Practical Magic
Alice Hoffman, 1995
Penguin Group USA
286 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425190371
Summary
Practical Magic is a tale of two sisters, Gillian and Sally Owens, brought up by their two elderly guardian aunts in a world of spells and exotica from which they eventually escape—one by running away, the other by marrying—but which never escapes from them.
Many years go by before strange circumstances thrust them together again, and again they are in a world that blends the mundane and the mysterious, the familiar and the fantastic, the normal and the numinous.
Three generations of Owens women are then united in an experience of unexpected insight and revelation, teaching all of them that the perceptions provided by what is called the magical are rare and wonderful endowments. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1952
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Adelphi Univ.; M.A., Stanford Univ.
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Born in the 1950s to college-educated parents who divorced when she was young, Alice Hoffman was raised by her single, working mother in a blue-collar Long Island neighborhood. Although she felt like an outsider growing up, she discovered that these feelings of not quite belonging positioned her uniquely to observe people from a distance. Later, she would hone this viewpoint in stories that captured the full intensity of the human experience.
After high school, Hoffman went to work for the Doubleday factory in Garden City. But the eight-hour, supervised workday was not for her, and she quit before lunch on her first day! She enrolled in night school at Adelphi University, graduating in 1971 with a degree in English. She went on to attend Stanford University's Creative Writing Center on a Mirrellees Fellowship. Her mentor at Stanford, the great teacher and novelist Albert Guerard, helped to get her first story published in the literary magazine Fiction. The story attracted the attention of legendary editor Ted Solotaroff, who asked if she had written any longer fiction. She hadn't — but immediately set to work. In 1977, when Hoffman was 25, her first novel, Property Of, was published to great fanfare.
Since that remarkable debut, Hoffman has carved herself a unique niche in American fiction. A favorite with teens as well as adults, she renders life's deepest mysteries immediately understandable in stories suffused with magic realism and a dreamy, fairy-tale sensibility. (In a 1994 article for the New York Times, interviewer Ruth Reichl described the magic in Hoffman's books as a casual, regular occurrence — "...so offhand that even the most skeptical reader can accept it.") Her characters' lives are transformed by uncontrollable forces — love and loss, sorrow and bliss, danger and death.
Hoffman's 1997 novel Here on Earth was selected as an Oprah Book Club pick, but even without Winfrey's powerful endorsement, her books have become huge bestsellers — including three that have been adapted for the movies: Practical Magic (1995), The River King (2000), and her YA fable Aquamarine (2001).
Hoffman is a breast cancer survivor; and like many people who consider themselves blessed with luck, she believes strongly in giving back. For this reason, she donated her advance from her 1999 short story collection Local Girls to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA
Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:
• Hoffman has written a number of children's books, including Fireflies: A Winter's Tale (1999), Horsefly (2000), and Moondog (2004).
• Aquamarine was written for Hoffman's best friend, Jo Ann, who dreamed of the freedom of mermaids as she battled brain cancer.
• Here on Earth is a modern version of Hoffman's favorite novel, Wuthering Heights.
• Hoffman has been honored with the Massachusetts Book Award for her teen novel Incantation.
• When asked what books most influenced her life or career, here's what she said:
Edward Eager's brilliant series of suburban magic: Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, Magic or Not, Knight's Castle, The Time Garden, Seven-Day Magic, The Well Wishers. Anything by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, J. D. Salinger, Grace Paley. My favorite book: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Hoffman's trademark narrative voice is upbeat, breathless and rather bouncy. She creates vivid characters, she keeps things moving along, and she's not above using sleight of hand and prestidigitation to achieve her considerable effects. She plays tricks with the reader's expectations by suddenly shifting tenses or passing the point of view around the room like a football. At one brief but memorable juncture, we see things through the eyes of a magician's rabbit.
Mark Childress - New York Times Book Review
Magic, fantasy, and full-tilt love-at-first-sight have figured in all of Hoffman's sexy, funny, and endearing novels, but they blossom as they never have before in her latest effort, a tale about four generations of Massachusetts sisters.... Hoffman has created a cosmic romance leavened with just the right touch of pragmatism and humor.
Booklist
Her 11th novel is Hoffman's best since Illumination Night. Again a scrim of magic lies gently over her fictional world.... [T]here's plenty of steamy detail and a pervasive use of the f-word. The dialogue is always on target, particularly the squabbling between siblings, and, as usual, weather plays a portentous role. Readers will relish this magical tale.
Publishers Weekly
The book is reminiscent in places of Gwendolyn Brooks's tiny jewel of a poem, "Sadie and Maud," and even more of Sue Miller's poignant novel, For Love (1993). But even as Hoffman agrees with Brooks and Miller that "grief is everywhere," she administers that sweet antidote, a happy ending. Her women are possessed by love, and transformed.—Marya Fitzgerald, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Practical Magic:
1. You might talk about the way Hoffman brings together the ordinary and extraordinary: magic takes place in common, everyday settings—in most of her books, the suburbs. Is she suggesting that mystery and enchantment can be found everywhere?
2. Could you sympathsize with young Sally and Gillian's wish to escape their aunts' strange household and to live a life of normalcy?
3. In Practical Magic characters can never be done with the past, it always catches up. Is free-will in Hoffman's world subservient to destiny?
4. How does Hoffman dissolve the boundaries between the inner and outer realms in this novel? Is she suggesting that human passions, when unleashed, can become monstrous threats?
5. Practical Magic is often funny. Where and how does Hoffman achieve her humor? In other words, talk about the parts that made you laugh.
6. Have you read other novels by Alice Hoffman? If so, how does this one compare? If not, does Practical Magic inspire you to read her other works?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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