

Now, in The Third Angel, Hoffman weaves a magical and stunningly original story that charts the lives of three women in love with the wrong men: Headstrong Madeleine Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister’s fiancé. Frieda Lewis, a doctor’s daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel–the angel on earth who will renew her faith.

Brilliantly evoking London’s King’s Road, Knightsbridge, and Kensington while moving effortlessly back in time, The Third Angel is a work of startling beauty about the unique, alchemical nature of love.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (67)

Haunting and beautiful...
I've read many of Alice Hoffman's novels and each is a story that lingers long after the last page has been turned and the book closed. This one is particularly haunting and I've found myself doing something I rarely do -- rereading the book from the opening chapter. Skimming to a particular segment and then leafing through pages of one of the parts of this novel. The book is divided into three segments, telling the stories from the viewpoint of three very different women during significant events of their lives. The setting is London, in fact at a hotel called Lion Park -- where people go when they want complete privacy -- and the time periods when these events take place are 1999, 1966, and 1952. The book seems to be in a style such that it can be read forward or backward -- and give the reader a different perspective or reaction to the story because of what the reader discovers when starting "at the beginning" with the oldest character, Lucy Green, first.

The three women at the heart of the story are connected though it's difficult to piece that together during the first read through of this novel. Each experiences something about love that devastates her. Coming to terms with the heartbreak and the loss is the question each seeks to answer: is love simple or is it complicated?

Maddy Heller -- falls in love with the man her sister is to marry.

Frieda Lewis -- falls in love with a heroin-addicted wanna be rock star who is in love with another woman.

Lucy Green -- is unwittingly involved in a love triangle that impairs her ability to believe in anything.

At the heart of these interconnected stories is the concept of The Third Angel. What does this angel represent? Frieda's father, a physician, tells her that there are three angels who ride with him in the back of his car on the way to see patients. The Angel of Life and The Angel of Death are self-explanatory; and then there's the Third Angel that represents humanity, love, suffering, redemption, faith, and hope. It's the angel, in disguise on earth, that helps human beings "embrace the transforming nature of love."

This is not a happy or uplifting book in many ways. It is a little depressing and brought me to tears sometimes while reading. The prose is beautiful and Hoffman can certainly turn a phrase that is, at times, poetic. The book, however, has a lot of depth and the stories that the women tell -- of their encounters with The Third Angel -- will haunt you. I recommend it.

THE THIRD ANGEL contains a marvelously vast beauty
"There was good love and there was bad love. There was the kind that helped raise a person above her failings and there was the desperate sort that struck when someone least wanted or expected it."

THE THIRD ANGEL --- Alice Hoffman's 20th novel for adults --- tells of three women in three different times, in the desperate sort of love that nearly always leads to a bad end.

In the late 1990s, Maddy Heller heads off to London for her sister's wedding. When she meets Allie's fiancé, Paul, there is an undeniable chemistry. She realizes that acting on her urges would be a bad idea, but Maddy has long carried a grudge against her sister. She has always felt that their mother favored Allie. Besides, Allie seems, well, almost uninterested in Paul. It's as though she doesn't really want to marry him, or is that just a convenient excuse Maddy tells herself?

Maddy checks into the Lion Park Hotel, a small old inn away from the rest of the wedding party. She recalls that her mother, Lucy, told her about a time when Lucy herself stayed there in the early 1950s. Lucy was 10 years old, and her family had come to London for her stepmother's sister's wedding. That love story didn't work out too well either. In fact, it went horribly wrong and she was right in the middle of it. Lucy knows the story behind the ghost in Room 707. She has carried that knowledge through all the years of her life. Now she watches her daughters falling into relationships destined to bring them a heartache potentially as devastating as that one.

Paul's mother, Frieda, also has a history with the Lion Park Hotel. As a rebellious young woman in the mid-1960s, she fled her rich father's home to make her way in this world. The Lion Park provided rooms, mostly shared, for a reasonable price, plus employment as a maid. That suited Frieda just fine. Her father would cringe if he could see her working as a maid, which would suit her quite fine as well. As far as she was concerned, he really had no say in her life, especially after leaving her and her mother for another woman. Ironically, she falls hard for Jamie, a man with a troubled past and a fiancé. She finds out what it's like to be "the other woman" --- and also learns about a desperate love that can kill.

But this is not just the story of the women. The men have their stories too. As do the mothers. Everyone has made mistakes in their lives. What can they do to atone for the wrongs they have done to others? There is always a price. For some, the cost is very dear.

Where, you may ask, does the third angel come in? Dr. Heller, Lucy's father, told her of the angel of Death and the angel of Life, two mythical beings that we all have heard about. Whenever he went on house calls, he claimed one of them rode in the back seat of his car. Then there is the third angel, who watches over us in a quiet, obscure way, almost unnoticed. One of them always rides with us, but knowing which one can be difficult to tell.

Don't let the size of this small book fool you. THE THIRD ANGEL contains a marvelously vast beauty, one worth far more than the modest cover price. In these troubled times, Alice Hoffman's story of love and redemption is a rare gem.

Beautifully written, but terribly depressing
Like another author wrote of Hoffman "I inhale everything Alice Hoffman writes"; me too. This book, like everything she writes, is so beautiful, it's art in written form, some of the passages so delicious and so moving, I feel compelled to re-read them immediately. But her writing has taken such a dark turn for me that I find it difficult to enjoy fully, as I'm left feeling terribly sad and a bit haunted. This book is one of those. Her's is still some of the best, most lyrical and spellbinding (literally) writing I have ever experienced, but the tragedy in her recent novels I find heartbreaking.

Those who enjoy books with wrenching heartache and real life grief will love this; those of us who yearn and dream of a life (or a book) that is filled with magic and light, where the story is everything we wish life were, will be sorely disappointed. The writing never disappoints, but this book cast a cold, echoing despair over me that I couldn't shake.

Poor Book
Not enough character development, I did not feel empathy for any of the characters except maybe Lucy who reminded me of myself a bit at that age.I was hoping she would elaborate more on the first story about the two sisters; Allie and Maddy. It seems to me she was in a haste to connect all of the events and in my view she failed to do so by giving us what I considered irrelevant information of each character.I don't recommend it.

Heartbreaking and lovely
Alice Hoffman has a particular talent for creating characters who break your heart. She does have a bit of a formula, however, and for that reason I hadn't read one of her books in a long time. I picked this one up on a whim and I have to say I'm really glad I did - this is one of her best.

One of Hoffman's tricks is to weave a story around a set of seemingly unrelated characters and then slowly reveal their connections to one another. She does that really well here and the story builds to a conclusion that left me sobbing for twenty minutes after I had finished reading. I don't agree with the reviewers who think this book was depressing - I think it was a story of hope and redemption and about the unexpected ways in which a life can be forever altered.

If you've never read an Alice Hoffman book this would be a good one to start with and if you haven't read one in a while: welcome back. ... Read more

Product Description
Estrella is a Marrano: During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, she is one of a community of Spanish Jews living double lives as Catholics. And she is living in a house of secrets, raised by a family who practices underground the ancient and mysterious way of wisdom known as kabbalah. When Estrella discovers her family's true identity--and her family's secrets are made public--she confronts a world she's never imagined, where new love burns and where friendship ends in flame and ash, where trust is all but vanquished and betrayal has tragic and bitter consequences.

Infused with the rich context of history and faith, in her most profoundly moving work to date, Alice Hoffman's first historical novel is a transcendent journey of discovery and loss, rebirth and remembrance.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

Incantation
Incantation is a moving story. You get a glimpse of the horror during the Spanish Inquisition through a 16 year olds eyes. It's a story about love, betrayal and family. I think Alice Hoffman did a wonderful job writing about this tragic time in history. As usual her writing is beautiful and poignant. When I finished reading this book, I just sat back and thought about it. It's one of those books I won't soon forget.

beautiful and powerful voice to a sadly familliar tale
Estrella's world is turning upside down: her best friend hates her, she has fallen in love with the neighbor, and the Jewish people of her town are being horrifically persecuted. Then she makes a shocking discovery: her family is Jewish. Hoffman's tale is beautifully described, like poetry and magic and tragedy in one, with a moving and powerful voice. Grade: B+

Ashes
Though short, Incantation is a powerful telling of the life a secretly jewish girl during the Spanish inqusition. Incantaion rings simiar to Night, the novel on the holocaust. The book is simply, yet well written, and though it displayed the horrors and presecuution, it was not in any way attacking Christians. This novel showed insite to the secret lives of these people and i beleive that it should be read by other middle schooler to open their eyes to this time in history.
revewer: Cassandra M

Incantation by Alice Hoffman
My students LOVED listening to this while they followed along. It made it more real for them. There were no wondering eyes and no discipline problems. Many of them were so into it that they finished the story ahead of time. Two thumbs up!

Fantastic Young Adult Book
I loved this book. The book is about an unconditional love and betrayal at the deepest level. I feel this book should be required reading for high school. The book not only told a great story it also brought to the forefront to the readera very serious part of our history. I loved the details surrounding the Spanish Inquisition and the honesty by the author without being judgemental in her writing. This is a book I will keep for my own collection. ... Read more

Product Description
Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love.

Customer Reviews (52)

An ambitious look at a dysfunctional family
Skylight Confessions is one of those novels that attempt to tell the story of a family over multiple generations within the confines of a single book.In fact, Skylight Confessions is more ambitious than that: it attempts to do so in a mere 262 pages of large-type.Yet it succeeds.

This is the story of the Moody family.It begins with Arlyn Singer, whose father has just died when the novel begins.She's now alone, but believes in fate and predicts that the next man who walks into her house will be the man she marries.Out of the blue comes John Moody, a handsome and, ahem, moody architecture student who knocks on Arlyn door asking for directions.They immediately have sex, but John isn't aware of Arlyn's plan so leaves her while she sleeps.She of course chases him down at his college, then his parent's house, until fate can take its course and they are married.

But the relationship's difficult conception portends the troubles to follow. John and Arlyn are opposites and give each other grief at every step.When they have a son, Sam, it is Arlyn who raises the boy while John is away at work and emotionally distant when home.Eventually and inevitably, affairs occur.There's another child, a daughter named Blanca.And then an illness.

After this, the book moves jumps ahead ten years twice as we witness the struggles ahead, as we see the consequences of forcing two opposed objects together.Sam is a troubled teenager then adult, constantly hurting himself to make sure he feels.Blanca tries to protect Sam, but eventually gives up and hides herself away.John remains mainly the same throughout.The family seems cursed as they plod forward in their lives, looking for love in their own unique ways.

