While browsing thru notes I made on books read years and years ago, I came across my remarks about Angel Landing, another Hoffman book, and remembered how impressed I was with her writing style and characters. I decided to see if she had written any more books and had no idea she had written so many others, including one selected by Oprah's reading group. I was not disappointed to be reading her again. Her characters, always quirky and strange, are written in such a lyrical tone that they seem very real and human. In The Drowining Season, Esther the White is the matriarch of a very dysfunctional yet loving family. Hoffman slowly reveals the past deceptions and future dreams of all the family members culminating in life-changing decisions made by all three generations. Your only hope is that all will have found the peace and love so desired. A great read!

After reading Turtle Moon I had a quest for more of Alice Hoffman. The Drowning Season gives a unique perspective of issues that I had never looked at before - namely death and obsession with a quest. Suicide is not an easy topic, but this is an eye opener. Hoffman has a timemachine built into her novels that transports us into these worlds almost through magic. I have never been disappointed with any of her novels, and eagerly look forward to the next adventure into the human spirit that she takes me on. Her characters are human and fallible - like all of us. The stories are lessons learned that touch our lives over and over again. She is so timely with stories on AIDs, abuse, gangs, new age beliefs, abandoned unwanted juveniles, and even crime. Each is almost a modern day parable. I couldn't put this book down, it traveled with me until I finished it.

This particular story has some very intriguing characters. Such as:
Trout and Eel-- the two adopted young men with startling qualities such as webbed fingers. And an affinity for the water, in a town where that love for water is not accepted at all.
Martha-- a young lady struggling with a search for idenity and the loss of her mother. She is filled with longing to be somewhere else.
Various Townspeople-- scarred with a paralyzing fear of the water. Which directly impacts the water loving young men in the story.

The only problem with this story is that it doesn't go to the depth an inquisitive reader would like. I find this especially vexing because the characters are so likeable and you just want to know more!
I do however reccomend this book. It is a fast paced read and is enjoyable if brief. Pick it up and get attached to a quirky bunch of characters, only to find yourself wanting more!

Ashley May Collins
Indigo
Alice Hoffman

Do you like the ocean? Well if you do you will like this story. This story is about a girl named Martha and her two best friends, Trout and Eli. Martha is a nice, respectful girl who is lonely most of the time. When she is with her friends she is very happy. They all want to live in a city by the ocean, not Oak Grove. But their mothers and fathers will not let them because of the floods. After Martha's mother died, she ran away to Ocean City with Trout and Eli. Then Martha broke her arm and had to go home. This is a adventurous, exciting, magical, mysterious and sad book. The best part was when Martha dances under the moon with her mother's shawl. Ages 8-70 would like this book.

If your looking for a book for summer about the lake or ocean, Indigo is the perfect book to read. Indigo I think is a four star book. It's good for ages 6-66. It's not too hard to read. The characters are Martha, Trout(Trevor) and Eel(Eli). Martha is caring, a good friend, willing and nice. Trout is caring, willing, helpful, a good friend and cares for his brother Eel. Eel is quiet, willing and cares for his brother Trout. This story is imaginative, mystical, discriptive, enchanting and sad at times. Oak Grove is a hot, hot dry place and all the people dread the water because of a giant flood, but Martha, Trout and Eel love the water. So one day they set out on a quest to find water. But then Marthas arm breaks so they have to go back. Oak Grove has another huge flood and it fills up the creek. Will they drain up the water or keep it? You'll find out if you read Indigo.

Unlike the me of my childhood and teenage years, I didn't start reading Practical Magic (by Alice Hoffman) because a movie based on it had been released. I haven't even seen the movie, although my husband has, and he says wait until it gets to the dollar theatre.  He's a movie connoisseur, and I have to admit that movie wasn't all that appealing anyway.

But, I picked up this book upon the recommendation of one of my friends who insisted I read it. I can't remember why or when, but the impression was strong enough that I purchased a nice trade paperback copy and put it on my massive To Read pile by the bed.

