Blackbird House: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Review

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Blackbird House: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) ReviewOn Cape Cod sits a white house surrounded by Massachusetts vegetation and farm land. It could be any New England home, but if you look closely this home is the setting for Alice Hoffman's newest book, Blackbird House.As a long time reader of Alice Hoffman's books, I looked forward to her latest title with much anticipation. And now that I've read this book, I found it to be another one of Alice Hoffman's best books.
Blackbird House is a series of interconnected short stories. While they can surely be read one at a time, if they are read together loosely as a novel they will provide most readers with another of Ms. Hoffman's books steeped in wonderful characterizations and magic realism. Every sense is awakened as one digests her flowing words. We feel her characters joys and losses, revel in her descriptions of nature and animals and hope for a good outcome for her characters lives as they unfold before our eyes. With the house as a backdrop and one of her most endearing characters, Ms. Hoffman provides her readers with pages filled with unusual people, magical places and events which challenge the emotions of the human heart. So entranced was I by some of the passages and stories, I was forced to close the book for a few minutes and take deep breaths before I could go on to read more..
As we read we come to learn of the history of Blackbird House from over 200 years ago. We first meet the builder of the house John Hadley, a fisherman during Revolutionary times who builds the house as a monument to the endearing love he has for his wife. When he goes off to sea with his two young sons, a blackbird, the youngest son's pet accompanies them and returns to the house now totally white after disaster strikes. This blackbird and its other white descendants seem to hover around the house at other times during the tales as if a witness to everything which happens both to the hoseu and the people who occupy it. In another story we meet Lysander who lost his leg to a giant halibut but finds love and courage with a woman thought to be the witch of Truro. In turn we read story after story of succeeding families who inhabit the house. Violet, who is betrayed by her lover, but then learns to love the local boy and gives birth to seven children eventually traveling to England to bring her orphaned grandson home. And then we meet this grandson all grown home who meets a German Jewish survivor in Germany during WWII and bring her home to meet Violet. How these two very different women come to terms with loving the same man provides readers with a wonderful story of love and jealousy. Finally we meet Emma, a 30 year old who rather lost after her divorce returns to her family's vacation home which she inherits from her parents. But of all of the stories I think it was the story India which rally captivated me the most as a young woman learns about the love her parents had for one another in a rather unusual household during the 60's.
At one time almost every Hoffman book I read I considered a favorite. But recently, being a bit more critical, I came up with the following list which includes Fortune's Daughter, Practical Magic, Seventh Heaven, Green Angel and Turtle Moon. Now to this list I add Blackbird House which takes its rightful place along with the other titles mentioned. If you are reading this review I hope it will encourage you to read Blackbird House or at the very least some of the other titles I have loved. As I often say an even so so book by Alice Hoffman is better than most. And while Blackbird is at times sad and overwhelming there is also much joy and lessons to be learned from within the pages of this book.
Blackbird House: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Overview

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