Hoffman has written a great work here.I like the format of splitting the narrative into three time frames years apart.It allows the author to effectively paint the family in her simple but beautiful prose.We care deeply for these people, even though in some case they're not very likable.But they're always human, and this is a credit to Hoffman's talent.

There were things about the book I didn't like.As usual with Hoffman, you get your bits of the supernatural.I also felt a little turned off by some of the more flowery aspects of the book, like the multiple occasions of love at first sight.But I suspect she wasn't as concerned with how the family was conceived as with what arose from that conception.And I would agree with that approach: that's where the heart of the book lies.

This is an intelligent, well-written novel that will also pull your heart-strings.That's a great combo.

PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES...
Do you believe in fate?In destiny?

The story begins with an introduction to the character Arlyn Singer, who at age seventeen has just lost her father.And as she stands on the porch after the funeral, gazing outward, she vows that the next person walking by will be "the one."

Then a stranger stops by, asking for directions, and they are drawn together.Even when circumstances appear to step in and interrupt what has begun, Arlyn persists.She follows John Moody, the architecture student, to his university and waits.Then she goes to his family home, The Glass Slipper, meets his parents, and makes their destiny happen.

Years later, they are living in The Glass Slipper with their unusual son Sam.And they are miserable.But they persist (or at least Arlyn does) in the belief that they are living out their destiny.

Each individual's destiny unfolds, including that of Sam, the brilliant explosive artist.Then comes little sister Blanca, the bookish "good" girl.Her destiny is to keep Sam out of trouble.

When a tragic twist of fate takes them all off the course they had envisioned for themselves, their lives seem to spin off, flying into some other self-destructive pathway.

Watching the devastation as it shimmers and spins, like a legacy of broken pieces or a mysterious puzzle--it is like watching some kind of train wreck.

Much later, we see evidence of ghostlike visitors who leave behind broken glass, soot, and feathers.

Hoffman weaves this family tale in and out through the generations, until finally we reach a kind of resolution.

I was completely swept away by the plight of the characters--almost obsessed.And through it all, the imagery (glass house, broken glass, birds flapping) formed a haunting backdrop for lives gone awry.

If I could, I would give Skylight Confessions a 6 or 7 star review.

Loved Loved Loved this book!
This was one of the best books I have read in a while.I forced myself to stay up late the last few nights to finish the book because I was so interested in finding out what happened to the characters.It's a lovely story all the way through to the end, great characters, interesting concept.I can't wait to read more by this author.

Harsh, Illuminating
I've read almost all of Alice Hoffman's books, and liked almost all of those.

But before reading "Skylight Confessions," I always found them SLOW reads.Their prose was iridescent, and their characters deep, and their silences were almost as important as the words, in conveying character and mood.

But I read "Skylight" at lightning speed.Perhaps that is because in this book, character takes a second place to fairy tale and myth.

As always, magic plays an important role.But myth and fairy tale are dominant.

The book divides into 3 parts, each about a tragic or near-tragic figure: Arlyn in the first, who stakes her life on a bet with herself and loses (and wins?); Sam, second, an artist of self-torture; and Blanca, the girl who spends childhood acting as an adult and then as an adult retreats to childhood.

All these characters (and many others) are intense, shocking, and moving.

The whole story hurtles with the speed of a dream, harrowing, and illuminating.

Fair
Skylight Confessions wasn't totally boring, but it wasn't a great read either.
The first part of the book was the best. It went downhill from there. The story just didn't seem like it was going anywhere or had any point. ... Read more

Product Description
With “incantatory prose” that “sweeps over the reader like a dream,” (Philadelphia Inquirer), Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future, with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots
arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

From the writer Time has said tells "truths powerful enough to break a reader’s heart” comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (51)

Blackbird House
This is a great read. The subtle intertwining of the stories adds to the appeal. This is a book I reread often.

Perfection!
I have to be honest, I read this book months ago but was unable at the time to find the words to describe this novel. I just have to start by saying that it is one of the best novels I have ever read in my life (and I clearly read a lot). Previous to reading Blackbird House, I had never picked up an Alice Hoffman novel. I knew that she had written Practical Magic and some other novels in the same vein and I thought that she wouldn't be my kind of author. However, when I cracked the spine on the Blackbird House, I wanted to slap my own wrist!


It is very difficult to adequately explain this novel because it is very simple and yet some of the stories are quite complex. Basically, the novel is made up of short stories (those of you out there who don't like short stories, don't run away yet!) about a house on Cape Cod that was built in the 1700s. There are twelve stories in the "novel" and each describes a new generation of the house as it is bought, sold, and passed down through certain generations. The stories follow the characters but only as it relates to the house. The true development of the book is that of the house and the times that surround each generation of owners. Each owner brings a part of themselves the property which allows the house to grow with its inhabitants. There is no climax or enthralling events, the true satisfaction comes with the unveiling of each person and the mark they leave on the house.

I simply adored this book. I thought that it was beautiful in every way. The characters were not always likable but they were real, which I believe is far more important. The atmosphere was almost tangible and I felt completely engrossed with each tale. There isn't a single "story" that I could pin point as my favorite because they were all splendidly written. This is a book that I will certainly go back to over and over again and urge others to do the same.

Blackbird House
A lovely chronical of a home built with love in the 1700s and the people over the next 2 centuries who inhabited it.Ms Hoffman wove bits and pieces of each story intothe other.The color red plays an important part: red boots, red pears,sweet peas, turnips, but most of all, love and death.What else would one expect of Alice Hoffman?

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
An absolute favorite of mine. I thought 'how strange' when I first started it but it has become one of my very favorites of hers and I am SUCH an Alice Hoffman fan. Anything I read of hers becomes my 'bible' while I am reading it.
This is a book of short stories. Each story is about someone who lived in the "Blackbird House" in a different time and era.
It is an absolute wonderful book!~!

magnificent reading!
This is one of the best books ever written by AH! Honestly; the theme, the story is woven beautifully throughout the many generation in this book. The evening is never wasted by reading this book. ... Read more

Product Description
The women of the Sparrow family have lived in New England for generations. Each is born in the month of March, and at the age of thirteen, each develops an unusual gift. Elinor can literally smell a lie. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people’s dreams as they’re dreaming them. Granddaughter Stella, newly a teen, has just developed the ability to see how other people will die. Ironically, it is their gifts that have kept Elinor and Jenny apart for the last twenty-five years. But as Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance, the unthinkable happens: One of her premonitions lands her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. The ordeal leads Stella to the grandmother she’s never met and to Cake House, the Sparrow ancestral home full of talismans and fraught with history. Now three generations of estranged Sparrow women must come together to turn Stella’s potential to ruin into a potential to redeem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (34)

Groan
Groan, don't authors have editors anymore? I guess Ms Hoffman is looking for a movie contract. This is a labored read and I couldn't muster up sympathy for any character, except maybe the serial stalker. If you miss a description, don't fret, it will be mentioned at least a dozen more times.

Good Character Driven Magical Realism
This is a story of magical realism and 3 generations of women trying to handle the legacy of the Sparrow family and their own relationships with each other.
This is my first Alice Hoffman book after hearing so much about this author. I really enjoyed this story and the character development. This is a character driven book, yes, there is the whole dad in jail story line but it is not the main story.
The main story is about these generations of Sparrow women and how things that happened years ago to their ancestors can have an effect all those years later.
I did enjoy this book and plan on reading more by this author!
I would recommend this to anyone who likes magical realism or character driven storylines.
3 ½ Stars

Will Purchase more books in the Probable Future by Hoffman!
This book is filled with great character studies, with the sense of the time period, and has curves and spins that were not expected by this reader.An excellent read, and I was recommended to this author by another author I love who says that Hoffman is her favorite author.I understand why.Five stars!

Interesting Read
This novel starts out with Stella Sparrow Avery, who has just turned 13.At 13 she gets her gift, as do all the sparrow women through her family line.All the babies born to sparrow women are girls and all of them are born in march.Some of the women can feel no pain, ease others pain, detect a lie, see others dreams etc...Stella can see how other people will die.During her evening dinner with her handsome and seriously mislead father she confides in him and asks him to intervene when she sees how a woman in the bar will be murdered.This sets a whole lot of events in motion that bring to light the history of the Sparrow women and the simplicity and meaning of love and friendship.It's a wonderful story that was extremely captivating and enjoyable.The book is written in thrid person which was nice because you can see the story from everyones angle and you understand the characters better.The only thing I wish Hoffman would have done better was to expand a little on the romances.They were touched breifly here and there throughout the story but I would have liked a little more detail to build the relationships better.Other than that it was a fun, emotional and entertaining read.

Sensual - Lovely - Real
This was a lovely book! I enjoyed reading it :-) It was very sensually descriptive with respect to nature ...the bees, flowers, lake water... heavy olfactory based that left the reader wishing she could dive into the pages to smell, see and feel all that was being described. I loved the writing style. As for the story, it was a superb mix of mystical, mystery & family - struggles, bonds, love & survival!
... Read more

Product Description
With her signature "vivid, convincing characters [and] uncommon insight," (People) Alice Hoffman in Illumination Night follows the lives of an old woman whose last mission is to save her granddaughter's soul; a family torn apart by a wife's fears and a husband's desires-and a high school girl who comes to Martha's Vineyard against her will, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption.

"[A] bright constellation of characters...draws the reader into the dusky, dreamy world of Alice Hoffman." (St. Petersburg Times)

"Alice Hoffman hits bull's eyes on the incomprehensions between the young and the old, on the magic and pain of ordinary life. She is erotic and romantic...funny...clever and humane." (The Times, London)

"Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things." (Amy Tan)

"One of the best writers we have today-insightful, funny, intelligent, with a distinctive voice." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

"A major novelist." (Newsweek) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Alice Hoffman is a gifted writer
I have fallen in love with every book I have read by this author.She keeps coming up with winners, each unlike the last.
This story centers around a teenage girl evolving into young adulthood and the lives she touches in the process.Its a beautiful love story, as well as a look into the hearts and minds of a grandmother whose fading life is renewed by the sudden presence of her granddaughter, also, the husband and wife across the street whose lives are dramatically impacted bythis young girl.
This is easy reading and keeps you interested.

A Book that Illuminates the Heart and Mind
This is one of the most beautiful and haunting novels that I've ever read.Hoffman's words flow out with so little perceived effort, almost carelessly rendering our most minor and most deep-seated fears, hopes and dreams in so mystical yet so pragmatic a manner.She combines mysticism, psychological insight and magical realism so that the three get immersed as one.What occurs is a poetic structure of intensity in the simple and benigh aspects of human existence.The ordinary becomes bizarre, what is on the surface appears freakish and things that we are terror-ridden by are actually commonplace.What is obscured becomes highly visible.