So here I am, reading this book, and I have mixed feelings about it. The story is good -so good that I have a hard time putting it down at night when it's time to go to sleep. The characters are compelling: two sets of sisters, a total four women in the Owens family. Sally, ever practical, and her younger sister, Gillian, the wild-child, are paralleled in some respect to Sally's teenage daughters, Antonia, lovely, yet moody, and Kylie, a blossoming, occasionally gawky, thirteen-year old. Hoffman's style is lovely and poetic. Listen how she describes the evening:

It rained all night, and now the sticky air is moving in thick mauve-colored waves.  The birds aren't singing this morning, it's too dark for that.  But the humidity has brought the toads away from the creek behind the high school, and theyhave a sort of song, a deep humming that risees up through the sleepy neighborhood.  The toads are crazy about Snickers, which teenagers sometimes throw to them at lunch hour.   It's candy they're looking for as they wind along the neighborhood, hopping across the squishy lawns and through pools of rainwater that have collected in the gutters....

How exquisite! I thought to myself.  And the rest of her words are equally graceful and appealing, full of lush imagery, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches.  A veritable feast for the senses with an entertaining story full of witchcraft.

Despite my affection for the story and Hoffman's graceful prose, I do have two major problems with the text itself: constant shifting in point of view and constant shifting in tense.

See, I was taught that when you write, you stick to one person's perspective per scene to maintain a consistent flow, and Hoffman doesn't do that. She bounces around from character to character, sometimes in mid-stream, sometimes abruptly shifting back to the original person or else shifting again to another voice. On the one hand, I can see how an author would want to include everyone's perspective in a particular scene, but it's simply too distracting for the reader, especially one who is accustomed to writing as well.

My second problem with the text focused on the shifting in tense. Hoffman starts out with past tense, as most books these days are written. In the second section, however, she shifts over to present tense. While one could rationalize that the author does this to indicate the past in the first section, as it focuses on the childhood years of Sally and Gillian, and to indicate the present in the later sections as they focus on the now, it still doesn't justify shifting, rather abruptly, I might add, from present back into past for several paragraphs. I had to stop reading for a moment, gather my senses, and go back to reread the previous section just to make sure that it wasn't me.

Still, Practical Magic is a good read, perfect for the beach or beside the bed.

That is an admonishment at the end of this wonderful book by Alice Hoffman. I'll preface my mini-review here with the following statement: Had anyone told me a year ago that I would read --in one day-- a romance about lives and loves of successive generations of women blessed or cursed with witchy powers, I would have laughed at them. A few years back, I tried to watch the movie "Practical Magic" and found myself thoroughly bored by what I considered a talky "chick flick." Since then, I've become a fan of Sandra Bullock and recently saw the film again, and found myself liking it for the most part. I particularly loved the sad, wistful character played by Bullock, that of Sally Owens.

So I checked the book out from the library, not knowing what to expect, and like a man in the story who becomes enchanted by a letter Sally writes that comes into his possession, "Practical Magic" hooked me. Hoffman writes with such easy, beautiful prose and the characters really spring to life and find a place in your heart and imagination.

I won't regurgitate the plot here. But I will say that Hoffman writes so well about perhaps the most exquisite and maybe the rarest kind of love, the type that hits both a man and a woman like a thunderbolt, overpowering and sweeping them both away. Hoffman's descriptions of this happening to Sally and her sister and the two men that they are destined to be with packs a tremendous and very satisfying emotional punch for any romantic, which I guess I am. Oh, how I found myself envying the lucky men who won the hearts of Sally and Gillian! To feel love as strong as that and be loved as fiercely in return must be the best thing in the world.

So read the book and like Sally Owens would say, fall in love whenever you can.

This is, without a doubt, one of my most favorite books in my collection, and some day I hope to have it in hardcover.

If you've seen the movie, forget it, go grab yourself a copy of this book, and sit down and read one of the most stirring and wonderful tales you are going to read in a contemporary setting.

