Customer Reviews

Probable Future

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Probable Future opens in familiar Alice Hoffman territory: in a New England town, Jenny Sparrow frets over the legacy her daughter Stella will receive upon waking on her thirteenth birthday. All Sparrow woman - and they are all women - find their one "talent", always something magical or supernatural, on this day. The first Sparrow, Rebecca, could not feel pain while Jenny's mother Elinor can instantly detect a lie. Jenny herself dreams other people's dreams. In true Hoffman fashion, the gift Stella receives affects not only the direction of her life but of those who love her - Jenny, Elinor, Jenny's errant ex-husband Will; Will's brother Matt; Liza, the owner of the town tea house; Hap, Stella's new best friend; and Brock Stewart, Elinor's doctor and companion.

While parts of this novel are groaningly familiar, Hoffman deftly moves from these moments to something more solid and truthful. The author has her own gift, that of confident narration. Her characterizations are memorably detailed, with the portrayal of Brock Stewart perhaps the most touching I have encountered in her fiction. Unlike in Turtle Moon and Practical Magic, the magic realism here is not as much a crucial part of the story as it is an overlay. Even though Stella's gift does prompt a journey back to the Sparrows, the reasons seem forced and the action unnecessary. This story would be every bit as moving without the Sparrow women's gifts, fireflies that ignite, and bees that demand politeness. Some fans might be disappointed by the lack of seamless integration of magic and realism in this novel, but others will be thankful the author did not force it upon a story which has its most honest moments between ordinary people. Love and the author's literary expressions of its intricacies figure heavily, verging on sentimentality, but again, Hoffman seems to instinctively know when to abandon this direction just her writing is in danger of becoming maudlin.

Turtle Moon and Practical Magic remain Alice Hoffman's most inventive novels; however, The Probable Future has its own charms. Quiet, loving, and upbeat, this novel is more likely to appeal to women than to men.

The Sparrows are a family of women who've lived in a small Massachusetts town since colonial times, their lives enlivened by a magical gift (different for each of them) that first manifests itself on their thirteenth birthdays. As is often the case with magic, the term "gift" is applied here fairly loosely. In the present day, Elinor always knows a lie, her daughter Jenny experiences other people's dreams, and granddaughter Stella, just turned thirteen, has developed the ability to see how people will die. The relationship-wrecking potential of the first two gifts is of course blindingly obvious, and the third would be a heavy burden for anyone to bear-especially a thirteen-year-old who's not speaking to the mother who's screwing up their relationship by trying to avoid all of her mother's mistakes.
These are well-drawn characters who often inspire, simultaneously, the desire to give them tea and crackers and the desire to knock their heads together. Jenny is completely justified and utterly wrong-headed in her resentment of her mother; so is Stella. Jenny is absolutely correct in having concluded, after having it pounded into her head repeatedly, that Stella's father, Will Avery, is a lying, cheating (...)who can be relied on only to let everyone down. Stella is also right in believing him to be a loving, devoted parent who actually listens to her, which her mother does not.
There is a plot in here, involving Stella's gift of seeing deaths accidentally landing Will in jail, charged with murder, but the plot is not the point. The focus of this book is the engaging, and ultimately optimistic, story of the tangled relationships of the Sparrow women and their friends and relations.
An enjoyable lazy-afternoon read.

I'll tell you reading some of the reviews on this site, I thought, wow, this is a hard audience to please! Hoffman has so many plot lines, and all of the characterization felt deep and well-thought out. But the thing is, I didn't stop to notice this during the book, because I was just into the story.

I disagree that Will Avery was unbelievable. Everyone knows a slacker in life who works so hard to get away with not working. I also loved the magical elements -- and how it made you think, you know, being mortal -- not such a bad thing.

Really great read!

I love escaping into the magical worlds Alice Hoffman creates in her novels and The Probable Future is no different. The story centers on a teen named Stella Sparrow Avery who, like other teens receives a gift on her 13th birthday. Her gift however is a legacy of magical powers that has affected a long line of Sparrow women. For one, the gift was the ability to run faster than anyone; another could stay underwater for 20 minutes at a time. The first, Rebecca, felt no pain, and yet another was a skilled midwife. Stella's grandmother Elinor can tell when someone is lying, and Stella's mother Jenny dreams other people's dreams. Although each gift sounds fabulous, it is a case of be careful what you wish for, because there is a dark side to each. Stella's gift is disturbing: the ability to see how people are going to die. She learns fast that her power has to be used judiciously when she shares information about a potential murder victim with her father and inadvertently makes him a murder suspect. Stella is sent to live with her estranged grandmother Elinor and is soon followed by her mother, Jenny who is not happy to return to the small New England village of Unity. Stella begins to come to terms with her gift as she opens her heart to the people she meets and begins to understand the family history that has inevitably shaped her life.

