I just finished reading my second Alice Hoffman novel, The Probable Future. This book was a bestseller back in 2003, but since I seldom read straight fiction (I do like mysteries for a year or two, and then stop again), and almost never read bestsellers, I hadn’t encountered her work til a friend handed me one last year (and I’m not sure of the title, though I liked it).
I had enjoyed the movie Practical Magic, because Aidan Quinn, Irish and one of my favorites, was in it – but had no idea who the author was.
She is an excellent writer, full blown people that you went to school with, or see every day at work. They’re a bit quirky, but then so are you and I. I, of course, being psychic, enjoy the psychic references, in this case a different gift for each woman in the Sparrow family.
Alice is also, and I appreciate this, an optimist, and her stories tend to wind around to happy endings. I really am very unwilling to put negative images in my head, and can trust Alice’s characters to have difficulties, but to figure them out.
This one ended just right, with lots of redemption and proper comeuppances. Only the story of Rebecca Sparrow is not directly redeemed. And there is enough love in the book for us to spare some for her.