Sally and Gillian Owens have a gift, a touch of magic that they wield in their lives with different philosophies. For Gillian, the world is a place to meet, enjoy, and move on. For Sally, the notion of a "regular" life is the prize, to be married, to have children, and to be a regular woman. Neither of them get what they're expecting, and the result is, well, magic.

The evocative prose of this book left me breathless: Hoffman has a way to work with present and past tense narrative that will work wonders on most readers. Her past tense writing gives you a sense of a fairy tale unfolding, and her present tense writing sucks you in with its sharp immediacy. Most of all, her generational writing, dealing with the Aunts, to the Sisters, to the daughters of Sally, is a wonderful perspective and a truly moving piece of narrative.

The blend of folklore with life, and the sharp clarity of Hoffman's eye toward the emotional made this one of my favorites, and I have given copies of this book to many people in my time. I recently mailed a copy to the Netherlands, for a friend there who couldn't find the book.

This book will move you, and make you believe.

I would like to preface my comments by explaining that the three stars are only because I hold Ms. Hoffman to such high standards, but I did find this book truly wonderful. Local girls is a collection of stories that travel through Gretel Samuelson's adolescence involving her beautiful, best friend, Jill, her self-destructive yet intelligent brother, Jason, her vibrant aunt, Margot, and her cancer-ridden, abandoned mother, Frances. What I love about Hoffman is that she doesn't feel the need to glorify her characters, instead she allows their imperfections to crawl through us and realize the beauty that exists anyway. Her language is breathtaking as usual, and she continues to incorporate the wonders and hardships of desire that we experience every day. The stories are either told to us by Gretel, or narrated by Hoffman. It is a lovely book and yet there is not enough of it. I would have preffered a novel rather than a collection. I needed more substance to illustrate the development that took place between stories, because there appeared to be significant chunks of the characters that I never got to see. I was very unsatisfied with Jason's character in particular. The book reflected the strength of women, but Jason was a significant part of the story line, and so much was left unsaid. I do recommend this book though, as well as other Hoffmans' namely: Practical Magic (don't see the movie), Here On Earth, Second Nature, and Seventh Heaven. She is a magical, sexy, illuminating writer.

I had been meaning to try an Alice Hoffman book for a long time. I'd heard so many great things about her writing, and the premises of her novels sound like my cup of tea. I don't think I made the right choice to sample her work with LOCAL GIRLS. Had I known this was really a book of short stories, I definitely would have passed it by. I'm not a fan of the short story format. I missed the flow of a novel and the richness of detail that is just not there in a short story. It was obvious that these stories were meant to stand on their own. Each new "chapter" re-explained details of earlier chapters as though I hadn't just read them. I found this quite annoying.

My poor choice, however, has not dissuaded me from trying another of Hoffman's works. All that I had heard about her writing is true. Her style is warm and her characterization gorgeous. Even though these were short stories, I could still empathize with Gretel and her family. I would have enjoyed a true novel about these people much more, though.

Alice Hoffman truly is a great author. She made me feel as if I was there. Gretel, the smart one is the main character in this story was an inspiration to the way she looks at life. She doesn't take things for granted and she sees everything as an oppurtunity. Gretel's best friend Jill is the beautiful one. Jill and Gretel really need each other to in life, they really look up to each other in different ways. Frances, Gretel's mother is diagnosed with cancer after her and husband had got a divorce. Jason, Gretel's brother ends up ruining his life by getting deep into drugs. Everyone in Long Island is basically looking for love. They all find it in the weirdest ways. This book leaves you hanging and wanting to know more.

I picked up this book on a summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard and was both charmed and entertained by it. The tradition of Illumination Night and the summer gatherings of Methodist families on the island make a kind of magical, firefly-lit ambiance for this tale of people, young and old, whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.

The most fascinating character for me was the agoraphobic young wife, trapped in her house by fears she can barely articulate. Hoffman's treatment of this characters is so realistic and convincing that after reading the novel I felt for the first time that I not only understood this condition; I had lived it.