The novel is about a couple who live on Cape Cod.The husband, Andre, refurbishes antique Norton and Ducati motorcycles.His wife, Vonny, is an agoraphobic, bound to their home by an invisible 'force field'.Their son Simon is mysteriously short and unable to grow.The story is also about a teenager, Judy, with uncontrollable desires that can be destructive to Andre and Vonny; a giant named Eddy who keeps his distance from humanity until he meets Jody; and Jody's grandmother who jumps from her porch, mistakenly thinking she can fly.

The novel examines families, relationships and bonds.It has a beauty and haunting quality that is like a tragic song.It was a gift to me to have read this wonderful book.Like in Fortune's Daughter, the beauty of Alice Hoffman's writing overwhelms.

very interesting.
I enjoyed this book from the beginning..however when I was finnished..I was kind of sad. What happened to Jodie? She just left..and that was it. Did Andre and Vonny turn out ok? What about the giant? There were just too many questions left at the end..for my taste. I still give this book 4 stars though, because the journey was great. I just wish the ending had of left me with some kind of resolution rather than a thousand questions.

AMAZING
This book starts off slow and I thought I wouldn't like it, but it becomes a thrilling book that you won't be able to put down! There are many different stories to follow and they develop over time. I would recommend this book to anyone! Alice Hoffman is great and another book by her Here on Earth is another great read!

I liked it but. . .
I think Alice Hoffman is a great writer and the story really draws you in, but, it seemed to start falling apart with the introduction of the Giant.It felt like he was there just to help the author move the plot along to its final conclusion and that diappointed me. ... Read more

Product Description
A New York Times bestseller, Second Nature tells the story of a suburban woman, Robin Moore, who discovers her own free spirit through a stranger she brings home to her perfectly ordered neighborhood.As Robin impulsively draws this beautiful, uncivilized man into her world-meanwhile coping with divorce and a troubled teenage son-she begins to question her wisdom and doubt her own heart, and ultimately she changes her ideas about love and humanity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (39)

Good book
Awesome read, very easy, not too complicated and not very long so great for a nice weekend

A favorite!
I have read all of Hoffman's adult novels and this is one of my favorites!

A Feral Romance
Well, this was a strange book. More than a bit unbelievable in its entirety... and the liberties that were taken with the feral child myth bordered on the ridiculous. The ending was not satisfactory. Overall, it was not a terrible book, it was entertaining and a fast read, but the characters' motivations fell flat and that spark of life was missing from them to make it a more enjoyable story.

What Makes Someone Human?
What makes someone human?This novel deals with the essence of what it means to
be human, the true stuff that makes us living, thinking, feeling people.

Stephen, victim of a plane crash when he was a toddler, gets lost following the crash.
He is raised by wolves and does not enter civilization until he is a grown man.How he
learns to perceive the world he's left behind - his wolf family - juxtaposed with civili-
zation, love, romance and sexual desire is the focus of this amazing novel. Stephen is
confused by the many facades of civilization where what one thinks and feels is often
masked by how one acts and presents oneself, so frequently at odds with true emotion.

This book is moving and sad, always poetic and thought-provoking.It has an essence
of true poetic mystery that characterizes the best of Hoffman's writing.

I highly recommend this book.

Unique and enjoyable
This is not a deep read but I found it enjoyable and it kept my attention.There are a few different themes going on in the book, the main theme being Robin who takes a chance on the man found raised by wolves and takes him into her home.Lessons on human nature but not preachy.This is a good read. ... Read more

Product Description
Now available in paperback, The Foretelling is a transformative story that asks many profound questions, for which there are many answers.Rain is girl of the Amazon tribe of women warriors, born in a time of blood and fear. As the future leader of her people, she must seek and hold fast to her inner warrior. What she encounters along her poignant and harrowing path toward her destiny-a kind young man, a strange, recurrent prophecy, and a condemned baby brother-lead her, against odds, to forge mercy, love, and peace. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

A Coming of Age Book, Amazon Style!
The first words: "I was born out of sorrow, so my mother named me Rain."

This sets the book up for a short and lyrical coming of age story through the eyes of Rain as one of the legendary Amazon sisters. Rain's birth was anything but joyous because it was born out of gang rape, so her mother shunned her. As she grows she learns everything she can about life of the Amazons. For knowledge is power and she much know how the whole society runs. She excels in horse training and riding and becomes as her grandmother, a true sister of the horse. Because she is a queen-to-be and also because her mother shuns her, she is set apart and often travels alone. These adventures with the advice from one of their most wise and psychic priestesses, Deborah, help her to see that what is beyond their borders is not all evil. Not all to be shunned. This becomes the beginning of her quest to becoming her true self, including her questions about if she wants to even be queen.

I think this book is a quick and interesting fictional look into a culture that did exist many moons ago (hey, got to get into character here). However, it really is a look at one girl's life as she questions and learns and grows into her own wisdom and seeks the courage to become what she should become. There are references of rape, and sex, but it is not done in a graphic way and dealt with in a way that would make sense at that time. I give this book 3 1/2 stars.

Loved this quote from the book: "The weak are cruel: the strong have no need to be."

Rainfall
this is another wonderful young adult novel...
dear lovers of fantasy,
... by Alice Hoffman. We loved it. It is the story of Rain who is the only daughter of the Queen of the Amazons, a nomadic tribe who rule the steppes of Eastern Europe on horseback. Born of rape, her mother ignores her, and while she is destined to be the next queen she is not at all sure she wants to be. We follow her life as she struggles with self identity and the effects of her mother's seeming lack of interest in her. A real delight.
kyela,
the silver elves

not sure who this book is for...
I bought this book for my daughter, and just wanted to "check it out," before giving it to her. I'm confused. This book touches some mature themes (rape, some "rituals" performed by Amazon women with captured men), suggesting it is targeting adult readers, but it reads like a story for kids. Simplistic fairy tale, mixes a few elements of history with feministic propaganda. This is a great theme - perfect for building the "girl pride," but the execution fails miserably. I hope someone else tries to pick it up, and does a better job.

Storytelling at its best!
The reader flies, as if riding a wild horse, on the exquisite prose
and hauntingly developed characters.
Storytelling at its best!

love this author
The Foretelling As always, a great reading experience. Love everything she has ever written. ... Read more

Product Description
The New York Times bestselling author's first collection of short fiction.

Alice Hoffman is at her haunting, thought-provoking best with these interconnected stories about a Long Island family, the Samuelsons, and the lessons in survival and transformation that life brings to every family.

"Pulls the reader in effortlessly...Hoffman has the power to make you really laugh and really cry." --USA Today

"Moving and deadpan funny...Epiphanies about passion, pain, and resiliency induce smiles and shivers in equal measure." --Entertainment WeeklyAmazon.com Review
More than a collection of short stories, yet not quite a novel, LocalGirls occupies an undefined territory between these two forms. Thelocal girls in question are Gretel Samuelson, her best friend, Jill, hermother, Franny, and Franny's cousin Margot--four characters who weave in andout of each of the 15 related stories that chronicle the rocky years ofGretel's adolescence. That hers will be a tough row to hoe is immediatelyapparent in the first story, "Dear Diary," in which Alice Hoffmanintroduces the Samuelson family just as they are being swallowed up by thefissures that have cracked them apart. "Long before the plane touched downin Miami we could hear our parents arguing," Gretel tells us of a familyvacation to Florida; "and at the hotel room they locked themselves in theirroom. If you ask me, working so hard at being married can backfire." It isthe end of the marriage that has lasting ramifications, however, as wediscover in later stories: Gretel's brilliant older brother, Jason, becomesa drug addict; their mother must battle cancer alone; and Gretel becomesinvolved in a destructive relationship with a drug dealer. All prettydepressing plot points, to be sure, yet Hoffman's luminous prose combinedwith Gretel's tart and funny perspective keeps the reader eagerly turningthe pages until the very end.

In fact, Gretel and her family and friends are so compelling, so endearing,that the reader wishes Hoffman had chosen to give the Samuelsons a novelinstead of this series of stories. In reading about Jason's descent fromA student with an acceptance letter from Harvard to working in the producesection at the local supermarket and shooting heroin, for example, onecan't help but feel that a lot of his motivations happen between stories;and Gretel's difficult relationship (or lack thereof) with her father andnew stepmother functions mainly as a plot device, leaving the readerwanting so much more. And yet, if one is to judge the success of a book bythe reader's reluctance to be done with it, then Local Girls issuccessful, for Hoffman has created a world so enticing that one is willingto overlook the minor flaws. At the end of the title story, as thenow-grown Gretel and Jill discuss two teenage girls in the neighborhood whorecently committed suicide, Jill remarks:"They should have just waited.That's all they had to do. They would have grown up and everything wouldhave been all right." The same might be said of reading Local Girls.--Alix Wilber ... Read more

Customer Reviews (63)

Depressing. Didn't care for it.
As a mother to a teenager, I try to read everything on her 'must-read' list. I didn't care for LOCAL GIRLS. It was depressing. What could my daughter possibly gain from reading this book? How to score drugs? That no matter how well you do in school, life will bite you in the behind? If only the writing had been better, there would've been something to hang on to, but it basically blew as well. Very disappointed. Why is a teenaged girl to read this?

A quick read
I read this book fairly quickly. The short chapters(stories)go quickly.
Most of the book was good, but it got kind of boring in the last 1/4.

Wonder in ordinary lives
Local Girls, Alice Hoffman
A sad piece.There is Gretel, who tells the story, Jason her brother, Franny their divorced mother, and cousin Margot, and a few friends.There is illness, death, lives ruined and/or wasted. With every quick turn of thepage you'll be fairly shouting, NO! Don't do that, do this! As always, Hoffman flashes us some hope: healthy children born to perhaps a more hopeful existence, and Gretel's great escape. Not a book to read if you are in a low mood already.Still, the writing is brilliant.

