Customer Reviews

Fortune's Daughter

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was my first Alice Hoffman novel I have read. In reviewing her other books, it is obvious that she incorporates mystical and spiritual concepts in her writings. In this novel, _Fortune's Daughter_ the art of fortune telling through the use of tea leaves provide the inspiration for an original and sensitive story. The "reading" of these leaves that remain in the bottom of a cup of consumed tea allows the reader to be introduced to the characters in the book and their secrets that are so well revealed by this talented author.

The fortune teller, Lila, is certainly not a stereotypical "old woman hag-like freak" that is so often portrayed in the movies. She is a beautiful wisp of a lady in her late 40's, married and living in the hills of Hollywood, California. Introduced long ago to the art of tea readings, she has a loyal following of clients and a fairly reliable income. Her passion, however seems fickle, and her past secrets and haunting memories begin to affect her readings.

Everything in Lila's past that she has struggled to hide erupts when she is pressured to do a fortune telling for a distraught young girl, abandoned by her flakey, no-good boyfriend. When Lila looks into her cup and into Rae's tragic eyes, the unbearable similarities intwine them and makes their fates dependent on each other from that moment on.

...I would like to comment on a few random impressions that I found interesting. One I had was that the "fortune telling" was not overdone, but appropriately utilized to ground and furthur the story line. Another is how the author uses the land to correlate with the character's personal issues and relationships to each other. For example, the infertile land behind Lila and her husband's house was referred to frequently throughout the book. Ms. Hoffman revealed the land to be nearly barren, and only with the greatest of efforts were the couple able to nurture plants to life. Tomato plants were thin, spindly, and rarely productive. The soil was said to be as if poisoned, leached of nutrients and unrevivable, no doubt a comparison to Lila.

The only viable plant, a vine, (interestingly enough, a passion flower), had for so many years been neglected, it had become wildly overgrown. Tangled into a gigantic heap of a mess, it grew into a choking dying nuisance requiring abrupt removal. This comparison could apply to the relationship that Rae had with her abusing boyfriend, then again, other possible correlations could be the relationship between Lila and her husband, or Lila and Rae, or indeed all four of the characters and their relationship to each other.

Ms. Hoffman described some incredibly intense and emotional events. One of these events was Lila's giving birth at age 18 after successfully hiding her pregnancy from her parents and everyone. Alone, and abandoned by her married boyfriend, the experience was revealed in words of delicacy and power, seeming to be a representation of the process of labor itself.

...Rae struggles throughout the entire novel to rid herself of her abusive boyfriend, Jessup, but she keeps seeking him out, and their dependent dysfuntional relationship stays alive. As the four of them converge on the hospital on the night of Rae's baby's birth, I could not help but feel let down that she ultimately was not strong enough to push Jessup away. Rae, like the passion flower, seemed destined to emulate the vine. The flowers are so beautiful and fragile. The danger is to allow it to grow without restraint.

Alice Hoffman is an amazingly talented writer. Each of her books lives and shimmers with some of the most evocative, lovely imagery of any author writing today. You know her characters personally. They live in your neighborhood or are members of your family, and you know them so well that you can't help but ache for each step they take through the course of the book.

In "Fortune's Daughter," Hoffman parallels the lives of two very different women. Rae is young, single, and pregnant and on the verge of losing her self-absorbed, shiftless boyfriend. Lila is middle-aged and happily married to Richard, who grows roses and lemon trees in unfriendly soil in their California backyard. As Rae's and Lila'a paths cross and Rae's pregnancy progresses, we are drawn intimately deeper into watching how one woman's life comes out of confusion into clear focus while the other loses her center and slips into madness. It's a delicately and finely drawn dance, and Hoffman executes it perfectly.

If anything was unsatisfactory about this book, it was that it ended when it did. After I finished it I sill wanted to go back, to read at least two or three more chapters to know what happens to Rae & Lila, to Jessup & Richard, and to all the others whose lives entwined in this story.

This is the third book I have read by Alice Hoffman. While I don't think it is as good as Practical Magic and At Risk, it is a good book, and definitely better than Here On Earth.

I can see by now that Alice Hoffman's novels are a bit haunting and mystical. She is a writer that, under most circumstances, has a haunting plot full of emotional welfare that hooks you in, and interesting, rich characters. To top it off, she paints beautiful pictures with her words. The only other writer I know who knows how to do it as well is Connie May Fowler.

In Fortune's Daughter, you have a pregnant, lost young woman named Rae, and a fortune teller named, Lila, whose paths cross when Rae goes to get her fortune read.