While the gentle-giant young man is a bit of a surprise for someone reading Hoffman for the first time, she also makes this character perfectly plausible and sympathetic. You can accept the young girl's falling in love with him because we come to care about him ourselves, while realizing that she has the power to break his heart.

As a writer, Hoffman leaves you with the impression that she feels deeply for her characters, regardless of their weaknesses and shortcomings. And putting down this novel, you can feel in yourself a tender-heartedness for others that most books either don't try to evoke, or try and fail.

This is one of Alice Hoffman's earlier books. It's filled with the magic realism for which she is known. The characters are all well drawn, especially Vonny and Mrs. Renny. I couldn't understand the husband's actions, however, and just did not feel much sympathy for him. Anyway, I love anything written by Alice Hoffman and always find her characterizations so natural. The people and their actions usually ring pretty true. Ms. Hoffman paints beautifully with words, and this is a perfect book for summer.

Kathleen

I loved this book. Alice Hoffman has a wonderful talent, especially for a writer who can keep this type of POV throughout the entire novel without flaw. The characters were flexible and the little touches of "magic" here and there make it a very cozy, interesting book. Haunting, however? I don't think so...

This was the first Hoffman I've read via audiobook, and I must say, it had a different feel to it than reading her work with my eyes.

The story is also quite different from most of her tales, though I've noticed there's a murder or death in nearly all of her books now. Basically, in this tale, a 3 year old boy survived a plane crash, and lived in the wild for very many years. He is found when some hunters accidentally 'trap' him with one of those cruel and terrible beartraps, and taken to mental institution, where he is slated to be locked away.

The sister of one of the psychiatrists goes to visit him for advice, and sees this 'wolfman' and - on random impulse and affected by something the wolfman says - takes him home.

This is the spark to the story - what sets everything else in motion, a trick that Hoffman has down pat. From there, everyone in the book has their lives ricochet off from this one event, and as always, Hoffman delivers wonderful metaphors, allegories and pathetic fallacy to an almost magical level. It's a beautiful piece of prose to read (or listen to).

Though I didn't quite find it as wonderful as 'Local Girls,' 'Practical Magic,' 'The Blue Diary,' or 'The River King.' Perhaps I'm overloading on Hoffman, or - more likely, as I adore her writing - it is the 'abridgement' that took some of the shine from her words. I may have to find the physical book and read it as well.

'Nathan

Reading over some of the other customer reviews, I notice that many people criticized this book for being too unrealistic. I think those people are missing the point. This is a modern fairy-tale, and fairy-tales are meant to be lessons about what it means to be human, and how we are supposed to live our lives. Using the "Wolfman", Stephen, as a metaphor, Hoffman manages to show how our modern world can cause us to forget our connection to the rest of nature. Using the events in the story, she shows how fragile and precious love is, and how grief and tragedy can cloud our vision and cause us to place blame on innocent people.

This is the third novel by Hoffman I have read, and it is by far the most poignant and most philosophical. Hoffman is a magnificent writer, one whom I strive to emulate. If you are looking for a touch of magic, a story which might illuminate for you what it means to be human in the last part of the twentieth century, Hoffman is the author you should read. And this book would be a great place to start!

I've read several of Ms. Hoffman's books and enjoyed them all. Second Nature, however, stole my heart. I loved it.

Then I read the reviews and comments from some of the other readers and had to sit back and wonder why it moved me so much while other readers clearly found it unbelievable. I'm a published author myself, and as such, a very critical reader. So, yes, there were plot holes, things that couldn't possibly have happened. But Ms. Hoffman's weaves a spell of magic with her writing that forced me to suspend disbelief. Her books take me back to when I read for the pure pleasure of the story rather than how she plotted a scene or developed a character. Her writing is simple and beautiful, and I couldn't have cared less whether Robin could have actually walked out of that hospital with Stephen. Or whether a she-wolf would in reality take in a human child and raise her as her own. I wanted to believe, and for the space of this very special book, I did. To me, that's pure magic.