A Coming of Age Story
Reality is invaded by a variety of magical elements straight out of the fairy tales as the story about a teenager and her family unfolds.

unique coming of age tale
This book is written in a different format from her other novels.Rather than a straightforward plot, it consists of chapters which take place in the same small New Hampshire town loosely tied together.They center around Gretel Samuelson, a sensitive but bored teen, her flamboyant best friend Jill, and their extended families beginning the summer after Gretel's parents have divorced.We learn about Jason, Gretel's older brother, who is Harvard-bound but has unexpectedly lost his motivation, Gretel's Grandma Frieda, mother and cousin Margot.As usual, magic realism abounds: a farmhouse covered with roses; a ghost seeking revenge on her daughter's ex-husband; a great horned owl; and a stepmother straight out of a fairy tale.As usual, Hoffman writes vividly and poetically about the mysteries of everyday life and the shifting alliances between families and friends in crisis.

... Read more

Product Description
Left on her own when her family dies in a terrible disaster, fifteen-year-old Green is haunted by loss and by the past. Struggling to survive physically and emotionally in a place where nothing seems to grow and ashes are everywhere, Green retreats into the ruined realm of her garden. But in destroying her feelings, she also begins to destroy herself, erasing the girl she'd once been as she inks darkness into her skin. It is only through a series of mysterious encounters that Green can relearn the lessons of love and begin to heal enough to tell her story.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (92)

I was Green. I am Ash.
My first encounter with Alice Hoffman was through the movie "Practical Magic" (1998). Knowing that movies are pale reflections of books, I read the book and found it to be much better.When I spotted this book (Green Angle), I realize that Alice was diverse in her writing and decided to read it. I am a fan of YA books and wondered how Alice would translate.

I bought the library bound version (sturdier than the paperback but the pages are not as white) but also the kindle (text-to-speak enabled) version as it was more convenient to port. I could listen too much of the book during my mooring commute to work.

Green a sensitive

There are two trains of thought on this book so instead of taking the low ground and saying that this puny book takes advantage of 9-11, gothic teens, and no plot. I chose to go the other way.

The book itself could be looked upon as allegorical for a los in one's life and how one copes with it. It is simple, elegant and poetic as we see the stages of grief and how different people deal with it. You can empathize with her situation and many of us have been in similar situations.The pacing was well done to go full circle in so few pages; there is not fluff as everything had meaning. It does however leave you to want the next book to see what happens.

It is not so much the words or the situations that make the book, as they are just the incidences in life not life. They are just a shadow of what is taking place.

The only thing I did not prefer in this book is that it is written in the first person "I,I,I" that preference does not distract from the story.

from missprint DOT wordpress DOT com
After a disaster destroys the city she loves and kills her family, fifteen-year-old Green is left with nothing; the life she once had turned to ashes just like the ashes covering her once lush garden.

Shocked by the loss and destruction, Green turns inward. Her clothes become armor. She closes her eyes against the loss and the rebuilding taking place all around her. She closes her heart to love or friendship.

But, little by little, love and friendship make their way into her life. As she struggles to survive Green finds unlikely friends, love, and redemption in Green Angel (2003) by Alice Hoffman.

Hoffman is one of those interesting authors who has written books for every conceivable audience (and did so before anyone was writing about kid lawyers if you know what I mean). Several of her books have also been turned into movies, including Practical Magic--one of my most favorite films.

Despite all that, this is the first book I have actually read by Alice Hoffman and it's so unusual that I have no idea if it's indicative of her work or not.*

First things first, Green Angel is a tiny book. Weighing it at less than 130 pages, there are some novellas that are longer than this book. For that reason, the normal narrative rules don't really apply.

Hoffman's writing is sparse (obviously) and melodic. With dialog presented in italics and the plot broken into parts instead of chapters, Green Angel reads more like an extended prose poem than a traditional narrative. Given that caveat, it is a good story.

Hoffman blends elements of poetry and traditional fairy tale tropes like kindly animals and wise old women to create a story about survival and reconstruction in the face of unthinkable tragedy. Sometimes gritty, sometimes florid Green Angel is a brief story that will stay with readers long after the story ends.

Green's story continues in Green Witch.

Possible Pairings: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, The Window by Jeanette Ingold, Madapple by Cristina Meldrum, Evermore by Alyson Noel, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

*I saw her at a reading/signing for Green Witch (the sequel to this book) and I didn't know much about her or her books. But I fell in love with the beautiful cover and decided I had to read it. So of course I had to read its predecessor too.

Pure Imagination Reviews

This book may be only 116 pages but it is filled to the brim with story. Green has a very close relationship with her family. Her mother collects Blue Jay feathers, her father can whistle any tune, flawlessly, and her little sister is made from moonlight. They are all so interlinked that it may be impossible for Green to get over their lose.

This is my first experience with Hoffman, and it was exactly what I was expecting. Magical. It has a fairy tale feel, but almost better. It's...more. It's not your everyday fairy tale. This is magical realism at it's best. I urge you to take an hour and read it! You won't be disappointed.

Pain and Rebirth
Green Angel / 0-439-65878-0

This story of a young girl's loss of her entire family and her own identity, and the subsequent struggle to regain herself in the aftermath of the loss, will no doubt make an impression on anyone. The deep themes of loss and survivor guilt are explored thoroughly, against a backdrop of magical realism.

Somehow, "Green Angel" puts me in mind of Island of the Blue Dolphins, for the titular character "Green" often seems just as isolated and alone, despite her interactions with her neighbors and village people, largely due to the almost complete lack of dialogue throughout the book. And, like "Island of the Blue Dolphins", Green's survival and grasp on humanity is aided by numerous animals, each of which she gently nurses to health, cherishes, and finally frees, recognizing that being wild is an intrinsic part of *their* characters.

Despite its deep themes and achingly lovely narrative, "Green Angel" will not please all audiences. The novel is extremely short - a little more than 100 pages - and the frequent repetition will enable quick readers to whip through in an hour or so. The novel relies heavily on magical realism, with Green often surviving on little more than a few nuts a day, and with health issues largely determined by the demands of the plot. Characters and themes drift in and out of the story, creating an aching, detached narrative to match Green's dissociation from her pain, but in such a way that may frustrate more literal-minded readers.

"Green Angel" is worth trying, if only for the beauty of the prose and the painful themes contained within, and with such a short time investment to the novel, any reader owes it to themselves to check it out, and approach the novel with an open heart. And if you do read and enjoy "Green Angel", make certain to also read the even better sequel, Green Witch.

~ Ana Mardoll

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
Green, who was always in the shadows and worked in the garden, is hit with a terrible reality. Her father, mother, and sister were all killed in the city when it was destroyed.

Now living on her own and trying to cope with her changed world, Green begins to fall. She wears all black and begins to ink herself in order to remember her family and what she has lost.Through a boy named Diamond, her neighbor, and an intelligent dog called Ghost, Green is finally able to get through and remember who she really is.

With all that has happened, Green learns that punishing yourself isn't a form of remembering, but moving on is.

Hoffman writes with a clear and silent insight, as if she is looking back at a terrible past with the memories still burning underneath her lids.I remember reading this book a few years back and even now I know the impression it left on me. Wanting to read this book again wasn't because I just enjoyed the story, but because it taught me something that neither my parents nor anyone I knew had ever told me about - what happens to you after someone you love dies.

I'm so glad that my love of reading gave me this insight before anything like this ever happened to me in a less dramatic situation, and therefore I recommend this book to anyone and everyone who wants to learn more about the human heart.

Reviewed by:AdrienneBe ... Read more

Product Description
The bestselling author of Turtle Moon and Practical Magic tells her most seductive and mesmerizing tale yet--the story of March Murray, who returns to her small Massachusetts hometown after nineteen years, encountering her childhood sweetheart...and discovering the heartbreaking and complex truth about their reckless and romantic love.

"A sound addition to an impressive body of work."--Boston Globe

"Sumptuous prose."--Denver Post

"Here on Earth is Hoffman's twelfth novel, and the spell she casts is stronger than ever."--Orlando Sentinel

*Includes a Reader's Guide

The New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection...with a Reader's Guide included.Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, March 1998: Here on Earth is set in motion when March Murray andher teenage daughter travel from their California home to NewEngland. Their stay is to be brief. Judith Dale, her childhoodhousekeeper-cum-foster mother, has died, and March must set things toright and get out of gloomy Jenkintown as quickly aspossible. "Five days tops," she reassures her scientisthusband. Instead, she is pulled back into the arms of Hollis, herfirst love--an avaricious, Heathcliff-like individual who radiatessulfur and cruelty. "She left and didn't come back, not even whenhe called her, and yet here she is, on this dark night; here and noplace else." In this deep fable of loss and control, love andfear, Alice Hoffman allows us into her characters' cores and makes uswish their fortunes were happier. Here on Earth is filled withwisdom, what-ifs, and animals who seem, if not to know more than humanbeings, at least to know how to shy from danger. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (495)

It's no Twilight
After finishing the Twilight Saga, and being disappointed by Breaking Dawn, I was desperate to find another paranormal ROMANCE that would feed my inner teen.The first time I read the f-bomb in Here on Earth made me slam the cover.I eventually skimmed the rest to find out what happens to the losers in this story, because I was sitting in the doctor's office, but cared not one single bit for the characters.As others have pointed out the similarities to Wuthering Heights are laughable and insulting. Heathcliff (WH)= Hollis/ Kathy(WH)=March/ Hindley(WH)= Alan/ Hareton(WH)=Hank.

A troubled 13 yr old orphan, Hollis, is brought to the house; the elder son, Alan treats him badly eventually sending him to the attic to live;The elder son becomes a drunk;The younger sister gets her foot stuck while spying on the rich family and while Heathcliff---er--I mean Hollis evades capture, Kathy---I mean March falls for the genteel life while spurning her "true" reckless, dangerous, troubled, "brother", Hollis; who then goes off to make his millions...Hollis then adopts his nephew by the elder son?I mean...please.I HATED THIS BOOK!Even though I am an adult, I don't need to read graphic "love" scenes. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but "thrusting"? Yuck.Give me the sweet, romantic, awesome dialogue in Twilight anytime.That was character development.That was layered.That made me understand the motivation of the characters. Here on Earth makes me understand why people say, "I hate reading!"

Great Beach Read---Damaged Characters Galore
"Here on Earth"
by Alice Hoffman

Book Review by Jay Gilbertson

This New York Times best selling author of Practical Magic and an Oprah Book Club pick really did herself proud with "Here on Earth." Though it was indeed a page-turner, the one complaint that drove me crazy was the fact that Hoffman is a bona fide Head-Hopper. In the world of writing, this is considered a huge no no. What HH means is that within a chapter the author hops from one character's head (or viewpoint) to another, making it challenging as to figuring out just whose story is it? What Hoffman does do very well, is create a really interesting cast of inter-connected characters and paints small town life wonderfully well.