Rae, who left home to run off with a boy she loves, Jessup, finds herself alone and pregnant. She leaves her family behind, and Jessup leaves her behind, since he is selfish and isn't interested in being a father at the beginning of this book.

Lila reads tea leaves and lives with her husband, Richard. Lila isn't really interested in fortune-telling anymore, and when she encounters Rae, she finds herself re-living her own painful past.

She was disowned by her own family when she became pregnant herself with her boyfriend's child. She was alone, as her lover was absent and selfish (much like Jessup was), and she was made to give up her daughter after she gave birth to her in her own bedroom. A cousin, who was a nurse, acted as her coach, as her parents refused to send her to the hospital due to shame.

Rae reminded Lila too much of herself when she was that age, and before she knew it, she was putting a strain on her marriage to search for her lost daughter.

This is a very bizarre and haunting story, full of feeling of loss and deep sadness. It is a good story, but one that leaves you with a very sinking feeling after you're finished with the book.

Nonetheless, an interesting read that is difficult to put down.

Hoffman spills language before her readers like golden coins, storytelling rich with imagery and texture, words spinning out like fables or folktales.

The characters in FORTUNE'S DAUGHTER are multi-faceted. Rae, a young woman who finds herself pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend, embraces her approaching motherhood. Distanced from her parents, Rae casts about for someone to help guide her through natural childbirth. She chooses Lila Gray, a pyschic reader of tea leaves, and it is Lila who breaks our hearts.

Living with her own demons, Lila is the most beautifully rendered of all the people in this story. Lila has yet to forgive herself for giving up the baby girl she had at eighteen, allowing her parents to place the infant for adoption. The parents are unwilling to help their daughter, turning their backs as Lila endures the pain of childbirth with only her cousin, a nurse, to help her. The agonies of birth are stunningly rendered, the images powerful and recognizable.

Lila's emotional development is arrested during this mournful time, and death becomes her suitor, courting daily. With the spring thaw, Lila is seduced back to life, falls deeply in love and marries. She spends the following years running from a truth she has been unable to share with her husband.

Rae's advancing pregnancy torments Lila with thoughts of her own lost daughter. She packs her suitcase, leaving with no explanation, determined to find her child.

What Lila discovers is not what she's expected, dreamed about. Returning home, her mind struggles with acceptance, unable to see little else, including her patiently loving husband. The marriage is strained as Lila isolates in her world of imagination. Finally, Lila is given the courage to release the past, lay it to rest, and reach toward the future. Hoffman creates such a fully realized Lila, that she virtually walks off the page, the reader wishing for this woman's happiness.

I am a huge Alice Hoffman fan, and when I found this slim book hidden in the back of the shelf at the library, I expected it to be as wonderful as her other books. I was disappointed. The character of Rae seems very similar to March Murray in Here On Earth. She's someone who got into an obsessive relationship at a young age and was willing to throw everything away for it. Her boyfriend is very similar to Hollis. It just seems like the story of these two were the beginning outlines of Here On Earth, and Hoffman decided to recycle them. Here on Earth is a much better novel though-you feel more for the charcaters and understand their passion. You just don't really care about these two. Some scenes in this book are downright bizarre, and many seem unnecessary. I had a hard time forcing myself to finish this book, because it bordered on boring. read one of Hoffman's other books for some great writing.

This was my first Alice Hoffman novel I have read. In reviewing her other books, it is obvious that she incorporates mystical and spiritual concepts in her writings. In this novel, _Fortune's Daughter_ the art of fortune telling through the use of tea leaves provide the inspiration for an original and sensitive story. The "reading" of these leaves that remain in the bottom of a cup of consumed tea allows the reader to be introduced to the characters in the book and their secrets that are so well revealed by this talented author.

The fortune teller, Lila, is certainly not a stereotypical "old woman hag-like freak" that is so often portrayed in the movies. She is a beautiful wisp of a lady in her late 40's, married and living in the hills of Hollywood, California. Introduced long ago to the art of tea readings, she has a loyal following of clients and a fairly reliable income. Her passion, however seems fickle, and her past secrets and haunting memories begin to affect her readings.

Everything in Lila's past that she has struggled to hide erupts when she is pressured to do a fortune telling for a distraught young girl, abandoned by her flakey, no-good boyfriend. When Lila looks into her cup and into Rae's tragic eyes, the unbearable similarities intwine them and makes their fates dependent on each other from that moment on.

