Reviews
please God take me back to new england thanks i’m entirely in love with these short stories. over the course of two centuries, blackbird house, nestled in a little green corner of cape cod, sees families from all over the world and ensnares them. their care and neglect gathers and pools in and around the house, accumulating in applewood floors, red oak bookshelves, sweet pea fields, and red pear trees. but of course this book is more than just an ode to new england’s natural beauty. blackbird house is the backdrop to generation-spanning dramas, featuring such characters as vanishing sailor husbands, infatuated math professors, and hippie deadbeat fathers. but the backbone resting behind each story is the common woman, her love for family and nostalgia for home, and just the slightest dusting of magic. if blackbird house exists outside of alice hoffman’s imagination, i’d love to visit it someday, to smell the clean, sharp, green woods and imagine the little tragedies and comedies that have played out inside.
Blackbird House is a collection of intertwining short stories, focusing around or in the titular Blackbird House along the Massachusetts coast. I liked this concept and thought it was executed well. I am a sucker for short stories. Some stories were better than others, or I just liked them more, so I give this book a solid 3.5 stars. It was entertaining and light, yet there was a depth of emotion to each story. There were also plenty of twists and turns that I didn't see coming. Maybe it's just easy to surprise me, but I always enjoy when the plot takes a turn I didn't expect.
Love and loss are two of the major themes here; this is common in most of Alice Hoffman's works. I absolutely adore her and her writing, but I have to say, there was a lot of death in this book. There was grief and depression also, which weighed heavily on some characters. Not all of them overcame it, either, which I thought unusual for Hoffman. I'm not sure this book is as uplifting as it could have been, but you can still find inspiration and cheer.
There was also such beautiful prose here and some beautifully written passages. Again, not every story lived up to my expectations, but this was a charming and enjoyable read.
A compilation of short stories surrounding a house and a white blackbird that is said to be a ghost. While the writing is good and the stories engaging, this book was extremely frustrating. Just when you got invested in the characters, the story would abruptly stop and moved on to the next story and the next generation in the house. After a couple of stories like this, you really couldn’t get invested in the book and were ready for it to be over. While everyone raves about this author, I was not impressed with this book. I’m very thankful I didn’t have to purchase it.
Beautiful.
Magic is the word, what a fantastic read this was! This is the first book I read by Alice Hoffman (although I did see the film based on "Practical Magic") and I absolutely loved it. The stories, characters, atmosphere, writing style... I loved it all!