There was no real strong connecting bonds between the characters. Far too many characters were continuously introduced and consquently it was difficult to feel that you got to know any of them in depth. There was no real theme that you could get a hold of and the ending followed suit as I found it rather meaningless. Also she didn't really have a good handle on what the late 50's were really like. Heck I was a teenage babysitter in the late 60's and all I got was 25 cents an hour....I was absolutely amazed that Nora's teenage babysitter got paid 4x that amount!! This was the first Alice Hoffman book I have read and it was a let down.

Seventh Heaven is the sixth book I have read by writer, Alice Hoffman. I obviously think she is an interesting storyteller, as well as an excellent writer of words, or else I wouldn't keep reading her novels. Some I like better than others, though I haven't come across a horrible book yet (though Here On Earth is still my least favorite thus far).

I noticed one main thing that all of her books have in common, and that's the feeling of wistfulness and despair in her books. Like many of her other works, Seventh Heaven centers around a town -- a community. Nora Silk, who is one of her main characters, but certainly not the only one, moves into this town as the only divorced woman on the block. This book takes place in 1959 where people just stayed married, regardless of whether or not the two people involved are happy in the relationship. Not only is Nora divorced, but she's raising two boys: Billy, an elementary-school aged child, and James, a baby. Billy has problems in school fitting in, and becomes withdrawn to the point where he tries to make himself invisible. Nora is a woman whom the other mothers steer clear from at first. She's a woman who doesn't appear to raise her children in a conventional way. She's also a woman who will take romance regardless of the form when she starts having an affair with a seventeen-year-old neighbor, Ace McCarthy.

This story isn't just about Nora being dejected, as well as her kids, by a whole neighborhood, and then later accepted. No, it's also about the neighbors: The McCarthy boys, Ace and Jackie, who can't seem to stay out of trouble. It's about the cop, Joe Hennessy, who lives across the street from Nora with his wife, Ellen, and boy, Stevie, who likes to torture Nora's son, Billy, in school. It's about the Shapiros, Danny and Rickie, and their parents. Danny, a kid who seems smart enough to get into any college he wants, slowly drifts, and his sister, Rickie, who seems to be confused about her own growing pains and morals. It's also about Donna Durgin, who walks out on her young children and husband because her life feels too empty. One cannot forget that this is also a story about Cathy Corrigan, who gets killed in a car accident and seems to haunt some of her peers from the grave. Like many of Alice Hoffman's books, Seventh Heaven leaves you with a weird, unconnected feeling after you're finished with the book. You may feel that way because that is how her characters are portrayed, as if nothing in the end was ever resolved. This book, much like Turtle Moon, and even Fortune's Daughter, leaves you with that very feeling.

Seventh Heaven is a very full read, with a very involved storyline, and very humble and real characters. It shows how very unique Alice Hoffman is as a writer.

I just finished re-reading this delightful book of Alice Hoffman's. I have had a hard time finding new fiction which interests me lately, so I went back to some old favorites.

This story takes place in the late 50s in a community on Long Island, a former potato field where all the houses look so much alike that sometimes women wander around for hours trying to find their houses. Into this cookie-cutter community of stay-at-home mothers with perfect homes arrives Nora Silk, divorced from her magician husband, with two small boys. The house she moves into is reputed to be haunted and is slowly disintegrating.

Nora is not welcomed by the other mothers, as they have never known anyone who is divorced and they are suspicious of her (and afraid of what their husbands will do). One look at Nora in her stretch pants and spike heels and you know what the husbands thought! Her son Billy is shunned at school--it does not help that he can read others' thoughts. All Nora wants is to be accepted, grow flowers, and have some friends.

But to her credit, she never succumbs to artifice in this quest. Instead of acceptance, Nora is labelled as a witch and Billy fails every subject except penmanship. As for the rest of her life, she "crossed her fingers and waited, she thought good thoughts and experimented with casseroles that contained olive loaf and hoped that would be enough."

