Publication Date: April 1, 2002 | Age Level: 9 and up
Three friends in search of a place to belong find that home is truly where the heart is in this new tale of enchantment from master storyteller Alice Hoffman.
13 year-old Martha Glimmer is convinced this is the worst time of her life. Her mother died, she grew 7 inches, and she has to put up with a woman who plys Martha's lonely father with food and opinions about how 13 year-old girls should behave. Martha longs to leave Oak Grove and travel. Martha's best friend Trevor and his brother Eli also want to leave Oak Grove. Nicknamed Trout and Eel because of the thin webbing between their fingers and toes, they long to see the ocean.
Fans of Alice Hoffman's first novella for children, Aquamarine, will be thrilled to discover Indigo, another watery tale that blends fantasy with reality in a surprising coming-of-age quest. Thirteen-year-old Martha and her best friends, brothers nicknamed Trout and Eel for their fishy tendencies and webbed fingers and toes, long to escape from their dull, dry town. Their ambivalent feelings about running away, though, are reinforced when a fierce storm interrupts their journey and helps them begin to answer their questions about who they are "at the deepest core"--and who they will become. Unfortunately, there's not enough time for Hoffman to develop her characters here, and an implausibly pat denouement may leave the reader wishing the book were longer--or shorter--but the elements of friendship, loss, and hope will come through for those who take it for the parable it is. (Ages 10 to 14) --Emilie Coulter
From Publishers Weekly
This slim offering finds Hoffman (Aquamarine) once again in mermaid mode. In landlocked Oak Grove where a flood years ago has made the townspeople so fearful of water that the local swimming pool stays drained 13-year-old Martha Glimmer mourns her mother's death and chafes under the disapproving ministrations of busybody neighbor Hildy Swoon. Martha's best friends Trevor and Eli McGill adopted brothers better known as Trout and Eel have problems of their own, including town gossip about their odd eating habits (salt water, raw tuna) and their webbed fingers and toes. After Hildy ruins Martha's prized possession, a shawl that had belonged to her mother, and the hydrophobic Mr. McGill repaints his sons' bedroom white (they preferred the "endless blue" of the sea), the three of them decide to run away. Broad clues point to the story's core secret, that Trout and Eel are the sons of a mermaid. An accomplished storyteller, Hoffman deftly interweaves themes of friendship, identity and the tension between family ties and freedom that adolescence inevitably brings ("I thought if you got too near to water, you would swim away," says Charlie McGill to his boys. They will, they assure him "But then we'll swim back"). However, the text has been stretched to fit the format of a novel, which may unfairly raise readers' expectations. Together with the sketchy characterizations and particularly the author's cool, dispassionate tone, the presentation may hamper readers' full pleasure in the tale. Ages 10-up. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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.
Trevor, nicknamed Trout, and Eli, nicknamed Eel, are brothers. They received their nicknames because they have webbed hands and feet. They were adopted when their mother, a mermaid, drowned. Trout is thirteen and Eli is eleven. Their dream is to go swimming.
Martha is the thirteen-year-old girl who lives next door to Trout and Eel. She hates her size, age, and Oak Grove. She hates how it never rains and how the grass is so dry. She is also very sad because her mother died last year and Hildy Swoon, a neighbor, has taken over. Hildy has made it clear that she isn't interested in Martha's company.
Plot:
This is a story about three friends who hated their town. All of the buildings were white, it never rained, and the grass was dry. They longed to find the ocean. They decided to run away during the night. Martha brought some snacks but only enough for a day. They made it to the woods the first night but a bad storm came in the morning. A branch fell and broke Martha's arm. They decided to turn back so that Martha could go to Dr. Marsh, but the town began to flood. The brothers realized that the dam needed to be taken down to let the water flow out and allow the town to emerge from the water. The brothers swam to the dam and pushed down the big stone. The brothers felt at home in the water. The boy's parents always feared that if the boys found water that they would not want to come back. Martha's dad had become so sad that he had lost sight of anything fun. The flood was actually a good thing. The boy's parents realized that their boys would indeed return. It also gave Martha's dad a new perspective. It had made Oak Grove seem brand new, as if the floodwaters had washed everything clean.
Setting:
Town of Oak Grove, which is far away from water. The story takes place in the month of July
Theme: The Ocean
Rating:
I liked the story because it has a lot of imagination and description. It paints a great picture for the reader.
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This particular story has some very intriguing characters. Such as: Trout and Eel-- the two adopted young men with startling qualities such as webbed fingers. And an affinity for the water, in a town where that love for water is not accepted at all. Martha-- a young lady struggling with a search for idenity and the loss of her mother. She is filled with longing to be somewhere else. Various Townspeople-- scarred with a paralyzing fear of the water. Which directly impacts the water loving young men in the story.
The only problem with this story is that it doesn't go to the depth an inquisitive reader would like. I find this especially vexing because the characters are so likeable and you just want to know more! I do however reccomend this book. It is a fast paced read and is enjoyable if brief. Pick it up and get attached to a quirky bunch of characters, only to find yourself wanting more!
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"Indigo," by Alice Hoffman, tells the story of Martha Glimmer, a 13-year old girl who lives in the inland town of Oak Grove. Her best friends are Trevor "Trout" McGill, age 13, and his brother Eli (known as "Eel"), age 11. The boys are odd outsiders with curious webbed toes and fingers.
Ultimately, the three kids go on a journey of self-discovery. These are three likeable, interesting characters and Hoffman tells their story with a simple, clean prose style that is very effective. Straddling a line between fantasy and science fiction, "Indigo" ultimately remains grounded in the very real theme of young people discovering themselves and their places in the larger world.
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