The reader is thrown into the lives of March and Gwen Murray, mother and daughter, as they return to the town where March grew up. March has come back to bury her foster mother, but we soon learn there is another reason she decides to stay; Hollis. He was March's teenage crush and one day he literally disappeared. March eventually moved away, got married to a scientist and had Gwen, but when she sees Hollis again after all those years, all bets are off and they have an affair. A totally twisted, abusive, lustful affair that has doomed written all over it, not to mention the rather obvious Wuthering Heights under current woven throughout. Heathcliff meet your match.

Hollis was once an outcast teenager, a troubled runaway that March's father decided to adopt. Now he's the wealthiest man in town and seems to own just about everything in and surrounding their sorry New England burg. What Hollis doesn't have is a heart and I have to say, he is one of the nastiest men I hope to never meet. Hoffman did a terrific job in weaving and connecting the cast of characters not only to one another but also to the town's deep and rich history. The author also managed to toss in the possibility of true love, even though it happens to be between fifteen-year-old Gwen and her cousin!

All in all, Hoffman took Wuthering Heights and simply gave it a new face and I honestly think that any author that can swing that is worth giving a read. This is a story of love and hate and how sometimes the happiest ending just isn't in the cards. Oh, and there's some magic stuff that happens, (not telling) a horse with insight, a real Devils Corner and some unsavory thoughts on what can happen when you think you have everything and yet nothing is enough. If this book were a real live person, I would highly suggest some really serious therapy...

Love Is Complicated
Here On Earth by Alice Hoffman is an Oprah's Book Club book. Let me start by saying that I usually do not read books from Oprah's list. They are usually just way too depressing. However, this was recommended to me by a good friend who usually has great reading taste so I decided that I would give it a try--as usual, I was not disappointed.

Ms. Hoffman spins an extremely complex tale of love. Love of all kinds; first love, friends, true love, family, young love, and sometimes those kinds of loves that are all consuming and even at times self-destructing.

March Murray, the main character returns with her teenage daughter to her small hometown in Massachusetts, after being gone for 19 years, for the funeral of her family's housekeeper and, basically, the only real mother that March has ever known. In returning to her past, March has to deal with her "first love" and maybe her only love -- Hollis, a boy she has loved since she first laid eyes on him at the age of 11. What Hollis and March experience is a love that is so strong that it consumes you. What March must find out is if she can survive it.

As you get familiar with Hollis and March, you will find yourself rooting for the Hollis that March sees, the Hollis that no one else knows. But at other times you will find yourself siding with March's daughter Gwen and her best friend Susie, in just wanting to kick Hollis' teeth in.

However, if you read this story carefully you can learn a lot about love, not through the story's main characters of March and Hollis, but from the slew of other characters that the author uses to gives us different views of love and what it really means to love and be loved. How would you deal with a lover's betrayal, domestic violence, a lover who doesn't return your love, a cheat? It's easy to say "I would do...." But when actually in the situation, sometimes love really is blind or maybe it just sees it differently. Ms. Hoffman does a great job of showing this through each and every one of her characters.

Sometimes it's hard to watch someone be involved in a self-destructive love. Your advice is neither taken nor wanted. This is also true of someone who is in love but refuses to really see what love is either because through their childhood they have watched love hurt someone close to them or they have been hurt by love themselves. By showing us love from so many angles and voices, Ms. Hoffman lets us see that there is something to be learned from many different encounters in love.

A book that can pull at your heart strings and still offer you the opportunity to step outside of yourself and examine how you view love and walk for a little while in someone else's shoes is well worth the read.

My only complaint is that the ending left you hanging slightly in regards to some of the characters. This is not entirely a bad thing though, as it gave me the opportunity to let my imagination explore where I wanted their love to take them.

Disappointing Ending
When March is eleven years old, her father returns from a business trip with a homeless thirteen-year-old he's picked up off of the streets of Boston.March is immediately taken with this boy, Hollis, even though her older brother Alan hates him on sight.

Hollis is a wary teen, easily offended and bent on vengeance.Nonetheless, March is absolutely smitten with him, and the two have only eyes for each other.When March's father dies several years later and Alan inherits everything, he does what is in his power to make Hollis' life miserable.As soon as Hollis is able, he takes off.A moment of hesitation by March means she is left behind, waiting until she simply can't wait anymore to see if Hollis will ever return for her.She starts a new life without him.

Twenty years later March returns to her childhood home to attend the funeral of the housekeeper who raised her.Her somewhat-troubled fifteen-year-old daughter comes with her, but March's husband remains at home across the country.By now Hollis has returned to town, triumphantly rich.He has buried a wife and son, adopted his nemesis Alan's son, and has purchased much of the land in town.Yet he is still incomplete without March.He fully expects her to fall for him when she returns.She seems to expect the same.But they are no longer children, living without consequences, and in their time apart their relationship has grown very complex.

I loved the language of this book; the writing is beautiful and lyrical.I loved reading the descriptions of the characters' thoughts, of the landscape, of the environment that was so all-consuming.The plot of this story was interesting, too.It was heartbreaking to read about a woman who felt like the only thing that had ever really mattered in her life had slipped away.It was equally heartbreaking to read how casually she was willing to throw away everything else that mattered in her life.

I wish I'd had a chance to get to know these characters a little better, though, to see how the boy March loved had turned into such a nasty man, to see how Alan had fallen so far, and especially to find out how things could possibly be wrapped up at the end of the book.I felt as though the story ended at a crucial point, when so many of the characters were on the brink of something new, possibly something redeeming.I needed a little more time with this book than the author gave.

Hated This Book
Boy oh boy.Seems like everything I read these days on Oprah's approved reading list is depressing.This book is no exception.Maybe I just like a little happiness in my books because this one did nothing but drag me down.The characters left much to the imagination, since the author's style apparently doesn't fill in a lot of the blanks there.One-dimensional cardboard stereotypical characters and misery is all I got out of this read.Tired of reading about hopelessness, cruelty and despair with no redemption at the end. ... Read more

Product Description
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well; as children, the sisters were outsiders. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, but all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back-almost as if by magic...Amazon.com Review
For most adults, fairy tales are among the childish things we've put away. Alice Hoffman, however, feels differently. Practical Magic startsout as a tale of Gillian and Sally Owens, two orphaned girls whose auntsare witches--of a mild sort. For the past two centuries, Owens women havebeen blamed for all that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town, eversince their ancestor arrived, rich, independent, and soon accused of theft:"And then one day, a farmer winged a crow in his cornfield, a creaturewho'd been stealing from him shamelessly for months. When Maria Owensappeared the very next morning with her arm in a sling and her white handwound up in a white bandage, people felt certain they knew the reason why."The aunts are daily ostracized by the same upstanding citizens who sneak totheir house at night for magical love cures. To the sistersthey are for the most part benevolently absent, though their bell, book,and candle routine makes life a torment for Gillian, beautiful and blondeand lazy, and Sally, who's all too responsible. But when one of the aunts'cures works too well, ending as a curse, the dangers of real love becomeall too clear. In Hoffman's world being bewitched, bothered, and bewilderedis no mere metaphor--and neither is desire. The elbows of one enamored manpucker a linoleum counter, another walks around with singed cuffs. It'sdifficult to catch the author's power in brief quotes. She needs spaceand increment to build her exquisite variations of vision and reality, hermatter-of-fact announcements of the preternatural. Practical Magicagain and again makes one recall the thrill of hearing at bedtime, "Nowwill I a tale unfold..." --Kerry Fried ... Read more

Customer Reviews (213)

MUCH Better Than The Movie
I usually read the book first, but I had seen the move "Practical Magic" and thought it was terrible, so I had no desire to read the book.It kind of fell in my lap one day, though, and I thought I would give it a chance.So glad I did!Walker's writing is absolutely beautiful, and she really can create a mood and an image through her use of words.There is none of the hokey, aww-how-cute stuff that marred the movie so badly, and I found the characters much more believable and human.I also liked that Sally's children were older and had a bigger part in the story.There is magic in the store, but it's much more subtle and the aunts actually do resemble an old-time "cunning woman" or village witch.I highly recommend this book.The only reason I didn't give it five stars is for the ending; it wraps up a little too neatly, and I felt that some of the characters behaved in an unrealistic way.

best Alice Hoffman book in my opinion
This book is so well written is just blew my mind.The descriptions of the setting and the placement of characters throughout the narrative is excellent, and the way in which Hoffman drawn you into the narrative, so gently and naturally, that you barely notice when you become so interested in the lives of the characters.Even the movie based on this book was good, so as far as that goes I think it's a good thing.I have read other of Hoffman's novels, but this one is the one that touched me the most, with the manifold personalities of the two sisters and their relationships and lives, pretty much perfect!

Eh
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman was made into a movie.Kind of.The movie takes great liberties from the book and is much better in my opinion.Although I really did not care for the book, I am giving it three stars because I know I am biased in my review.If you are looking for the book to be like the movie, move on!If you haven't seen the movie or you are looking for a women's fiction type book with some romance, look no further.The main themes of the book seem to be love, human desire and self responsibility/growing up.There is a lot of love.Everyone is falling in and out of love.Love is very, very important in this novel and you must have it.It was too much love for me.At the same time, I felt there was overkill with the "f" word.I've never thought that before, but it seemed to really stick out here - almost as if it was out of place.

Some of the characters were likeable and some were annoying.For instance, Gary really needed to stop crying!And I don't know why all the women had to be so beautiful.I'm not sure what the message was there but apparently it's very important to be stunning and have men swoon all over you all the time.

The writing is well done.Ms. Hoffman is a master at the craft and an accomplished writer, but all in all I did not enjoy the story.I'm giving it three stars (would have given it two) because I feel like my disappointment is more my problem than Ms. Hoffmans.

Highly recommended for readers of multigenerational tales or stories where love can conquer all
Three generations of a family form the core of this novel. Sisters, Gillian and Sally, are raised by their aunts Frances and Jet, also sisters. Sally's two daughters, Antonia and Kylie, create the third generation. Magical realism is woven into the storyline which focuses on the issues of fate, trust, love, sibling rivalry, and family ties. I highly recommended Practical Magic for readers of multigenerational tales, magical realism, and stories where love, both romantic and between family members, can conquer all.

