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A review by danikass
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
3.0
--Review features spoilers for the middle of the book, but not the end--
I picked up Practical Magic hoping for Salem vibes, for magic and spells and witches. If you’ve read this book, you know I wasn’t even remotely right, instead entering a world of family, love and domesticity, with a touch of magic.
But that’s my own fault for not actually researching the book before reading. It’s also nothing like the movie, which I haven’t seen in like a decade anyway.
Hoffman’s novel is about three generations of the Owens family: two orphaned girls raised by their aunts, and then one of their daughters — all of whom men find irresistible.
The family has been in Massachusetts for some 200 years, where the townspeople blame them for anything that goes wrong and children cross the street when passing their house. The aunts make a living by helping local women manipulate men into loving them using witchcraft.
This is the world where responsible Sally and wild Gillan grow up, surrounded by peers who fear them as kids and recklessly love them (er, ok, Gillian) as teenagers.
While a widowed Sally goes on to raise her two daughters on Long Island in as normal circumstances as she can, Gillian moves West and bounces from man to man and job to job — until one days she shows up at Sally’s house with her dead abusive boyfriend in the car and they bury him in the backyard.
What follows is a story of sisters and aunts growing together and apart, learning to love themselves, each other and the right men.
Hoffman’s writing is the epitome of telling instead of showing. The majority of the novel is pure, passive narration that makes the story feel really distant and the characters more like puppets than people. Characters will have massive personality changes out of nowhere — introduced just by Hoffman telling you so — and you just have to trust her. It didn’t feel like natural character development.
It also felt like she was making the story up as she went along. At one point the family is planning a trip to Massachusetts for the next day like everything is normal. Then suddenly, Hoffman said they’ve known this entire time that there’s a dangerous, all-encompassing hurricane coming that night. It was like Hoffman decided she wanted dramatic rain in this one scene, but was too lazy to go back and work it in where it belonged.
The final third of the novel saves the story. It’s active, like Hoffman got lost in it herself and forgot that she was just passively narrating it beforehand. This finally made it compelling and difficult to put down. It felt powerful, the way a novel about witches should.
So give it a shot if you’re in the mood for a quick read on witchcraft in the form of love, family and domesticity. Skip it if you want to read about Halloween and mysticism.
On a related note, I’m now really excited to read about the aunts in Hoffman’s new prequel, The Rules of Magic.
I picked up Practical Magic hoping for Salem vibes, for magic and spells and witches. If you’ve read this book, you know I wasn’t even remotely right, instead entering a world of family, love and domesticity, with a touch of magic.
But that’s my own fault for not actually researching the book before reading. It’s also nothing like the movie, which I haven’t seen in like a decade anyway.
Hoffman’s novel is about three generations of the Owens family: two orphaned girls raised by their aunts, and then one of their daughters — all of whom men find irresistible.
The family has been in Massachusetts for some 200 years, where the townspeople blame them for anything that goes wrong and children cross the street when passing their house. The aunts make a living by helping local women manipulate men into loving them using witchcraft.
This is the world where responsible Sally and wild Gillan grow up, surrounded by peers who fear them as kids and recklessly love them (er, ok, Gillian) as teenagers.
While a widowed Sally goes on to raise her two daughters on Long Island in as normal circumstances as she can, Gillian moves West and bounces from man to man and job to job — until one days she shows up at Sally’s house with her dead abusive boyfriend in the car and they bury him in the backyard.
What follows is a story of sisters and aunts growing together and apart, learning to love themselves, each other and the right men.
Hoffman’s writing is the epitome of telling instead of showing. The majority of the novel is pure, passive narration that makes the story feel really distant and the characters more like puppets than people. Characters will have massive personality changes out of nowhere — introduced just by Hoffman telling you so — and you just have to trust her. It didn’t feel like natural character development.
It also felt like she was making the story up as she went along. At one point the family is planning a trip to Massachusetts for the next day like everything is normal. Then suddenly, Hoffman said they’ve known this entire time that there’s a dangerous, all-encompassing hurricane coming that night. It was like Hoffman decided she wanted dramatic rain in this one scene, but was too lazy to go back and work it in where it belonged.
The final third of the novel saves the story. It’s active, like Hoffman got lost in it herself and forgot that she was just passively narrating it beforehand. This finally made it compelling and difficult to put down. It felt powerful, the way a novel about witches should.
So give it a shot if you’re in the mood for a quick read on witchcraft in the form of love, family and domesticity. Skip it if you want to read about Halloween and mysticism.
On a related note, I’m now really excited to read about the aunts in Hoffman’s new prequel, The Rules of Magic.