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Alice Hoffman's enchanting witch's brew of suspense, romance and magic -- now a major motion picture from Warner Bros. When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers -- and as their own powers begin to surface -- the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society. But both find that they cannot elude their magic-filled past. And when trouble strikes -- in the form of a menacing backyard ghost -- the sisters must not only reunite three generations of Owens women but embrace their magic as a gift -- and their key to a future of love and passion. Funny, haunting, and shamelessly romantic, Practical Magic is bewitching entertainment -- Alice Hoffman at her spectacular best.… (more)
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Fans of the film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman will get a different story here, but the central action does revolve around the aftermath of Gillian's destructive relationship with Jimmy. But mostly, the book is a close portrait of the sisters. Sally is always the sensible one, there to cook healthy meals and hides herself from the pain of love after her husband dies. Gillian, on the other hand is sensual as she is lazy, but emerges with interests that may surprise the reader as it rounds out her character. Sally's daughters become strong characters in their own right, as they deal with adolescense, young love, and self esteem. The aunts are not the main characters as they are in the film, but are mysterious and marginal until called upon to help the sisters, when three generations of Owens women connect in ways they could not earlier in the novel.
The "magic" in the novel is diminished to the aunt's love spells, (and is moe frightening in this respect) but it is more present in the way the characters interact with each other. Their empathy, their heightened senses, their depth of perception is weaved with importance among knowledge of herbs and superstitions. The magic effects the townspeople without their knowing, as they are drawn beyond their power to the beauty of Gillian or the the lilacs that spring up overnight in Sally's yard.
Hoffman also creates a vivid New England that evokes tales of Salem and autumns with rainbow foliage. There are few authors that can really nail down a certain area of geography, and Hoffman is one such writer who has a talent for describing New England and New Englanders. It is difficult to describe how she does so, as the novel gives off an intangible sense of this location.
I eventually reconciled my appreciation for this novel with my intense dislike for Here on Earth. I can only surmise that Hoffman does better with her own original material, and can fully explore her characters when not bound by preconceived structure. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy character studies of women.
She falls in love, marries and has two children, Antonia and Kylie, but her happiness is short lived when her husband dies. She breaks down before pulling herself together to bring up her daughters alone. She never allows herself to fall in love and doesn't even date. Her normal life is throw out the window when Gillian arrives out of the blue with her current (and abusive) boyfriend Jimmy dead after giving him too much nightshade to make him sleep. They bury him in the back gadren, but he refuses to stay there for long and soon his malicious spirit is causing the family terrible luck. Kylie and Antonia are going through puberty and to make matters worse an investigator comes looking for Jimmy with regard to some of his more recent crimes. The investigator may be just what Sally needs...
I love the film and was really looking forward to reading this despite some mixed reviews online. I really like Alice Hoffman and really loved this novel. It's hard to describe the differences between the book and the film, but the book focuses more on the practical rather than the magic and the movie is the other way around. It's a little like the differences between Chocolat the film and novel. I loved getting to know the Owens family and really related to Kylie the most trying to find her place in the world.
First, let me say that I loved this book. And I mean LOVED. As soon as I read the first sentence, I knew it would be one of those rare books that I could just lose myself in from beginning to end. This rarely happens for me, and so its absolutely heavenly whenever I find a book that I connect to in this way. Alice Hoffman has a way of making you feel like you're being buoyed in warm bath as you read her novels. This isn't to say her books are what most people would consider comfy cozy. I'm probably unusual in that my comfort reading tends to include death, heartbreak, and desire. I don't like happy books and so Hoffman's more realistic (albeit magical) stories appeal to me.
In Practical Magic, I loved that the story focused on the relationships between women. Its rare to find a book that feels truthful in its depiction of what women are really like. Alice Hoffman is gifted in being able to reflect the complexity of these relationships with such understated ease. Of course, everything Alice Hoffman does is understated. I am sick to death of books that bang you over the head with all their themes and romances and complicated relationships. It is so refreshing to find an author who just gives you an interpretation of life and allows you to glean from it what you may.
This is only the third book I've read by Alice Hoffman, but I'm already looking forward to my next. She's becoming one of my favorite, authors and for me this is exhilarating since I rarely like any author well enough to read more than one of their books.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves stories stories about strong women, magic, and the worth of true love.