There is some of Hoffman's magical realiam woven into the story, but so adroitly that the reader hardly realizes it and must go back and re-read the passage. Hoffman's character descriptions are subtle and spare, but draw a complete picture of this neighborhood.

Another great book by this author!

I should probably reflect on this more as I just finshed this novel.. however, I have to say that I really enjoyed it. For those of you have never read Alice Hoffman, she writes tales of the heart in an enchanted setting. The actual setting tends to be Massachusetts, however, it could be anywhere the reader finds magical for whatever reason. 'The River King' revolves around the inhabitants of a Haddan, a small Massachusetts town north of Boston. Haddan is home to an exclusive prep school ala Andover or Philips Exeter and tension between the townies and the rich students is a historically overt truth. The novel begins introducing the characters and their relationships. When a student is found dead in the local river, the characters search their hearts to make sense of the death with respect to their own lives while a local detective stirs up old secrets while investigating the case. Hoffman writes with lyrical prose that is a sheer joy to read. She relates basic human truths about love and loss while never losing the pace of the story. I heartily recommend this novel.

The Hadden School, an elite private school on the banks of the Hadden River, has had a very checkered past since it was built in 1858. No child from the town has ever been admitted and the Hadden students and townies never mix. When a student, August Pierce is found dead, floating in the Hadden River, both worlds come crashing together as Abel Grey, town policeman becomes determined, despite the wishes of both the school and the town to close the case quickly, to find out what actually happened. His investigation into possible foul play begins to unravel the secret lives of both the students and town residents. Alice Hoffman spends almost the first half of this book setting the suspenseful and compelling atmosphere, and because her writing is so detailed and at times overly descriptive, it bogs the plot down at times. That said, her writing is eloquent and her scenes so vivid you begin to smell the river and feel the damp, cold air of Massachusetts. This is a story of love, loss, betrayal and finally hope as the characters, so beautifully drawn, begin to come apart, piece by piece, as the truth comes to the surface. The River King is a powerful story told with great insight and wisdom that leaves the reader both sad and hopeful at the end of the book.

The other reviews of this novel do not give "The River King" justice. It is truly an excellent piece of work. Hoffman's descriptive writing, as usual, is wonderfully melodic, and the characters in this book are some of the most endearing I have encountered. Gus, one of the main characters, is the type of person you just want to hold and protect, and Carlin is equally captivating, though infuriatingly human. Betsy and Abe, the two adults with a romance, are just as captivating. I highly reccommend this book. I have read quite a few of Hoffman's works, and I would say this (along with Practical Magic) is one of her best.
I just finished reading it 2 days ago, and no matter how hard I try I can't stop thinking about it. The characters are so wonderful that I just can't leave them behind me. Be forwarned, it's a terribly sad book, but it is definitely worth the read! In fact, I hope everyone reads it! I think it's a fantastic book, despite what the other reviewers say.Another reviewer has said that it does not leave you feeling like a piece of yourself has been released-this is true. But I think that the reason you don't feel like you have released a piece of yourself is because it becomes such a part of you that you cannot let it go. It's that good.

"Blue Diary" is Alice Hoffman's fourteenth novel, so one would think she would know better than to create such cliched and cardboard-cutout characters as the ones that people this story. I love Hoffman's lyrical, and sometimes hyperbolic prose however, so I decided to give "Blue Diary" a chance.

The plot of this book is not bad, but it's nothing to email your friends about, either. After thirteen years of marriage, and the birth of a son, an unsuspecting, but perfect wife, Jorie Ford, is shocked when her perfect husband, Ethan is arrested for the long-ago rape and murder of a teenaged girl. Even more shocking to Jorie is the fact that "Ethan" is not really "Ethan." He is Byron Bell, a sociopathic murderer.

