Customer Reviews

The Probable Future

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Alice Hoffman's PRACTICAL MAGIC is easily her most popular title, yet she hasn't written anything similar to that book in many years, much to the dismay of her many fans. Subsequent books have ranged from disturbing to unfulfilling, as she tackled such powerful themes as spousal abuse, hazing and identity change.

But this book returns her to the genre that suits her best: magical realism. The wonderful book spins the tale of a family of magical women, who pass psychic gifts from generation to generation. It's up the the latest of the Sparrow women, a rebellious teenager, to trace the disturbing history of this haunted family. Meanwhile, her mother, unhappily married and attempting to turn her back on the Sparrow gifts, learns from her daughter the terrible truth of the original Sparrow "witch."

It's glorious reading and done in the lush style that Hoffman wears like a kid glove. Any Hoffman fan who has been disappointed in recent years will love this book, as will newcomers to Hoffman's work.

Alice Hoffman is utterly amazing. Her books are magical, and I'm not just refering to the storylines. Alice Hoffman's writing seems to take on a surreal quality. Her words take you places. As a reader, you are drawn into the lives of her characters. You can feel their heartache, their happiness and their frustrations. But her talent doesn't stop there. Alice Hoffman's ability to describe surroundings, smells, tastes and textures is truly magical. The Probable Future is just one shining example oh how talented she is.

The story is set in the small town of Unity, Massachussets. Unity may be slight in terms of population and shopping malls, but it's history is massive. Many of Unity's families carry with them a dark past. Their ancesters took part in the murder of a young girl. Although centuries have past since the incident, Unity is still filled with regret, loss and mystery.

The Sparrow women have been an intregal part of Unity's history for hundred's of years. Each woman is given a "special gift" on her thirteenth birthday. A magical, although sometimes practical, ability is given to each young girl. Eleanor Sparrown can spot a liar. Jenny Sparrow is plagued with the dreams of others, and Stella Sparrow is able to view death before it occurs. The Sparrow women are special, although they may not enjoy their talents. This is the story of how these woman live with each other, and discover the magic of their family history.

The Probable Future is a unbelievable book. You will relish in the sights and sounds of Unity and feel the emotions of each and every character as clearly as if you were a Unity resident yourself. Alice Hoffman's ability to stimulate your senses will allow you to sniff the sweet scent of lake water, touch the old oak trees and taste the culinary delights of Hull's Teahouse. When you finish you feel the history of this small town and understand why those Sparrown women are such an intregal part of it.

Probable Future had a future. The premise, a family history of girls (the only ones born into the family) coming into a "gift" at thirteen set up as prelude to some family dysfunction has a lot of promise. There are a few very strong characters and some wonderful passages, especially in the latter part. Unfortunately, the story never really lives up to its premise. Stella, newly come into her gifts of seeing people's "probably futures" (seemingly their deaths only), is daughter to Jenny whose own gift of being able to dream other people's dreams led her into an unhappy marriage which has recently ended. She in turn is daughter to Elinor, the stern matriarch whose gift of always being able to spot a lie hasn't prevented her from missing certain truths and has left her, along with some family tragedy, alone and bitter. All three of them are "Sparrow girls" descended from Rebecca Sparrow who long ago was drowned as a witch and who passed on the legacy of a single gift at thirteen. Had Hoffman stopped there and explored the family dynamics she could have had a great tale. Unfortunately, she feels the need to spice it up with some more urgent drama.
The drama comes when Stella tells her dad Will, (a charming man of absolutely no responsibility we are told again and again) that a girl will have her throat slit and asks him to try to prevent it. When it happens anyway he becomes the target of the ensuing investigation due to his strange foreknowledge. The killer then tries to track Stella down to prevent him from being uncovered.
This is by far the weakest part of the plot. The killer's actions make very little sense, the police and judicial systems are implausible at best in their own actions, Will is far too dim, and the way in which the killer pops up and gets resolved is just very awkwardly handled. All of this from a plot arc that is really unnecessary.
The gifts themselves are handled in clumsy fashion and with a slapdash sort of fashion. Stella sees preventable deaths but only of some people. She knows when they'll die, but only for some people. The visions are metaphorical, except when they're literal. Elinor can spot a lie which she takes as meaning she can spot a liar (I'm not clear on if this is her flaw or Hoffman's), but not always. The gifts conveniently occur for plot movement. They are seemingly never discussed among the women yet somehow there is shared information--either an inconsistency or a section the reader should have seen. The biggest oversight with regard to the gifts is the way in which Stella's seems to have almost no emotional impact on her. A thirteen-year-old girl surrounded by people whose deaths she sees who seems to experience little to no emotion? Thirteen-year-old girls have emotional responses to the new paint on their lockers. The impact of her gift was just too easily glossed over.
There are further flaws of too easy resolutions, too shallow characterization, and repetitive imagery where Hoffman batters the reader a bit too much to make a point or simply doesn't trust the reader to catch an allusion or thematic lead. And then there are simply throwaway lines like a character getting into Harvard due only to their SAT's. Harvard turns down kids with perfect scores; nobody gets in based on their SAT's.
Interestingly, by far the strongest characters are also the oldest--Elinor and her doctor. His characterization stands out for its richness and depth, while hers is not as strong but still a highlight of the book. The doctor's son Hap is not drawn as fully but the details are rich and human. The others are weakly portrayed with some being only two-dimensional.
The historical sections are some of the strongest writing and one wishes there could have been more. Just as one wishes Hoffman could have focused more on the relationships among the three generations without the distraction of the murder or a "bad-boy" dispute between mom and daughter that seldom rises above sitcom fare.
People who like Hoffman will probably still enjoy the book despite its flaws. It's more a frustratingly weak book than a bad book. But those looking for an introduction to her work probably want to start elsewhere.