The plot lines are well detailed by other reviewers, so I shall not repeat the same in different words. I would like to comment on a few random impressions that I found interesting. One I had was that the "fortune telling" was not overdone, but appropriately utilized to ground and furthur the story line. Another is how the author uses the land to correlate with the character's personal issues and relationships to each other. For example, the infertile land behind Lila and her husband's house was referred to frequently throughout the book. Ms. Hoffman revealed the land to be nearly barren, and only with the greatest of efforts were the couple able to nurture plants to life. Tomato plants were thin, spindly, and rarely productive. The soil was said to be as if poisoned, leached of nutrients and unrevivable, no doubt a comparison to Lila.

The only viable plant, a vine, (interestingly enough, a passion flower), had for so many years been neglected, it had become wildly overgrown. Tangled into a gigantic heap of a mess, it grew into a choking dying nuisance requiring abrupt removal. This comparison could apply to the relationship that Rae had with her abusing boyfriend, then again, other possible correlations could be the relationship between Lila and her husband, or Lila and Rae, or indeed all four of the characters and their relationship to each other.

Ms. Hoffman described some incredibly intense and emotional events. One of these events was Lila's giving birth at age 18 after successfully hiding her pregnancy from her parents and everyone. Alone, and abandoned by her married boyfriend, the experience was revealed in words of delicacy and power, seeming to be a representation of the process of labor itself.

I am curious as to other opinions regarding the ending. Rae struggles throughout the entire novel to rid herself of her abusive boyfriend, Jessup, but she keeps seeking him out, and their dependent dysfuntional relationship stays alive. As the four of them converge on the hospital on the night of Rae's baby's birth, I could not help but feel let down that she ultimately was not strong enough to push Jessup away. Rae, like the passion flower, seemed destined to emulate the vine. The flowers are so beautiful and fragile. The danger is to allow it to grow without restraint.

This is the fourth of Alice Hoffman's books that I have read in recent months, and I found Fortune's Daughter to be a beautifully written portrayal of two women coping with longing, loss, and letting go. Unlike many novels where romances drive the plotline, in Fortune's Daughter, the central relationships are between mothers and daughters -- real mothers, both through birth and adoption, and surrogates chosen by lonely young women in need of support. Hoffman's judicious use of magical realism heightens the emotions and vividly expresses the inner life of her characters. Highly recommended.

I need to change my genre of fiction at some point because I find that after a number of novels in which the protagonists are treated badly by the men - I get angry and have trouble seeing the value of the whole novel. This novel tells pieces of the lives of two women, unlike each other in many ways but bound to each other by coincidence. Rae is the young unmarried woman, pregnant by her abusive boyfriend Jessup, and Lila is the aging former fortune-teller who was forced to give up her child (by another useless man, her `married' boyfriend) for adoption years ago and is haunted by it. The two come together when Lila is pushed into reading the tea leaves for Rae - and sees startling similarities in their lives. The book is really about Lila and her inner monologues, her pains, her love and her loss.

The writing in this novel is fine (the 3 stars are for the writing), the plot and interesting one, and the thread of mystical, "visions", and even the various tragedies, add to the lure of the book. But as I mentioned earlier, I am tired of reading books in which women are second class citizens, treated badly and of course suffer for it. Rae's boyfriend has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever and thus it is impossible for a reader with any brain to understand why she continues to seek him out. Not that we need to read Cinderella tales every day, but there is a good deal of true loneliness in this book, and not enough positive balance to make it worth the read.

Fortunes Daughter is about Rae, a young, unmarried girl who is awaiting the birth of her child and Lila, a fortune-teller with no interest in the future who lost her child when she was a young, unmarried girl.

Rae and Lilas lives, fates and futures intertwine as each tries to make peace with the past and become a better person for the future.

Not knowing the what the book was really about, Lilas fortune telling, visions, nightmares, spirituality stuff was different then what I would normally read. I didn't like how Lila was so emotionally torchered all her life and never fully found peace.

Without spoiling the storyline, I can say that as an Adoptive Mom I REALLY didn't like how one element of the book was treated. At all.

All in all, it was an OKAY read. I read it in a weekend and like all of Hoffmans other books, she pulls you in with her ability to turn everyday events into enchanting words.

Fortune's daughter was a novel that I found myself reading as often as possible. Each woman's story was touching and realistic. I could feel the emotions that Rae went through when her boyfriend left her pregnant and lonely. I cried for Lila as she revisited her painful past. This book was very well written and tied two woman together who needed each other whether or not they were ready to admit it. They were able to find strength in each other when no one else understood what they were going through. The outcomes of their situations were suprising and touching. I would definitly recommend this book to my girlfriends.