by Alice Hoffman
Simon and Schuster
Alice Hoffman is an amazing author – if you haven’t read her, you should. She is a lovely writer, whose books balance magic and reality and the special mix of the two that is real life.
The Rules of Magic is a prequel to her 1995 book Practical Magic, which was made into a 1998 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. Practical Magic is perhaps Alice Hoffman’s best-known book, but she has written more than 30 others. It’s a testament to her longevity and persistence as an author that she has now written a prequel more than 20 years after the original book.
The books in between are nearly all stunners. I’ve read most of them and loved them all. My favourites are The Red Garden – a sweeping family saga that spans more than 300 years written in 2011 – and Blue Diary – another family story about lies and hidden pasts that was written in 2001. The Dovekeepers, also written in 2011, gets honorable mention for its treatment of the siege of Masada 2000 years ago, as told from the women’s perspective.
The Rules of Magic is the backstory to Practical Magic – it tells the story one generation earlier. In Practical Magic, Jet and Frances are elderly aunties; in The Rules of Magic, they are children.
Their family – the Owens family – has been cursed since 1620, when an ancestor was charged with being a witch. Jet and Frances (and their brother Vincent) are children of the 1960s and their story mostly takes place in New York city.
All three children have special talents. Frances can draw birds to her hands with her mind, Jet reads people’s thoughts and Vincent has all sorts of hidden skills. When Frances turns 17, all three children spend the summer with their Aunt Isabelle, who lives in the same Massachusetts small-town house where Practical Magic is set. Isabelle teaches them “the rules of magic.”
I can’t give away much more without spoiling the story. Suffice it to say, if you trust Alice Hoffman to take you away with her words to a brilliant world where anything is possible, you will enjoy the ride.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com