Enchanting
Like so many others have written, if you are buying this to read the movie you will be disappointed. That being said it is a beautiful story of family and love. It's well written, full of increditable detail. I couldn't put it down. ... Read more

Product Description
Twelve year-old best friend Hailey and Claire are spending their last summer together when they discover something at the bottom of themurky pool at the Capri Beach Club.There, among the seaweed and jellyfish that the summer storm has blown in from the ocean, there is a mysterious and beautiful creature with a sharp tongue and a broken heart ­ a mermaid named Aquamarine. Amazon.com Review
This wide-eyed, magical tale by distinguished author Alice Hoffman reflects the pale blue hue of two 12-year-old friends about to be parted at summer's end. Hailey and Claire have lived next door to each other and have been best friends all their lives, but now Claire's family is going to move away to Florida. The two hang out at the neighborhood beach club in the blistering heat, dreading the end of things. The Capri Beach Club, too, is coming to an end--neglected and shabby, due to be bulldozed at the end of the season.

Despite the girls' fear of change, everything shifts with a summer storm. At the beach club the next morning, Hailey and Claire find that the storm has left its mark, filling the cloudy waters of the swimming pool with jellyfish and seaweed. Hailey boldly dives in and discovers that the waves have also brought a delicate blue and white mermaid who is extremely grouchy at her predicament. The girls scheme to return the fish-woman to the sea, but she obstinately refuses to leave the vicinity of Raymond, the handsome boy who runs the gift shop. Alarmed at the mermaid's growing weakness, Hailey and Claire extract her promise to go back to the sea in exchange for one evening with Raymond. They set up a blind date, dress her in a long blue dress to hide her tail, and take her to the rendezvous in a wheelchair. But the next morning the dying mermaid is in love, and the patio is full of partygoers. Can the girls sneak her past all those eyes to save her life? And will she let them? Young teens will be entranced by the strange dreaminess of this poignant little story about love and loss. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell ... Read more

Customer Reviews (70)

Very good Seller!
Seller was wonderful in rushing the video to me.
Terrific to work with! Thank you!

Comparable to sea glass - rare and beautiful
This summer, the Capri Beach Club may look similar to a shipwreck, what with the tractors surrounding the once-beautiful resort, and the washed up starfish and seashells scattered everywhere. Not to mention the cloudiness in the pool water, or the fact that the smell of burned hamburgers no longer linger's throughout the premises. But to Hailey and Claire, the Capri Beach Club couldn't be more beautiful. Hailey and Claire have been best friends and next-door neighbors for as long as they can remember. But the two girls are polar opposites. While Hailey loves nothing more than to dive headfirst into just about any body of water, Claire finds herself frightened of the wet escape, preferring to stay on dry land, where at least she knows she's safe. Ever since they can remember, the two friends have spent their summers at the Capri Beach Club. They know that Raymond - the snack bar attendant - loves to read, and has read over one-hundred books since they've been visiting the Club. They also know that he has never learned how to grill a burger without burning it, but that hasn't stopped people from eating the charred meat. This year, though, things are different. For one, at the end of the summer, the Capri Beach Club will be no more. After years of standing, and being a vacation spot to families and people of all ages, it will close its gates, and never re-open them again. To the two friends, this is one of the worst things that can happen. But there's more. After years of being next-door neighbors, Hailey and Claire will have to say goodbye, for Claire's grandparents have decided that the time has come for them to move to Florida, and Claire is being forced to accompany them. Claire has never known any other home, and can't stand the thought of parting with Hailey. The two of them have grown-up together, and done everything side by side. They even have their own codes and signals for one another. But all of that will be history come August 31, when Claire waves goodbye for the last time. Which is why the two friends have decided to make this the summer of a lifetime. They have decided that, even though the Capri Beach Club is practically empty, they will spend every single day of the summer at their home away from home, simply enjoying each other's company, and bracing themselves for the end of summer. When they discover something strange lying at the murky bottom of the Beach Club's pool, however, they realize that this is their chance to make the summer more memorable than any other. Aquamarine is a mermaid who was swept ashore during a recent storm, and has taken up residence in the condemned pool. She's a beautiful creature, with long, flowing hair, and a tongue as sharp as her tail. Ignoring the call of her six sisters, who wish that she would return home, Aquamarine has left the ocean in an attempt to find love on land, but has only managed to find a broken heart. Hailey and Claire can't bear to see Aquamarine so sad, and, in an attempt to save her life, they come up with a plan that will give her the chance to have one magical night. A night that will be just as special to Hailey and Claire, as it is to Aquamarine.

I finally purchased Alice Hoffman's AQUAMARINE when I heard about the film being released. However, I placed it in my room, and forgot about it until just last night, when I decided that it would be a perfect way to kick off the summer. From the moment I began the story, I found myself pulled in to the world of Hailey, Claire, and Aquamarine. In just a short amount of time - clocking in at a mere 105 pages - Hoffman manages to weave a story that is unforgettable. Mixing mythology with present day, Hoffman creates a coming-of-age novel that is easy to identify with, that must be read in one sitting. The contrasting personalities of Hailey and Claire play off one another perfectly, and make it obvious just how strong their friendship is. Hailey seems more daring, and ready to leap into the unknown; while Claire, who has experienced tragedy in her life over the years, seems more reserved, wanting to think things over, and contemplate a plan, before pursuing anything. Their relationship and bond is so strong, that the reader instantly feels for the girls, wishing that they could stay side-by-side forever, as opposed to being separated by the end of the summer. Aquamarine is also an interesting character. Hoffman paints a picture of mermaids not always being the sweet, angelic creatures they are portrayed to be in cartoons. She breathes new life into the mythological creature, making Aquamarine snippy, and, oft-times, downright rude. However, it's obvious that Aquamarine's slightly nasty attitude is truly just masking her sadness, and is not intended to offend either Hailey or Claire. While so many books on the market appeal to readers because they center around vicious girls, looking to call each other names, or play nasty jokes on one another; AQUAMARINE's appeal is that it is the complete opposite, embracing friendship, and the joy of helping others. Gone are the catty remarks, and the backstabbing. In their place is beauty and love. Hoffman's imagery doesn't disappoint either. Her descriptions of seashells, and aquatic life are lovely; and she truly makes the reader see colors such as silver and blue in a new light. Hoffman packs quite a punch with this tiny book that leaves an extremely strong impact. Comparable to sea glass - rare and beautiful.

Erika Sorocco
Freelance Reviewer

Mermaid Tale
Hailey and Claire have always been best friends and have always lived next door to each other.Every summer they have spent their time at the Capri, a beach club nearby.Now, in the summer when they are twelve, the Capri is falling down and they are the only ones who go there, besides Raymond, the teenager who works at the snack bar.At the end of the summer, Claire will be moving to Florida, far away from her best friend.

Every day that passes is closer to moving day.The two girls spend every day at the Capri, wishing that something would happen to make things better, and simply dreading the day when Claire would have to move.Someone new would move into Claire's house, the Capri beach club would be torn down, and perhaps these two best friends would forget each other.Every day is tragic.

Then one day after a huge storm, the girls look through the weeds in the beach club pool and see a mermaid there.She is beautiful and snobbish, and can't live away from the sea for very long.However, when she sees Raymond she falls in love and refuses to leave the pool unless she can meet him.Hailey and Claire now have something to think about besides themselves.They need to find a way for this mermaid and Raymond to meet, so they can then convince her to go back to the ocean where she can become healthy again.Through this experience, Hailey and Claire share something special that brings them even closer together, while at the same time making it easier for them to part.

I liked the fantasy aspect of this book, and I liked how the feeling of the girls that their lives were falling apart was paralleled by the falling down conditions of the Capri beach club.

However, I thought there was pretty poor character development, and I didn't care nearly as much about anyone in the story as I should have.

Aquamarine
Aquamarine is a book about two young girls Hayley and Claire who spend everyday in the summer together. They wanted to spend time together because Claire was moving to Florida with her grandparents. A huge storm came and washed into the pool and the girls found Aquamarine and took care of her. Aquamarine wanted to do everything Heather and Claire did.

My Favorite part of the book is when Aquamarine and Raymond go on a date. She has to get rolled in a wheel chair because of her tail. SHe gave Haley and Claire had three wishes. When the third wish is done Aquamarine has to go back and live with her family.

I would reccomend Aquamarine if you need a short read. The downside of the book is that it is not detailed a lot. You can relate to the book if you best friend is moving.

The Crazy Discovery
The book Aquamarine is abput two girls named Hailey and Claire, who are best friends.Hailey and Claire then find out that Claire is moving to florida with her grandparents so they paln on having the best summer ever.Until there is a big storm and it destroys the beach club that they hung out at almost everyday.So the girls go down to the club to see what it looks like and to their surprise there is a mermaid named Aquamarine in the pool.
There are many great parts in this book so it was hard just to choose one.My favorite part of the book is in the begining when the girls fist find the mermaid in the pool.This is my favorite part of the book because it is sort of funny when the girls get scared when Aquamarine just says boo.This is also my favorite part because who would expect a mermaid to be in a pool.I also like that the author did not make Aquamarine sound like the Littli Mermaid. This is just one of the great parts of Aquamarine.
I would definitley recommend this book becuase I am the type of person that does not like to read so for me to like this book I know that it has to be good.This is a good short read but it is also a great story. Aquamarine is definitley a fictional story so anyone that likes fiction books should read this story.I would only recommend this book to girls because I do not really think that guys would like reading about mermaids and girls talking about love.All in all Aquamarine was very good book that just made you want to see what would happen next. ... Read more

Product Description
DESCRIPTION: Alice Hoffman's most spellbinding novel yet--the story of a small-town librarian who, after being struck by lightning, is afforded the opportunity to begin her life anew--is now in trade paperback. A magical story of passion, loss, and renewal, THE ICE QUEEN is Alice Hoffman at her electrifying best.Amazon.com Review
A solitary New Jersey librarian whose favorite book is a guide to suicide methods is struck by lightning in Alice Hoffman's superb novel, The Ice Queen. Orphaned at the age of eight after angrily wishing she would never see her mother again, our heroine found herself frozen emotionally: "Iwas the child who stomped her feet and made a single wish and in so doing ended the whole world‹my world, at any rate."Her brother Ned solved the pain of their mother's death by becoming a meteorologist: applying reason and logic to bad weather. Eventually, he invites our heroine to move down to Florida, where he teaches at a university.Here, while trying toswat a fly, she is struck by lightning (the resulting neurological damage includes an inability to see the color red).Orlon County turns out to receive two thirds of all the lightning strikes in Florida each year, and our heroine soon becomes drawn into the mysteries of lightning: thewithering of trees and landscape near a strike, the medical traumas and odd new abilities of victims, the myths of renewal.Although a recluse, she becomes fascinated by a legendary local farmer nicknamed Lazarus Jones, said to have beaten death after a lightning strike: to have seen the other side and come back.The burning match to her cool reserve--her personal unguidedtour through Hades--Lazarus will prove to be the talisman that restores her to girlhood innocence and possibility.