As someone who has read all of Alice Hoffman's books, I feel that her latest seems a little formulaic when compared with some of the others (especially _Practical Magic_). It is a story of three women of the magical, bewitching Sparrow family: the men they are and are not supposed to be with, townspeople who don't understand and therefore fear them, and the tricky relationships within their own family. Since the story line seemed so familiar it took a little while for the book to snare me, however, the ending is beautiful and made it all worthwhile.

Alice Hoffman does it again. The Probable Future gently pulls us into the life of a small New England town through generations of the Sparrow women. Though the setting is contemporary with three generations of living Sparrows, we look back often enough to understand how their present day struggles relate to the Past. It reminds us to ponder our own heritage, how we got to be who we are and where we are. Of course, there is something magical about each woman and that is fun. You'll have to read the book to discover why it is of special interest to March babies. A nice, curl-up-under-the-covers read.

Look and you will find the stories behind the relationships of mothers and daughters. I loved this book, even my teenage (I'm not my mother) daughter loved this book. I can not wait to let my mother read it. This just might be my favorite book of Alice Hoffman.

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.

As a great fan of Alice Hoffman I've read all her books many times, with a special love for Practical Magic. The books written after Practical Magic have lacked something, though I can't point out excactly what. The Probable Future however captures everything I love about Hoffman's writing - the everyday magic, the love between the characters and the beautiful description of the surroundings and Unity. Like JK Rowling (author of Harry Potter) I find the magic described in her books so natural that you don't even consider it to be supernatural. I really loved it - and cried at the end.

Imagine a family whose past begain in the birth of 'gifts.' To this one family line, the women are all given a gift on their thirteenth birthday. When she was young, Jenny Sparrow found herself able to dream the dreams of others, and suffered under a bad relationship with a mother whose gift was to immediately tell who is lying.

Jenny ran away with the wrong type of boy, and it is soon the time for her own daughter to turn thirteen. And Stella, her daughter, gets a the most terrible gift of all: she sees the future - but specifically, how people will die.

When Stella tries to prevent a murder, and her father - who acted in her stead - is the one accused of the crime, Jenny has no choice but to send her daughter to live with her mother. There, Jenny and her cancer-ridden grandmother Elinor learn a lot about fate, death, and just what it means to be alive. Events conspire to force Jenny, and her husband, to return to the city they ran away from, and before long, passions and gifts are intertwining.

With typical Hoffman elegance to the prose and emotionality of the characters, 'The Probable Future' was an absolute joy to read. I am a huge fan of Hoffman to begin with, but this one is on par with 'The Blue Diary' and 'Practical Magic', two of Hoffman's best. I read it in one extended setting (with bothersome interruptions of meals and work), and cannot wait to pass this along to another Hoffman fan.

If you've never read Hoffman, you simply must read her for her elegant style, her immediacy in writing in the present tense, and her beautiful use of power, magic, and folklore in the evocation of characters.

'Nathan

This beautiful novel is filled with so many different kids of love: between mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren, first love for teenagers and more mature love between adults, old friendship and romantic love in the geriatric set, love of family and place and ancestors. The very real and likeable charaters all seem at one time or another to cause unintentional pain to someone they love and every character must in her (or his) own time find a way to atone and to forgive.

The setting in the tiny town of Unity really does bring everyone together and forces families to work out their problems. The imagery of nature, flowers, bees and animals is wonderful as is the weaving in of the history of the town and the Sparrow family. The magical gifts of each of the Sparrows are multifaceted. Elinor can always tell a lie, unless it is told to her by someone she loves. Jenny can sense other's dreams but becomes confused about who is doing the dreaming. Stella can forsee other's deaths but her images are easily mis-interpreted, and, maybe, a few of those deaths can be prevented.

Elinor, Jenny and Stella reflect three passages in a woman's life and at different times I identified with each. They are funny, engaging, smart women. This is my first Alice Hoffman and I plan to read many more.