Alice Hoffman is an amazing writer with a special talent of adding a little magic to the everyday. It's what makes you identify with her stories and care about her characters, even when things take a slightly fantastic turn.
In The Probable Future, we're introduced to the Sparrow Family, a line of women who receive a unique gift upon their 13th birthday. This gift, a special ability, seems to suit the recipient well, yet often leads to trouble when integrated into the outside world.
This is especially true for Stella, the youngest Sparrow, who's able to see how some people will die. Her desire to save people, coupled with this gift gets her into trouble, puts her dad in jail, and sets in motion the entire book.
Forced to leave her home in Boston, Stella is taken back to her mom's home town and a grandmother she's never met. The matriarch, Elinor, knows when you're lying. Jenny, Stella's mom, experiences other people's dreams alongside them. All three women end up at Cake House, in Unity, Mass., a town built upon the horrible death of a Sparrow ancestor, who couldn't feel pain.
It's a broken town, symbolized by the ancient, dying tree in the center square. Full of people who don't have what they need most, the rejoining of the Sparrow women helps transform the town. Inhabitants learn that destiny isn't something set in stone, that you have to take control of your own future to change it, and that sometimes, a very clear prediction is wrong.
If I could have read this whole book through in a single sitting, I would have. I loved everything about it: the New England backdrop, the depth of history, the complexity of emotions. Each character learns something so valuable by the end of the story - you feel proud to have seen into a little bit of their lives. In true Hoffman fashion, those who feel lost find their way, even if the path curved in some unexpected directions.
Read this. Read lots of Hoffman.
Other Alice Hoffman books reviewed on this site:
It takes 300 pages for something to happen in this book and where it ends up is so far from where you think it's going, that I'm not sure the trip is worth it. I'm also not sure the person who wrote the synopsis of the book actually read it.
I picked up this book because it is set in Boston, my favorite town, and it's a period piece, taking place on the eve of U.S. involvement in WWI. It features the Allston Family who is recovering from the tragedy of losing two of its members on the Titanic. The synopsis of the book cites "mysterious circumstances" and a "harrowing mystery" to be solved as the family copes with their loss, or at least that's what I thought and what intrigued me about the book. Taking the position of the survivors who were left ashore while family members drowned on the Titanic is a unique perspective that I wanted to read about, but instead I was given Harlan, a rule-breaking college kid with a gambling problem and Sybil, a young woman who discovers through the use of opium that she has a very special, very depressing gift. Both characters are affected by the loss of their family members (a sister and their mom,) but what takes main stage is coping with these other issues. Must be what the synopsis meant by "mystery."
Even thinking about the flow of the book now, I'm confused. The book jumps between the present (1915,) the day the Titanic sank, and 1868 where you learn more about the father in the family. Initially, it made sense to pair the present in the book with scenes from the Titanic, but then things shifted and you see a connection between the present and the father's flashback. There's only a tiny point where the three story lines connect in any way and it was anticlimactic. It would have been a more compelling story without the flashes back to the Titanic, if you ask me. The story would have felt more cohesive to shift the focus on the "gift" Sybil discovers and how it affects her life and the lives of her family. The conclusions she reaches about destiny and fate as a result of coping with her "gift" are the most interesting piece of the entire story, but they get tangled up with the reader's incorrect expectations that this is a book about the aftermath of the Titanic.
Howe likes to infuse her stories with a lot of history and a little bit of the fantastical and I think she got it right with her previous book, but this one definitely fell short.
This book was an extremely quick read but totally disappointing. There are simply no happy endings, only short-lived moments of joy. If you're going to fictionalize not just the life of a famous author, but her whole family, you could at least give the reader more than fleeting happiness to walk away with. Not even Louisa seems content with her writing career in the end -- how sad is that?
The book focuses on a single year really in Louisa's adult life when her family relocates from Concord, Mass. to Walpole, New Hampshire. Her family is living off the charity of others since her father refuses to work a "day job," so she's struggling between the demands of helping her family sustain themselves and the desire to strike out on her own and really pursue her writing. She's already been published at this point and has saved enough money to venture out on her own, but decided to help her family settle into their new home first.
In the midst of her time in Walpole, she falls in love, waffling back and forth between the traditional concept of marriage as an acceptable future and her continuing desire for her independence. How it translates in the book though is in repeated confrontations between the lovers where Louisa caves in - admits her love and willingness to be with her man - waits a minute to think it over, and changes her mind, abandoning him. It's redundant with a bad payoff since at the end of the book she's not even fulfilled by the ultimate choice she makes for herself.
I love Little Women and had no expectations this book would mirror any stories from that book, but I was hoping for a little less depressing drama and a little more positive character growth. So many books are popping up that fictionalize the life of someone well-known and I admit that I do enjoy the genre, but skip this book. It's just not worth even the brief investment.