Hoffman's story advances with a feline economy of language and movement--not a word spared for the color of the sky, unless the color of the sky factors into the narrative.Among the authors who have played with the fairy tale's harsh mercies (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter), Hoffman has the closest understanding of the primal fears that drive the genre, and why, perhaps, we never outgrow fairy stories, but only learn to substitute dull, wholesome qualities like personal initiative or good timing for the elements that raise the hairs on our neck and send us scrambling for the light switch. --Regina Marler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (93)

A narrator with no name
The main character is distant, cold and uninteresting.At the beginning you feel sympathy.The wish and then death of a mother.Tragic.But there is nothing to like until she is hit by lightening and explores the world.The book is not long and therefore can capture your attention but to come away satisfied was not what I felt at the finish.

Ice Queen
After her mother dies leaving her brother and her orphaned, the eight-year-old narrator believed it was her wish that killed her. As an adult, the single librarian, studies death, vows never to feel, never to care. She decides that she is made of ice, and she likes it that way. One day, she is struck by lightning, which temporarily cripples her, negates her ability to see the color red, and slowly leads her more deeply into the lives of others, and into her own life as well.

Written under the influence of fairy tales, this story is unusual. Dealing with common fears and questions about existence, this story has value. I found the book somewhat depressing, although I could see its merit.

Couldn't get through it
This is my first Alice Hoffman book and most likely my last.I wanted to finish it but was really only forcing myself so I stopped.Yuck.

Lightning Strikes
I will just say, that from the first page, I was hooked.Read the first page in the bookstore, picked up a copy for myself and a copy for a friend. The book operates on an interesting premise and abit of magical thinking. Though it's the kind of magical thinking any of us may think we possess on occasion.

The main character is utterably believable, even as the author continues to stretch what we may believe can happen in the world. Everything is written so realistically that the fantastic parts seem totally believable and as though nothing else would have been right.

I don't want to give anything away...but I will say that as a poet, I was jealous of a few of the lines in this book. They were that beautiful and haunting and sometimes just plain old weird.

The whole book is a metaphor for change and for freeing yourself from the ties that bind when you finally figure out it's you doing all the tying.

***this book contains no hokey goddess soul spiritual new age trickery.

Maybe I Picked the Wrong Book
This is my first time reading this author, I bought this book from a library booksale. The cover caught my attention (love butterflies) but after reading the back cover, I thought it would be a good book. It was just ok for me and I was pretty much at the end before I realized what I was reading if that makes sense. It isn't memorable at all for me. Maybe I will try another of her books..any suggestions? ... Read more

Product Description
People tend to stay in their place in the town of Haddan. The students at the prestigious prep school don't mix with locals; even within the school, hierarchy rules, as freshman and faculty members find out where they fit in and what is expected of them. But when a body is found in the river behind the school, a local policeman will walk into this enclosed world and upset it entirely. A story of surface appearances and the truths submerged below, The River King confirms Alice Hoffman as "one of our quirkiest and most interesting novelists" (Jane Smiley, USA Today).Amazon.com Review
There are two things any reader can count on when coming to Alice Hoffman: her prose and a remarkable empathy for those who live on the fringes of society. In her 13th novel, the author turns both to good account. Set in a tony private school located in a small New England town, The River King traces an intricate weave of intersecting lives over the course of a year.The Haddan School, founded in 1858, has long been the scene of tragedy and wonder: during its first year a tremendous storm flooded the grounds, and more than a century later "frogs can be found in the plumbing; linens and clothes stored in closets have a distinctly weedy odor, as if each article had been washed in river water and never thoroughly dried." Then there are the glorious roses planted by Annie Howe, a villager who married the headmaster and later hanged herself; these flowers have an unusual effect on sensitive girls. "When such girls walked past the brittle canes in the gardens behind St. Anne's, they felt something cold at the base of their spines, a bad case of pins and needles, as though someone were issuing a warning: be careful who you choose to love and who loves you in return."

A cogent warning indeed, for as in all of Hoffman's novels, the question of whom one chooses to love and who loves in return is the crux of the matter. The River King revolves around triangles. First there is Betsy Chase, a young photography teacher at the Haddan School who has gotten herself engaged--almost accidentally--to a fellow faculty member, even as she is inexorably drawn to Abel Grey, a town policeman. Then there are Carlin Leander, a scholarship student, and her best friend, Gus Pierce. While Carlin is able to fit in, even attracting the interest of the most popular boy on campus, Gus is a defiant outcast, a tall skinny kid in a long black overcoat "who viewed his own life as a prison sentence and experienced his existence much as a condemned man might." Carlin's romance with the charismatic, cruel Harry McKenna creates a rupture between her and Gus, and fuels a mean-spirited practical joke with horrific consequences. In the aftermath of tragedy, each character's heart, conscience, and courage is tested in unexpected ways.

Hoffman spins her web of love and heartbreak and transcendence with a sure hand, and in the process creates characters so palpably human in all their petty flaws and small instances of heroism that one almost expects them to step out of the book and into the room. Indeed, if there is a flaw in The River King, it is that Alice Hoffman doesn't always trust the magic inherent in her characters, relying a little too heavily at times on somewhat precious invocations of the otherworldly. But this is a minor defect in an otherwise satisfying novel, one that will keep the reader spellbound by its emotional complexity and compelling story. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Customer Reviews (93)

Mysterious and chilling, wonderful Hoffman.
In a nutshell, I loved The River King. It is the third Hoffman novel I've read (previous ones are The Third Angel and The Ice Queen) and I think it's my favorite so far. Her narratives are so enigmatic and brooding they encompass the reader with a deep, internal sense of unease, and The River King is no exception.

In Massachusetts, in the town of Hadden, there is a private high-school for the intelligent and the wealthy. Students and townspeople don't mix, don't mingle, and each side minds their own business. But when a young boy from the school is found drowned in the river, barriers are crossed and the lines dividing Hadden start to blur.

Among the characters are Abel Grey, burdened by his brother's suicide when he was young; and Betsy Chase, chained to an impending marriage she no longer desires. There is Carlin Leander, smart and beautiful, but an outsider; and Gus Pierce, head over heels in love with Carlin and an outsider himself. A host of supporting characters lend weight to the plot, drawing everyone together. A deep, decades old suicide of one of the school's first residents also plays a background, as does the magical history of roses and water that Hoffman skillfully blends into the storyline. Her hints of the mysterious are gentle and persuasive; so realistic you almost wonder if they're magic at all.

Much of the novel is told in asides, mentioning one character's story in reference to another. It takes a supreme talent to be able to start the reader headed in one direction, bend them toward another, but have them end up at the correct final destination. It's just one reason Hoffman's novels are so successful.

The River King is dark and mysterious, it chills the reader page-by-page. If you're interested in reading Alice Hoffman's novels, I would definitely recommend The River King if you're in the mood for a mystery. If you're in the mood for one of her more contemporary novels, I point you toward The Third Angel: A Novel.

Wonderful storytelling, eerie setting--and a crowded stage
The central character of the "The River King" is the setting; what the moors are to Wuthering Heights, the woods are to Haddan School. The campus is defined by the eeriness of its environs: ducks and geese are as prevalent as students, mice are constantly running for shelter or scurrying away in fright, twigs snap underfoot and fogs blanket fields and moss covers fallen logs and rains muddy the ground. People hide, things rot, bodies are found. And everyone is haunted by a past, a secret, a sodden mood.

This earthy Gothic atmosphere is territory Hoffman has created with imaginative skill in previous novels; here, too, she again scatters hints of magic realism in the proceedings (although in this outing, it must be said, the elements come across as Garcia Marquez Lite). So the characters of the novel end up finding stiff competition in Hoffman's eerie, enchanting, scene-stealing backdrop.

And the two lead female characters nearly succeed. At the core of the plot is the book-smart Carlin, whose beauty makes her (in spite of her best efforts to resist) the most popular girl in school--which in turn makes her friendship with the ungainly August awkward (and riddles her with guilt when his body turns up). Betsy, the school's new art instructor, is engaged to a professorial, passionless pill of a man, so it's no surprise when she falls in love with the first enigmatic presence that steps her way--a solitary and lonely police detective who refuses to accept the official version of August's death and who is troubled by a suicide in his own family's past. But I wished Hoffman had stuck with these two women a bit more. Instead, Hoffman gives us the perspective of a number of other characters--from Gus's tormenters to the pharmacist's nephew to various porch-dwellers who inhabit the town--and the omniscient mind's eye seems a bit unfocused. We learn far more about cantankerous history teacher Helen Davis from Carlin herself; Helen's own musings end up being superfluous.

Even though I (obviously) don't think it's one of Hoffman's best, I still really liked "The River King." In spite of the crowded stage, it's impossible not to be spellbound by the magic of the storytelling and the spookiness of the atmosphere.

Brilliant!
This was the first Alice Hoffman novel I read, and by consequence, I have now read every other. This is truly one of my most favorite books and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to all. The story is beautifully and methodically crafted, and is both dark and whimsical satisfying the dark and light sides of everyone's novelistic expectations. While I doubt the book will win a Pulitzer or become required reading for scholars, it is a brilliant read that I have turned to again and again. Hoffman's prose is (unfailingly) magical, moving, inspiring, and intriguing. SECRET: I am basically obsessed with this book.

Chilling and Good, Captivating and Original
I was in Reno visiting friends, when I stopped by the Salvation Army. Never know what you're going to find in one of those stores. I found this book, just browsing around, picked it up for half a buck, hardcover, almost mint. Went back to the Circus Circus, great rooms there for not much money during the week, plus you get a great buffet down the street at the Peppermill.

I love Reno. And I love Alice Hoffman. And because I do, I cracked the book, intending to only read a chapter or two. I read halfway through the book, would've kept reading, but we had to go to dinner with those friends we came to visit. Afterwards though, I finished this. Heck with CNN and the Hillary, Obama fight -- this was an Alice Hoffman book I hadn't read. Gotta get your priorities in order, after all.

This is a story about spoiled kids in a New England prep school. They think they're better than the townies, but the townies like the dough the school brings in, they coexist. Then a couple not so spoiled kids get admitted and nothing is ever the same.

