Practical Magic
by Alice Hoffman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alice HoffmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-08-05
ISBN: 0425190374
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Book Reviews of Practical Magic
Book Review: Fairy Tale for Adult Children
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are looking for a fantasy that will keep you engrossed, you will find it here. Practical Magic is a fairy tale for adults. Like all of Ms. Hoffman's books, it is a sheer reading delight.
The characters in the book are endearing. The elderly aunts in the story are like eccentric good witches of the north. The story is absolutely engaging. This is as good a book as any of Ms. Hoffman's with which to begin.
Ms. Hoffman has a gift for exploring human relationships in such a way that is uplifting to the soul. From that standpoint, this book is a deeply spiritual one. As the author of a series of books with a spiritual theme, I especially appreciated that. You will love this book if you have a sentimental bone in your body.
Davis Aujourd'hui, author of "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude"
Summary of Practical Magic
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...For most adults, fairy tales are among the childish things we've put away. Alice Hoffman, however, feels differently. Practical Magic starts out as a tale of Gillian and Sally Owens, two orphaned girls whose aunts are witches--of a mild sort. For the past two centuries, Owens women have been blamed for all that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town, ever since their ancestor arrived, rich, independent, and soon accused of theft: "And then one day, a farmer winged a crow in his cornfield, a creature who'd been stealing from him shamelessly for months. When Maria Owens appeared the very next morning with her arm in a sling and her white hand wound 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 to their house at night for magical love cures. To the sisters they are for the most part benevolently absent, though their bell, book, and candle routine makes life a torment for Gillian, beautiful and blonde and 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 become all too clear. In Hoffman's world being bewitched, bothered, and bewildered is no mere metaphor--and neither is desire. The elbows of one enamored man pucker a linoleum counter, another walks around with singed cuffs. It's difficult to catch the author's power in brief quotes. She needs space and increment to build her exquisite variations of vision and reality, her matter-of-fact announcements of the preternatural. Practical Magic again and again makes one recall the thrill of hearing at bedtime, "Now will I a tale unfold..." --Kerry Fried
Hoffman, Alice Books
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