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Summary
Summary
For more than a century, the small town of Haddan, Massachusetts, has been divided. It was as if a line were drawn down the center of Main Street, separating those born and bred in the village from those who attend the prestigious Haddan School. Then an inexplicable death thrusts the two worlds together, and, as the lives of everyone involved unravel, the town's divided history is revealed.
Author Notes
Alice Hoffman, an American novelist and screenwriter, was born in New York City on March 16, 1952. She earned a B.A. from Adelphi University in 1973 and an M.A. in creative writing from Stanford University in 1975 before publishing her first novel, Property Of, in 1977.
Known for blending realism and fantasy in her fiction, she often creates richly detailed characters who live on society's margins and places them in extraordinary situations as she did with At Risk, her 1988 novel about the AIDS crisis. Her other works include The Drowning Season, Seventh Heaven, The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, The Ice Queen, and The Dovekeepers. Her book, The Third Angel, won the 2008 New England Booksellers' Award for fiction. Two of her novels, Practical Magic and Aquamarine, were made into films. She has also written numerous screenplays, including adaptations of her own novels and the original screenplay, Independence Day. Her title's The Museum of Exteaordinary Things, The Marriage of Opposites, Seventh Heaven, and The Rules of Magic made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
YA-Haddan School is an elite prep school located in a small town in Massachusetts. One of its dorms is haunted by the ghost of Annie Howe, who killed herself after discovering that her husband, a past headmaster, was an adulterer. Many years pass before two new students, Carlin Leander and August Pierce, both socially and intellectually independent from the school's cliques, meet and fall in love. The other students plot revenge: August is too much the individual and Carlin too good for him. Pierce is murdered and it takes all of police officer Abel Gray's talent and persistence to bring justice. He is helped by the photography teacher, Betsy Chase, and he falls in love with her. Their courtship becomes another part of this complicated plot. Hoffman's characters have strongly defined personali-ties, and their relationships are complex, built upon multiple events from each individual's past and present. August is a gangly, thin young man attempting to find his true self and endure the taunts of others. His spirit becomes so strong that even as a ghost he shows up in Betsy's photographs. Hoffman's writing evokes gloriously poetic images and stirs emotional responses as she wields her style of magical realism, and the story captures the magic in living and the power of love. Young adults familiar with Hoffman's other books will enjoy this as will fans of Gabriel Garc'a M rquez and Laura Esquivel's work.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in and around an exclusive private school in fictional Haddan, Mass., bestselling author Hoffman's (Practical Magic; Here on Earth) latest novel flows as swiftly and limpidly as the Haddan River, the town's mystical waterway. As one expects in a Hoffman novel, strange things have always happened in HaddanDa combination of Mother Nature gone awry and human nature following suit. In 1858, the year the school was completed, a devastating flood almost destroyed it and the town. The esteemed headmaster, Dr. Howe, married a pretty local girl who hung herself from the rafters "one mild evening in March." Local superstitions prove true more often than not, and twice in recent history a black, algae-laden rain has covered people and buildings with a dark sludge. An uneasy peace has always existed between the locals and the Haddan School, based on the latter's financial benefit to the community and the local authorities' willingness to look the other way when necessary to maintain the school's reputation. But when student August Pierce is found drowned in the Haddan River, detective Abel Grey is flooded with memories of his own teenage brother's suicide, and refuses to look away. Supporting characters are richly textured: new photography instructor Betsy Chase feels unsafe in Haddan, yet somehow finds herself engaged to a mysterious young history professor Eric Herman; Carlin Leander, a poor, strikingly beautiful young girl, comes to Haddan to recreate herself and escape her neglectful mother, and becomes misfit August's only friend while dating the most popular boy on campus; Helen Davis, chair of the history department, is haunted by a long-ago affair she had with Dr. Howe, which she believes had something to do with his young wife's suicide. As ever, Hoffman mixes myth, magic and reality, addressing issues of town and gown, enchanting her readers with a many-layered morality tale and proving herself once again an inventive author with a distinctive touch. Literary Guild main selection, Doubleday Book Club featured alternate; foreign rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Norway, Denmark; major ad/promo; 14-city author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Hoffman, a gifted writer who's been treading water lately (Local Girls, 1997, etc.), is in much better form with this compelling portrait of class tensions and personal longings in the small-town Massachusetts. Since 1858, the Haddan School has educated the children of the wealthy, who barely notice the village residents. More than 50 years after local girl Annie Howe, unhappily married to the school's womanizing headmaster, hung herself from the rafters of the girls' dormitory, town-gown fraternizing still seems a bad idea. Three new arrivals, though, quickly upset the smug status quo. Carlin Leander, transported from working-class Florida on a swimming scholarship, catches the fancy of handsome Harry McKenna, nasty top dog among the popular students. Betsy Chase, hired as photography instructor because she's engaged to ambitious history teacher Eric Herman, finds herself attracted to Abe Grey, a town cop with a checkered past. And Gus Pierce, a brilliant but troubled new student, defies the vicious hazing (led by Harry) to which the faculty turns a blind eye. When Gus's body is discovered in the river, everyone wants to sweep the matter under the rug. But Abe needs to honor the legacy of his upright grandfather, purge his bitter knowledge of the town's current corruption, and redeem the sorrow of his brother's long-ago suicide, as well as Annie Howe's. He persists, and some measure of justice is meted out to the guilty, though there's plenty of suffering for the innocent as well. Hoffman balances a biting depiction of Haddan's snobbery and moral failures with her usual breathtakingly beautiful evocations of the natural world (laid on a little thick here). Her appealing protagonists find happiness, and a series of supernatural events suggest the existence of a higher order that will not allow evil to prevail . . . entirely. A host of complex, well-drawn characters and a strong story make up for a slight tendency to overdo the magic realism in a novel sure to please Hoffman's many fans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In Hoffman's enchanting fictional universe, nature reflects human passions and sorrows. Thwarted desire is echoed in spectacular thunderstorms; grief makes flowers change color; animals are drawn to lonely people; and rivers reveal their secrets. Hoffman herself hovers like a fairy godmother over her evocative landscapes and endearing characters, unable, it seems, to keep suffering at bay but determined nonetheless to make sure that each story of love and loss is well told. Here she dwells in the small Massachusetts town of Haddan, where the locals resent the snooty denizens of a posh prep school. But not all of Haddan's students are privileged and arrogant. Poor, beautiful, and smart, Carlin is attending Haddan on a swimming scholarship and finds most of her peers callow at best. Gus is also smart, self-possessed, and defiant, and he cannot believe his good luck in befriending a girl as amazing as Carlin. But the boys in his dorm despise and torment him, and no one comprehends the severity of his situation. When his body is pulled from the river, Haddan's legacy of suicide is reexamined, but neither Carlin nor Abe, a maverick policeman, believe that Gus killed himself. As Carlin copes with her grief, remorse, and what seem like messages from the beyond, Abe investigates, while attempting to quell his seemingly unwelcome love for Betsy, a photographer and a Haddan teacher. An inventive, romantic, and insightful storyteller, Hoffman touches everyone and everything with her magic wand, illuminating the power of emotion and the exquisite mysteries of life. --Donna Seaman
Library Journal Review
Hoffman combines the dark and the pastel in this Gothic-lite murder mystery, laden with lush descriptions of flowers, greenery, and a quaint New England town. Haddan, MA, has an uneasy relationship with the local snooty coed boarding school. Its first headmaster married and betrayed a local girl, who committed suicide, bequeathing the school its haunted air. The novel focuses on Carlin, an impoverished girl on a swimming scholarship, who befriends fellow new student Gus, a charming misfit targeted for cruel hazing by the unofficial fraternity in his dorm. Meanwhile, Betsy, the beautiful photography instructor engaged to a coldly remote history teacher, falls for Abel, a gorgeous policeman. When Gus is found drowned on Halloween, Abel is convinced that Gus's death is not an accident, and Carlin becomes haunted by the watery presence of Gus's ghost. The novel, with its young protagonists and pining romance between Betsy and Abel, straddles the line between young adult and women's fiction. One wishes Hoffman had pared down the precious local descriptions and allowed the plot, which has some unexpected twists, to shine through. For libraries that cater to Hoffman fans. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/00.]DReba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.