This is a tale of murder and the supernatural. It's chilling and good, captivating and original, delicious and warm, heartbreaking and cruel. It's not tender. It is Alice Hoffman and it is a book not to be missed. I somehow did miss it though, but I'm more than glad I finally got to it.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Verbosity Loses a Star
I am a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Alice Hoffman's and had heard how astounding this book was.I agree that the story of a misfit, Gus, fighting to survive in a upper-classed prep school spins a great tale of intrigue.When he is found dead we must investigate with, Abe, a wounded detective, who wants to know if Gus's demise was by suicide, accident or murder.Hadden, the rich school, would just as soon let sleeping dogs lie and pay the town off for silence.Stubborn Abe will not be bought and the story sizzles with suspense.Carlin, as much a misfit as Gus, fights with Abe to solve this mystery and it a bit gruesome to say the least.

My only complaint would be the verbosity of description.Every tree, every bush, every flower, every shimmer of water is detailed to the point of nauseum.Hoffman gifts rich prose every book, but I think this was overkill.I found myself waterlogged and exhausted, drudging through the mire of repetitive info on all of nature.However, it wasn't disturbing enough to stop me from reading every page and being ultimately happy with the startling outcome.
... Read more

Product Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Second Nature and Here on Earth presents "a captivating...truly original novel" (Cosmopolitan), the story of a divorced woman, her disillusioned teenage son, and the events that change their lives in ways both simple and extraordinary. When Keith Rosen runs away from his Florida home - inexplicably taking along a motherless baby - his mother is perplexed and terrified. She takes off on her own journey to find him. And Turtle Moon follows their path, in a suspenseful and beautifully written story that confirms once again the exquisite talent of Alice Hoffman. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (65)

Writing Left Me Speechless
Not only did I love the story, but only Alice Hoffman can put together a sentence that works magic like DaVinchi's paint brush.
This is probably one of my favorite Alice Hoffman books (after Practical Magic) that somehow escaped my reading pile till now. I'm so glad I discovered it and if you're a fan of Alice, I'm sure you'll adore this book too!

The Hallmark of Alice Hoffman
The first time I read Turtle Moon I knew I would have to read all of Alice Hoffman's books. And quickly! It is a stand-out novel for its refreshing lyricism and well-crafted use of magical realism. Alluring, poignant, and endlessly captivating, Turtle Moon is a story I will turn to again and again.

Meanest Kid in Verity
A quirky little novel about a disturbed twelve year old boy - "the meanest kid in Verity," (Texas, that is) who only finds true love and devotion when he meets up with Arrow, the meanest dog in town.It is Arrow's master, Police Investigator and K-9 handler, Julian Cash, who introduces the two and by understanding their bonding, finally comes to terms with his own tragedy and loss twenty years earlier. Julian is the hero, though bumbling and vulnerable and naïve and becomes the epitome of the human desire for redemption. It is a lovely story full of idealistic romance and a mystery that keeps the reader turning the pages.

A Book Impossible to Put Down
This is a moving story about about a single mother with a very complicated child and a policeman who suffers with guilt. Add in a touch of the supernatural, then through in the tense and superb writing style of Alice Hoffman and you have a book you can't put down.

Good characters, well plotted, two reservations
Characters are interesting and book is very well plotted.On the whole, the surreal elements work well, but the attempt to make the Florida heat a character in its own right did not ring true and was overdone.The motivation of the killer in hanging around is questionable.The description of the two failed marriages, Lucy's and Katherine's, ringed true and elevated this novel.
... Read more

Product Description
In this powerful, lovely sequel to GREEN ANGEL, Green must learn the stories of a number of "witches" and free her true soul mate from a prison as she grapples with life, love, and loss in a post-disaster world.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Poignant, puissant, achingly lovely writing ...
Alice Hoffman couches her poetry in such lovely liquid prose that the line is forever blurred.This a sequel to the also rich and dream-creamy GREEN ANGEL."The paper turned a dovelike gray and smelled like heather and heath."Besides just drowning in her beautiful words, her characters shimmer with the startling humanity that comes from loss (upon loss, upon loss, ...)"my teacher's tale of the books she loved has stray words that fall out when I turn the pages."For Hoffman fans, this is not to be missed.And for lovers of beautiful writing, modern fairy tales, and quirky, but so real characters, this small book is a feast."A world can exist in a kiss, a rose, a leaf, a heart."

"A world can exist in a kiss, a rose, a leaf, a heart."
It is best to read "Green Angel" first however; there is enough flashback thoughts to fill in the necessary original tail to continue the tail in this book. We also get a few thoughts that should have been in the first story. We will revisit with many of Greens old friends.

Now it has been a year sense the disaster and what should have been the end of Green's story is just the beginning.Her mission is to collect people's stories. This includes stories for several so-called witches that were to contribute to her plan to recover her soul mate. That is if he does not turn out to be one of the bad guys.

It is the incidences of the story that makes the book. Being a paper maker, myself I found the references to the types of paper she make to match people's stories very interesting in its self.

This story contains many helpful sayings for those who have experiences a loss regardless of age or gender. I often wonder if she actually wrote it for a particular someone. Moreover, looking closer you can see the reflections of a Joseph Campbell coming of age story. Alice Hoffman would have to have read Campbell as part of any good creative writing class.


The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series)

You are what you do when you face loss
"Loss does different things to different people...I have planted a garden, reached out to my neighbors, begun to write down my story."

It's been a year since teenaged witch Green's home was destroyed by the Horde, a group of terrorists who hate any kind of progress and will destroy it if they can. She's working on rebuilding, finding and helping displaced folks, and moving forward. In particular, she seeks Heather (a school friend) and Diamond (a young man who taught her to love again). Along her journey, she meets several witchy women who teach her how to continue her path of growing after loss.

My only complaint is the book's so short! With lines like the following, I could read several hundred pages and be content. "Dreams are like air. They never leave you. It takes less than nothing to begin."

Hoffman understands grace and brevity and she's created a masterpiece in both. While this book is labeled 9-12th grade, I can see "Green Witch" as an excellent read for anyone dealing with loss.

Rebecca Kyle, September 2010

from missprint.wordpress.com
Green used to think her story was written. The day her beloved city was burned to the ground seemed to be the end of things. Her mother, her father, and her beautiful sister were gone. The boy she loves is far away searching for his own family. The past is filled with dangerous memories and the future seems like a distant hope. So Green tries to focus on the present.

As her village tries to rebuild, Green tends her garden and collects the stories of the survivors. When Green sets out to find the Enchanted--women the village calls witches--in the hopes of collecting their stories. And maybe something more. One of the witches can grant any person their heart's desire. With their help Green might be able make her heart whole and rescue a friend she thought was lost in Green Witch (2010) by Alice Hoffman.

Green Witch is the sequel to Green Angel--the story that introduced readers to Green and her world. It is also a story that Hoffman had not planned to write until fans asked to know what happened next to Green and the boy she loved.

Like its predecessor, this book is very short with sparse writing that hearkens back to traditional fairy tales and prose poetry in its meter and style.

While Green Angel focused on moving through tragedy for both the town and Green herself, Green Witch is all about rebuilding and transformation. This is a story where women who survived unspeakable loss can become witches imbued with magic, where gardens can grow from ashes, and where a girl who lost everything she loved can rediscover hope and love. As Green gathers stories and tends her gardens, she too begins to grow as she realizes her own power and finds her place in a world forever changed by one tragic day.

Possible Pairings: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Madapple by Cristina Meldrum, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Hoffman's usual lyricism, best if you've read "Greel Angel"
Sixteen year old Green, who in "Green Angel" lost her family in a violent attack that leveled a nearby city, lives a lonely life with her plants in the village of her birth. She longs for the love of Diamond, the mute stranger she nursed back to health while she was recovering from the tragedy herself.

When Finder, who used to be thirteen year Troy Jones, brother to another of Green's foundlings (Heather who vanished mysteriously) asks Green to find his sister by talking to the Enchanted (those the villagers fear might be magical or monstrous,) Green and Finder set off to find Heather...and maybe Diamond.

They encounter a number of "witches" who have suffered losses like everyone else and each give Green a gift as well a little wisdom.

There's a slam-bang finish which isn't hinted at through the rest of the slow, lyrical story & I don't want to ruin it further. Hoffman mixes her usual magical realism with fantasy (which is a mix that boarders on redundant) and there is some repetition in the narration that galls...but this really is a beautiful book and a fitting sequel to "Green Angel." There are echoes of the tale of Baba Yaga (only this time the "witches" are good) and a lot of contemplation of love and loss.

Perfect for literary-leaning teens and people who read like them. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (23)

I adore it!
I am in love with this book. The first time I read it I was about 12 years old, which is much too young. But I read it again once I was old enough to really understand it and it's definitely one of my favorites. I've read it so many times because it just leaves you wanting more. I just have this need to understand the characters on a deeper level. They're all developed so well. The narrator especially is so real that I actually find myself worrying about what happens to her when the story ends even though I know she's a fictional character. It's definitely one of my absolute favorite books and kind of reminds me of a female Catcher in the Rye. I love it!

devotion/love of a gang member

If I had known that this was going to be a story about the love of a gang member, I know I wouldn't have chosen it, and consequently I would have missed a very good book.

Unable to tear myself away
Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (5/09)

"Property Of" was first published in the year 1977 and was Alice Hoffman's first novel.This 2009 edition contains a new introduction written by the author that explains to us just how the book "Property Of" came to be.The book itself tells the story of a young girl who, like most of the town, is in love with McKay, the president of the local gang, The Orphans.She finds a way into his life, but resists becoming "Property of the Orphans," a group of girls who belong to the gang members.

Although the book deals with some dark subject matter such as gang life, promiscuity, heroin and other drug use, and death, I did find the writing to be very intriguing and engaging.Once I started reading I was unable to tear myself away from the characters.I had concerns in the beginning that the writing would be dated and that I wouldn't be able to relate to the characters and plot, but I found the book easy to read and actually enjoyed the parts that were a little dated.

This is the first book that I have read written by this particular author.I was familiar with the author's name, particularly because one of her novels was named an Oprah's Book Club selection, but I had just never gotten around to reading one of her books.What a better way though than to start right at the beginning with her first!I highly enjoyed "Property Of" and I definitely will be seeking out more of Hoffman's books to read in the future.

Property Of
I enjoyed this book a lot.It gives an insight into the relationships among gang members.I continue to love Alice Hoffman's use of imagery, plot and character deveopment.I'm continuing to read my way through the remainder of her titles.

I like this book
THis is the first of her books that i read and i haven't read any other yet but i liked this book. it told the real story of gangs and stuff. i wouldn't expect this author to know much about this topic but she did a really fine job. i give it two thumbs up. ... Read more