The style is marvelous--omniscient point of view done with a light, sure touch with passages of beauty and perfectly paced. I can't recall any part of this book that ever dragged and Hoffman has the gift of making you fall in love with her characters--even ones that don't seem at all appealing at first. The plotting is great too. A small detail on one page comes back to bite about 140 pages later. Stupid things characters do actually have consequences they learn from. And I love how love figures into this--both familial and romantic.
I could criticize the novel for it's bolt out of the blue romances--but I don't have the heart to. It fits somehow with the way the book is permeated with magic, and the book left me smiling at the world.
As they grow both girls can't wait to be free from the aunts. Gillian runs off with a young man and works her way through three husbands. Sally finds herself deeply in love with a local man. They marry and have two lovely daughters but alas, Sally's husband meets with an untimely death. She moves herself and her daughters back to the aunts house and suffers a year-long bout of depression. She vows yet again to take keep her daughters from harm and herself from love. To that end she moves her small family to Long Island, a place where she feels they can be normal.
One night Gillian arrives at the Long Island house with the body of her dead boyfriend in the car. In an effort to cover up the deed (an overdose of a potent natural drug), Sally helps Gillian bury the body in her yard. That's when strange and potentially evil things start to happen. It takes a visit by the aunts along with some strong magic to dispell the strange happenings and bring true love to both Gillian and Sally.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Tightly woven story, lyrical prose, a bit of humor, lots of magic, and charismatic characters. Like other reviewers I wanted to finish this book in one sitting. It is definitely a page-turner. Hoffman has a definite winner in this book.
Also recommended: The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman
After seeing so many women come to the aunts for help with love problems the sisters vow to never be like them. Uh huh. But they also want normalcy. They both find ways to escape: Sally by marrying and Gillian by eloping and running away. Years later, when Sally's two daughters are teenagers and her husband has passed away, the bonds of sisterhood are tested when Gillian seeks Sally's help for, shall we say, accidentally murdering her boyfriend. And how do two women, who've been hurt in the past because of love, find happiness?
I love how Alice Hoffman writes. So magical. I think it's a bit more refined in The River King but I just love it. The only thing I didn't like is that she uses some pretty strong language here and there sometimes. While maybe to a point it is necessary, I just could have done without it. But the differences between the book and movie...I loved both versions. I think the movie made the story flow a bit better. And I kind of liked the daughter's younger age in the movie vs the book. And the ending was a little anti-climatic compared to the movie...but I liked it.
This is my first novel that I have read by Alice Hoffman, and I thought it was fantastic. The story is an easy read, with beautiful scene descriptions and very believable characters that I can relate too. The author drew me into the story of Sally and Gillian and I was sad when I
The magic in the book is lovely, it's not too much, it's not made a massive deal, it's just part of the setting, these women are witches and it is part of their lives and always will be.
The ending is slightly anticlimactic, in the movie Gilly is possessed by the ghost of the abusive boyfriend she and Sally murdered in self-defense, and the town who have been cruel and judgmental towards the Owens family come together to help. In the book; it just falls a bit flat. There's no real mention of his ghost, and they take care of him over a page or two. I was expecting more.
I do love the final lines of the book, and this is from a reader who does not like romance novels.
"Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."
This, however, is not Hoffman's fault in any way, hence my 4-star rating. It might even have toppled The Ice Queen from its position as my favourite Hoffman novel so far, had it not been for the movie thing. Anyone who's read Hoffman before knows what to expect: a beautifully written, wistful novel blending elements of magic (and more subtle magical realism) with strong, unusual characters and an exploration of the bonds we form with places, lovers and family.
In Practical Magic the story revolves around Gillian and Sally, the beautiful Owens sisters. Orphaned at a young age, they have had a strange upbringing in their aunts' house, where they are simultaneously feared and revered by the local townspeople. Desperate to escape, Gillian runs away to seek her own path and Sally marries a wonderful man and has two headstrong daughters. But when Sally loses her husband in a tragic accident, and Gillian accidentally kills hers, the two are reunited at last. Will Sally's teenage daughters, Kylie and Antonia, make peace with each other and be happy? Will Gillian and the aunts reconcile their differences? Will Sally ever find love again? And will they finally escape the dark and vengeful spirit of Gillian's abusive husband, which casts its bitter shadow across their whole existence?
