(Book) Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

This book is significant for me in a number of ways, the greatest of all is that this is the first book I have physical read (and not Audible’d) since March 2018. My vision for the longest time was so poor that I could barely make it through my work day and squint through the blur on the drive home. I am not sure why I felt the urge to pick up this particular book, but I did. And, I initially decided to “take it slow”, to “go easy on my eyes” and only consume the book in small bites. I say initially because I devoured the book in just at two days. I have been making sure to read with extra light, preferably outside when a little sunshine finds its way between the clouds or in the sunroom, midday.

I truly enjoyed the book. It was different yet familiar. The differences that stood out the most to me: the age of the children, the more divisiveness of the sisters, the appearance of the aunts maybe not “caring” (for lack of a better word) and that the story took place somewhere other than the aunts’ house. There are differences too numerous to note here, additional characters, additional scenes, etc. But the ones that stood out to me most are those above.

To the aged old question, which was best, movie or book? I cannot choose really, they were so different and, in their own individual ways, amazing. I loved both (the movie being in my top ten of all time and watched at least twice every year).

I eBay’ed a set of books by Hoffman, hoping that those are as easy to read as this one. In the meantime, I hope to pick up another book and read it in just as enjoyable a fashion.

Have you read the book? Did you like it? Let me know in the comments below!

A few bits of info on the book and author:

Plot Summary

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have also endured that fate: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their darkened house, their love concoctions and their crowd of black cats. All Gillian and Sally wanted to do was escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back to each other, and to the magic they could not escape.

Alice Hoffman (born March 16, 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children’s writer, best known for her 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships.

Alice Hoffman was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, New York. Her grandmother was a Russian-Jewish immigrant. She graduated from Valley Stream North High School in 1969, and then from Adelphi University with a Bachelor of Arts. She was a Mirrielees Fellow at the Stanford University Creative Writing Center in 1973 and 1974, where she earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing.