The matriarch of a Long Island clan with a stubbornly suicidal son and a defiant, restless granddaughter, Esther has hired a Russian landscaper to watch over the family as well as the grounds of their secluded waterfront estate. But he has been watching Esther, too. And his love for her is growing wild enough to uproot them all.
The author of Here on Earth and The River King presents a "stunning and hypnotic" novel that "interweaves past and present with piercing images and unfailing energy" (Publishers Weekly).
Alice Hoffman is the author of fifteen novels: Blue Diary (2001), The River King (2000), Local Girls (1999), Here On Earth (1997), Practical Magic (1995), Second Nature (1994), Turtle Moon (1992), Seventh Heaven (1990), At Risk (1988), Illumination Night (1987), Fortune’s Daughter (1985), White Horses (1982), Angel Landing (1980), The Drowning Season (1979), and Property Of (1977). She is also the author of three children’s books: Aquamarine (2001), Horsefly (2000), and Fireflies (1997).
Born in New York City, and raised on Long Island, Hoffman graduated from Adelphi University and received an M.A. from Stanford University, where she was Mirrielees Fellow. She currently lives near Boston with her family and her dogs.
Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing. She currently lives in Boston and New York.
Hoffman's first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. She credits her mentor, professor and writer Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, the writer Maclin Bocock Guerard, for helping her to publish her first short story in the magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff then contacted her to ask if she had a novel, at which point she quickly began to write what was to become Property Of, a section of which was published in Mr. Solotaroff's magazine, American Review.
Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published a total of eighteen novels, two books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults. Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte's masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Her advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman (Women's Cancer) Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA. Blackbird House is a book of stories centering around an old farm on Cape Cod. Hoffman's recent books include Aquamarine and Indigo, novels for pre-teens, and The New York Times bestsellers The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, and The Ice Queen. Green Angel, a post-apocalyptic fairy tale about loss and love, was published by Scholastic and The Foretelling, a book about an Amazon girl in the Bronze Age, was published by Little Brown. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year. In January 2007, Skylight Confessions, a novel about one family's secret history, was released on the 30th anniversary of the publication of Her first novel. Her most recent novel is The Story Sisters (2009), published by Shaye Areheart Books.
Hoffman's work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay "Independence Day" a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, Self, and other magazines. Her teen novel Aquamarine was recently made into a film starring Emma Roberts.
While browsing thru notes I made on books read years and years ago, I came across my remarks about Angel Landing, another Hoffman book, and remembered how impressed I was with her writing style and characters. I decided to see if she had written any more books and had no idea she had written so many others, including one selected by Oprah's reading group. I was not disappointed to be reading her again. Her characters, always quirky and strange, are written in such a lyrical tone that they seem very real and human. In The Drowining Season, Esther the White is the matriarch of a very dysfunctional yet loving family. Hoffman slowly reveals the past deceptions and future dreams of all the family members culminating in life-changing decisions made by all three generations. Your only hope is that all will have found the peace and love so desired. A great read!
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After reading Turtle Moon I had a quest for more of Alice Hoffman. The Drowning Season gives a unique perspective of issues that I had never looked at before - namely death and obsession with a quest. Suicide is not an easy topic, but this is an eye opener. Hoffman has a timemachine built into her novels that transports us into these worlds almost through magic. I have never been disappointed with any of her novels, and eagerly look forward to the next adventure into the human spirit that she takes me on. Her characters are human and fallible - like all of us. The stories are lessons learned that touch our lives over and over again. She is so timely with stories on AIDs, abuse, gangs, new age beliefs, abandoned unwanted juveniles, and even crime. Each is almost a modern day parable. I couldn't put this book down, it traveled with me until I finished it.
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The characters of this book are more eccentric than my neighbors.
The tales intertwined in this book belong more in a 19th century novel than they do in today's writing world.
The biases and idiosyncracies of the characters are Hoffman-esque. Oh, are they ever so ever Hoffman.
By the time we learn what a drowning season is, we learn that the person who likes to attempt hydro-suicide ventures (almost as often as the tortoises lay their eggs) is not necessarily the most mentally disturbed family member. Maybe, you have to think, the others drove him to the shores to fill his lungs with salt water.
Hoffman writes well. Extremely well. And, knowing that many of her other books deal with single women raising teenage kids -- something which I must assume she knows a lot about -- this book surprises you as it stays away from that common theme.
If you do not like this book, I can guarantee you will not like many (or most) of her other novels.
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