If you've seen the film, read this anyway - but go into it with a more open mind than I did, because there are substantial differences between the two. If you haven't seen the film, then I highly recommend the book. Hoffman is such a lyrical and haunting writer, and Gillian, Sally and their quirky aunts are some of the most appealing and relatable characters I've come across in her books yet. I still love the movie though!
I didn't like this one
I don't think I liked any of the characters. The girls were all written well, written to be realistic and shown in different stages of their life where they learn and grow and change. But still. Meh. And I just felt sorry for Sally.
The boys were just abnormally-perfect-love-mates for the girls. All of them. Blah.
And really, were there any other characters besides the Owen girls and their respective love mates? Yeah. Well then.
I wanted a little more magic. Herbs and little stuff doesn't cut it when they have the potential to force a false love with a single dove heart.
And I don't really see how Jimmy had all that power to cause all that trouble. More like a forced story plot.
I was just not impressed. Which is just sad because I liked Garden Spells, which was oddly very similar.
Objective rating is probably three stars, but personal rating I'd have to give it two stars for lack of interest and shallowness.
Maybe recommended for people who like realistic magic and slice of life books. You probably have to be a girl to like this book too. Sorry boys.
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well; as children, the sisters were outsiders. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the
This was my first book by Alice Hoffman and I adored it. I'm cheating a bit by using the summary for Barnes and Noble but I couldn't figure out where to start summarizing. This cuts it down and gives you the gist without the spoilers so now I can share my thoughts. I loved this book and my first experience with this author. There is the hint of magic throughout the story but this book is mainly about love. The things that people will or won't do for love as well as the joys and pain that love causes. The beginning of the story moves quickly through the early years of Sally and Gillian's lives and their experiences and hardships that come from living with the Aunts. It then moves on to their lives as grown women and the moment that they are brought together again. There are no chapters in this book, rather the story is broken down into four (I believe) sections. Each of the parts of the story were woven together into the perfect story that it was. I was captivated with this novel and don't care if that is a cliche. LOL! :)
One of the things that kept me on edge with this book is that you never knew what was going to happen next. Hoffman includes enough twists and turns to keep the reader slightly off balance and trying to figure out the ending. I loved it and was inclined to read later and later into the night. The author wrote about love throughout the story and one particular passage that I marked said:
"This girl had no right to demand anything more. What had she thought, that love was a toy, something easy and sweet, just to play with? Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn't let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for its sake."
After reading that, don't you just love the way the author writes? She writes in such a fluid, descriptive way that I was able to picture the characters in my head with the way that she wrote them. I would hazard a guess that this book fits in with the magical realism genre which is a first for me. It definitely won't be my last though and I am going to be reading more from this author soon. I finally got the chance to see why Hoffman is a favorite of so many. What a magical tale and a perfect way to end the Winter Reading Challenge!
I feel like overall there was even less plot in the book than there is in the movie- it meanders, touching on bits and pieces but never really establishes a significant issue to overcome by the end. It was a quick read and swept me along as I read, but it felt unsatisfyingly unfinished.
It was a great movie. But I liked that Alice
I liked that there was so much no emphasis on the clean up of the mess by the other women of the town and that it was all contained to just the Owen's women, where it belonged. I loved the relationship between Gillian and Sally in both the movie and the book, but I felt it more in the reading.
Alice Hoffman provided relationships. Hollywood, as usual, provided drama. But I won't complain, because I still love the movie, and will top off the week with yet another watching of a great story.
Practical Magic follows the lives of two orphaned sisters who are sent to live with their strange aunts at a young age. After
It suffers from a somewhat meandering storyline that seems to have too many endings, or places that could have been endings.
I also hoped for a little more depth in the characters, especially the elder sister's Sally's children, whom the narrator follows for a while, and them promptly dumps them and goes back to the story of Sally and Gillian. The characters generally seem to do their tasks without any motivation.
But although this work was not great fiction, it was diverting and enjoyable. Good airplane reading!!
I enjoyed the book, but I can't say how much I would have if I didn't already like the movie. As much as I like the writing style, it doesn't seem to have much of a plot (which is why there's no attempted plot summary here). It jumps from one event to another, from one character to another, without any warning or even any division on the page. I liked it because I already knew some stuff about the characters and the story - the movie cuts a lot out, but many things are still the same, or close enough to recognize - but I don't know if I'd like that without the prior knowledge.