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A review by sedeara
Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
3.0
At first, there seemed very little that distinguished this book as "literary fiction" rather than "romance." The character treatment was limited, somewhat shallow and stereotypical, and the writing didn't have the sort of glimmer one comes to expect from literary fiction. Although her shifting of viewpoint characters can more adequately be described as "head-flowing" than "head-hopping," it still really annoyed me that she wouldn't just "stay in one place" for an entire scene. (By "head-flowing," I mean that there was often a common thread that supposedly should have "smoothed" the transition from one viewpoint character to another within the same scene, but in actuality it just made me not feel connected to *anyone.*)
I didn't like any of the characters except March's husband, Richard, who is only in about two scenes, and who gets jilted for her childhood love who, as a man, battered his previous wife. I couldn't buy into the relationship/connection between Gwen and the racehorse, Tarot, who, in actuality, would have probably trampled her. This book is essentially a retelling of "Wuthering Heights," but that's not what redeemed it -- what redeemed it was the way it followed that kind of obsessive, possessive love, forged in the inexperience of childhood, out to its logical conclusion, handily dispelling the notion that such a love is "romantic." And for that, anyone whose looking for a romance in these pages is probably the person who most needs to read them.
I didn't like any of the characters except March's husband, Richard, who is only in about two scenes, and who gets jilted for her childhood love who, as a man, battered his previous wife. I couldn't buy into the relationship/connection between Gwen and the racehorse, Tarot, who, in actuality, would have probably trampled her. This book is essentially a retelling of "Wuthering Heights," but that's not what redeemed it -- what redeemed it was the way it followed that kind of obsessive, possessive love, forged in the inexperience of childhood, out to its logical conclusion, handily dispelling the notion that such a love is "romantic." And for that, anyone whose looking for a romance in these pages is probably the person who most needs to read them.