Blackbird House

I don't know what it is about summer that makes me feel like reading an Alice Hoffman novel, but I just love picking up one of her many great books when the season hits. While at the library the other day I got a hankering to reread one of my favorites of hers and found it waiting for me on the shelf. Yay! 

The book is Blackbird House.

Alice Hoffman's books are different from those I usually read. Though her stories are character-driven and often sentimental and moving, there is always a bit of magic present or an undercurrent of fate, mingled with supernatural. Her writing is beautiful and often haunting. When I read her books it's almost as if I'm in a captivating dream.

In the book Blackbird House Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set on a small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod (lots of her books are on the Cape or in New England, which means I give them bonus points for a setting that makes me swoon).  Over a span of 200 years we meet complex and moving characters: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives and changes everything; Maya Cooper, who doesn't understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead while living at Blackbird House.

Amazon says: These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

So, if you're looking for a novel to take to the pool or the beach or out on the porch swing – give Alice a try. Some of my other favorites of hers include: Illumination Night, Seventh Heaven, and Practical Magic (Yes, there was a movie based on the book but the movie stunk and didn't do the book justice at all so pretend you never saw it).