Alice Hoffman's Magical Books
As the days grew cooler and darker in October, I found myself increasingly drawn to mood reading books like Alice Hoffman’s magical series, in part because her latest prequel of the series came out early in the month. Thus, I convened with the Owens family in Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic (1995), Rules of Magic (2017), and Magical Lessons (2020). By reading all three novels together, I enjoyed a month of magically lovable witches battling the challenges and frustrations of being independent creatures in a world that doesn’t appreciate their unconventional style or power. Hoffman’s novels build prequel upon prequel as she works closer and closer to the root of the Owens’ family story and its curse. Each novel explores the themes of love, sisterhood, and women supporting women, always with a health dose of magic stirred in.
Practical Magic tells the story of Gillian and Sally Owens set contemporaneously to its publication at the close of the twentieth century. As little girls, Sally and Gillian’s world turns upside down and they end up living with two elderly aunts in a mysterious old house on Magnolia Street in a sleepy Massachusetts town. Life for the girls on Magnolia Street is anything but conventional; few rules bind their childhoods, unlike other little girls, and their aunts are anything but maternal. In fact, the aunts appear to encourage the mysterious distrust the town has of them and their witchy ways, as they exist on the outskirts and rarely leave their seemingly enchanted and ancient home. Village women come to the backdoor when the light is on at dusk for salves against life’s pains and challenges. Against the backdrop of all this magic and freedom, however, Sally and Gillian grow up wanting only to fit in to normal life. The sisters, opposite in so many ways, find different paths to normalcy. The novel witnesses the joys and tragedies of their young adult lives before fate brings them back together many years later. Ultimately, this is a story of magic and mystery, of love and fear, of curses and confusions. But in the end, it is a story that reminds us all we must be who we are; in resisting our identity we tend to court chaos. Practical Magic, concludes with the power of love—between family and lovers both. Through love, the Owens sisters find their way back to their family and themselves.
Over twenty years after publishing Practical Magic, Hoffman takes her readers back a generation in the first prequel: Rules of Magic. Set in New York City and Massachusetts in the mid-twentieth century, when Franny and Jet (the elderly aunts in Practical Magic) come of age alongside their younger brother, Vincent. Hoffman’s prequel expands upon the theme of being true to who you are, as the Owens children learn to abide by the rules of magic and make sense of the mystery which seems to punctuate all aspects of their family. Early in the novel Franny learns about the Owens’ family curse which damns anyone who loves an Owens to suffer greatly, and in the hubris typical of a young person, she attempts to avoid the curse by avoiding love. Meanwhile, her sister Jet’s romantic experiences seem to prove the power of the centuries-old curse. Even Vincent, who seems to exist beyond romantic attachment, inevitably faces the vulnerability of being in love. Rules of Magic winds the loves and losses of the three Owens children through the years, concluding that when we acknowledge who we are, and who we love, things tend to work out. This novel includes plenty of tragic circumstances, but it follows in the tradition of Practical Magic by ending on a hopeful note.
Alice Hoffman’s most recent Magic Lessons (October 6, 2020), was by far my favorite of the three novels. Magic Lessons tells the life of Maria Owens, the matriarch of the Owens family and the one who settled on Magnolia Street in the seventeenth-century. This novel begins in the England of her childhood and as her adventures mount, the reader follows her first to the Caribbean then onto Massachusetts and New York. Maria and her daughter, Faith, suffer and survive as various forces pull them apart. Ultimately, Maria’s story is one all about finding and keeping true love, while Faith is forced to reckon with number one rule of magic—“do as you will, but harm no one”—as she comes of age. By the novel’s conclusion, Maria and Faith’s stories reiterate the theme present in Hoffman’s earlier books: “Love is the only answer.”
By progressively moving further back in time with each subsequent novel, Alice Hoffman provides plenty of background on her previous books’ characters, but also writes in such a way that one could likely read the books in order of publication or in order of fictional chronology. Hoffman’s books demonstrate the power of time to blur the truth, and the ways in which family stories, even for the infamous Owens’ family, may not always be as accurate as one imagines. And yet, even as family stories shift with time, certain truths remain throughout the centuries as every Owens must learn.
Bibliography:
Hoffman, Alice. Magic Lessons. Simon and Schuster: 2020.
Hoffman, Alice. Practical Magic. Putnam: 1995.
Hoffman, Alice. Rules of Magic. Simon and Schuster: 2017.