Although I found the plot of "Blue Diary" rather trite, it was the characters that really made me dislike the book. Jorie is simply "too perfect." She is the perfect homemaker, the perfect mother, the perfect gardener. And even all this sweet perfection and outward domestic bliss would have been acceptable if Hoffman had not made Jorie so maddeningly clueless.

Come on! How many wives would be so naive as to not even wonder when their longtime husband had never once revealed even a hint of his life before marriage? Husbands who didn't reveal where they were born, who their families and friends were, where they went to school, etc.? I can tell you one wife who wouldn't bat a perfectly mascared eyelash at all this secrecy...Jorie Ford. It was maddening. I wanted to slap the woman to wake her up from her dreamworld. I have a feeling a slap wouldn't have helped, though. Jorie Ford is a woman who sees the world and everyone in it in terms of black and white. There are the "good guys" and there are the "bad guys." And clearly, she and Ethan have been the "very good guys."

Even more irritating is that fact that Hoffman attempts to couch her treacle in "small-town" warmth and fuzziness. Her omnisicent narrator moves here and there in a haze of clueless wonder that is second only to Jorie's. There is suspense in this storyline, make no mistake about that, the plot is not the problem here, it is the characters, Jorie, in particular.

If Hoffman had written a book in which a character such as Jorie wanted to explore her need for domestic perfection, then this might have actually worked. But even after (finally) realizing she's married a murderer and a liar, Jorie Ford, aka Jorie Bell, feels no such need. She simply accepts the fact that she's perfect and a bad man did a bad thing...to her. She's the wronged victim who takes absolutely no personal responsibility for her lack of perception. It wasn't her fault her husband was so bad, she thinks. It wasn't her fault he was so good at hiding his past from her. Sure. We hear you, Jorie.

The final blow comes when Hoffman, steeped in sentimentality, gives the dead teenager a birthmark at the base of her spine in the shape of a butterfly. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been shaped like a heart.

Alice Hoffman usually writes more fanciful books and I think she's at her best in that realm. Her prose, even in this dreadful book, is lyrical and poetic and wonderful to read. Pretty prose, however, needs a little something more to back it up. If not a plot, then an original literary device, if not an original literary device, then a fascinating character, etc. Sadly, "Blue Diary" doesn't have any of these things. It's just treacle.

Ethan is the pillar of the community--a great husband and father, an honest carpenter, a baseball coach who never yells at 11-year-olds who err on the field, and a volunteer fireman who is known for taking death-defying risks to save lives. So it comes as a great shock to everyone who knows him when he is arrested on suspicion of an old unsolved murder. Well--a shock to everyone but Kat, the 12-year-old neighbor who provided the anonymous tip that got him arrested. So begins Alice Hoffman's Blue Diary, which explores how catastrophically this single event haunts Ethan's family, friends, and neighbors.

Blue Diary is a book that would be a 5-star read against 95 percent of what's on the bookshelf. Hoffman's stiffest competition, however, is her own work and Blue Diary doesn't come up to the standard of Practical Magic, Turtle Moon or the River King. Hoffman's prose is always clear and her stories always interesting, but the lush poetic imagery of earlier novels is missing in this one. Jorie (Ethan's wife) and Kat (the neighbor kid) are well-drawn characters, but a bit transparent compared to the masterfully painted characters of Hoffman's other books.

Nonetheless, Blue Diary makes for an interesting read which poses the thought-provoking question: how well do you really know anyone? and the paranoia-provoking corollary: how can you be so sure?

I have been, and always will be an Alice Hoffman fan, from the moment I read "Practical Magic," and then moved on to "Local Girls," and just kept going.

I adored this. One day a truly respected man, Ethan Ford, does not go to work. He is arrested for a fifteen year old murder, and this is the tale of what happens thereafter. It's Hoffman's wonderfully rich descriptive thematic analogies that snare you - when Hoffman describes lillies, they're not lillies, they're pathetic fallacy in motion. The characters were beautiful, with the incredibly interwoven lives that she is known for creating in most of her works. And the use of present tense in her prose always grinds me to a sense of immediacy.

The rare first-person perspective from one character sometimes made me stumble (she was light years ahead of the maturity I've encountered in most adults), but the raw emotions of all the people involved was enough to pick me back up again. The only thing I did hiccough on was Ethan Ford himself - at the start one gets the impression that there will be a bit more to his particular story, but he doesn't really develop much - this is a tale about those he has affected, and how they ricochet off each other once his secret is out. I suppose I was lulled that his acts and past were going to be a moral conundrum, but I found I never gained even a bit of respect for him, nor any empathy for his plight. I merely wanted him to suffer.

Turns out I'm not so forgiving a person after all - but I don't think that detracted from the story in and of itself, which is so very much more about the rest of the characters than Ethan himself.

'Nathan

This is the first Alice Hoffman book I've read. I like the way it was written...I hate the way it ended. I thought the main character had no back bone and should have broke off the relationship And listen to her daughter. If you still want to read the book to find out for youself get it at the Library.

In "Here on Earth," March Murray and her teenage daughter Gwen return to a small town outside of Boston where March grew up. They plan to stay for a few weeks to help clear out the belongings of an old friend who recently died, but they end up staying once March reunites with her childhood "soulmate" Hollis, and Gwen falls in love with a boy from town. They stay at great cost, not only because it means separating from March's husband and Gwen's father, but also falling into the dangerous world of Hollis, who has become an angry, isolated, controlling man. Everyone else in the town knows this, but March can't see it because of the power of their earlier relationship. The book shows how March & Hollis' relationship unfolds as March goes deeper and deeper into denial. In the background are March's old friends who try to support her, and who are coping with the choices they made along the way.

I think one of Hoffman's goals with this book is to show how some people can get drawn into abusive relationships without realizing what is happening. She also makes some comments about the compromises people make to keep the things that matter to them. She made her points, but I didn't find the story or the characters especially compelling. Although the narrator's point of view switches amont different characters, I thought that only March's motivations were fully explored; Hoffman switches to other characters mainly to move the plot along and to justify the turns in the story. Hoffman has an informal writing style that is clear and easy to understand, if not especially graceful or polished. In all, I didn't regret reading this book, but it wasn't one I savored or that stayed with me after I put it down each day.

Alice Hoffman has the ability to enchant and totally enthrall her readers with her brilliant use of the language. "Practical Magic" is one of my favorite books. In "Here on Earth," however, Hoffman misses the mark. Her story of obsessive love immediately brings to mind the classic "Wuthering Heights." Someone should have told Hoffman that once was enough. The tragedy of Cathy and Heathcliff worked for Victorian readers, but I have my doubts about how it will play today.

I had several problems with the story. 1. March Murray is not a stupid woman. She's bright, talented and has lived a full life. She's not your typical moon-faced teenager waiting for her love to return. Yet, the moment she sees Hollis for the first time, she loses any modicum of sanity and drifts aimlessly into netherland. 2. March's daughter, Gwen, isn't dumb, either, but she cannot resist a relationship with her 1st cousin. This relationship never rang true for me. It's hard to believe that someone as street smart as Gwen could turn to mush over a teen-age boy, even if he is the only really believable character in the book. 3. March's husband, Richard, would have come after her once he realized she was being isolated from the world by Hollis. He adored her and would have never let the situation drag on, especially since his daughter was also living in Hollis' house. 4. March's best friend, Susanna Justice, is not the type of woman that would let March waste away in the clutches of an evil man like Hollis. Susanna, if you believe Hoffman's description, is a force to behold. She would never sit still for March's destruction.

I love Hoffman's description of the bleak New England fall and winter. I was cold in the middle of a Texas heat wave just reading about the grey skies and the white snow. I'm just a little disappointed that all this beautiful prose is wasted on such a useless plot.

The Cathy/Heathcliff story worked in "Wuthering Heights". It doesn't seem to work here in the 1990's.