Reconciliation and forgiveness are the main themes of the novel: about the need to forgive each other, forgive oneself and forgive past wrongs that have been carried down through generations. It is also about the transforming power of love. Hoffman contains her themes within an intricately weaved story that wraps around you like a warm blanket. It is a wonderful story of family love and the relationships between mothers and daughters. It would make a great read for any book club - there is plenty in it to discuss.

With the exception of a few abrupt segues, I enjoyed this book immensely. The female characters are rich and diverse. The story line has just enough mystery and magic to hook the reader, yet remain believable. I liked the way Hoffman wove the historical events of a small town and its treatment of a woman with the current happenings to her descendents. This is a morality story, it's a love story, it's a story of mother-daughter relationships, it's a story of the rites of passage from adolescence to adulthood, it's a story of small town politics and fear, and finally it's a story about the loneliness and courage it takes to be different and trust in your probable future.

The Sparrow family have lived in Unity almost since the town has existed, in an old house that's been added on to so many times it's assumed the shape of a wedding cake. The residents of Unity know it as Cake House, and its inhabitants present a mystery the townspeople don't want to solve, or even have much to do with, in spite of the sacrifices the Sparrow women have made to the community through the past two centuries-or perhaps because of them.

Each Sparrow woman develops a unique gift at the age of thirteen, and these gifts aren't necessarily blessings. Elinor Sparrow can tell when someone is lying. Her daughter Jenny can enter others' dreams. Jenny's daughter Stella, in her turn, wakens on her thirteenth birthday with the ability to see how some people will die. Her gift lands Stella's father, Will Avery, in jail when he's wrongly accused of murder after trying to warn the authorities about one of his daughter's premonitions.

This is not a story of how the murder is solved. In fact, that becomes a minor detail. It's a story about a family, a town, and how a much older mystery is brought to rest, of how the Sparrow women first came to live in Unity, the part they've played in its history, and where they're headed. It isn't packed with action, either. The reader enters the life of each character as one would enter the life of a new friend, easing one's way in and beginning to see the world through the other's eyes. The patient reader is rewarded by the full richness of Alice Hoffman's writing. In the world of novelists, Hoffman is the equivalent of the dedicated cook who spends an entire day preparing a meal with love, creating everything from scratch, and possibly by magic. Other cooks open cans and stir up store-bought mixes, some toss everything into the microwave oven. They feed our stomachs, while the gifted cook-and author-feeds our souls.

I'm not a big fan of "magic realism" so this book was always going to be a hard sell for me. It tells the story of a family of women, the "Sparrows" each of whom develops a special gift when they turn 13. The grandmother can instantly detect lies; the mother sees other peoples' dreams and the daughter sees how people will ultimately die. Previous generations also had "superpowers" of various kinds.
The story takes place in the misty, dreamy, magical town of Unity, Massachusetts, where nothing is as it seems. The best aspect of this book for me were the descriptions of this strange place -- the smell of the vegetation in the woods, the different kinds of rains that fall, the mist, the humid fragrant air, the bees, the frogs, the orchids and roses and the strange smell of water that clings to the Sparrow women.
That's the plus: on the other side of the ledger, the plot is laughably predictable. There wasn't a single development I didn't see coming 60 pages in advance. Everything is ultimately tied up neatly and happily like a Christmas present wrapped with a bow. The characters are also very weak. Each one is a kind of walking cliche. There is the serious brother and the wastrel (the men in this book are particularly poor), the good doctor, the evil murderer etc etc.
I was tired of this book by the end. I admired some of the writing but it didn't add up to a satisfying novel.

I am fascinated with how well Hoffman composes magical realism. She is so adept at her deep character development that she is able to add some of the mysterious to them. This book is about a family of women who all wake up on their thirteenth birthday with a "gift." Stella, the teenager in this novel, wakes to find she can see how people are going to die. Well, this gets her father in trouble and eventually they all have to move back to their hometown. Parts of the novel were extremely predictable (hence the 4/5 rating), but I enjoyed the rest for how characters thought of each other and how they developed such tightly-woven friendships. And I enjoyed that the book was about a multitude of characters, not just the three living Sparrow women.

I loved Practical Magic and looked forward to this one, but by the time I reached the end, it was a sheer chore just to try and finish. Hoffman does a fantastic job with description but I think she focuses way too much on that front. I felt no sympathy for the characters because really, there was a serious lack of development in each and every one of them. The idea of the Sparrow women and their gifts and their history was an interesting start, but that was really the only thing good about this book. Believe me when I say I never throw books away because I always donate copies if I don't want to keep them, but with this, I tossed it BEFORE I even finished.

This was a lovely book! I enjoyed reading it :-) It was very sensually descriptive with respect to nature ...the bees, flowers, lake water... heavy olfactory based that left the reader wishing she could dive into the pages to smell, see and feel all that was being described. I loved the writing style. As for the story, it was a superb mix of mystical, mystery & family - struggles, bonds, love & survival!