The Red Garden [Kindle Edition]

Alice Hoffman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hoffman brings us 200 years in the history of Blackwell, a small town in rural Massachusetts, in her insightful latest. The story opens with the arrival of the first settlers, among them a pragmatic English woman, Hallie, and her profligate, braggart husband, William. Hallie makes an immediate and intense connection to the wilderness, and the tragic severing of that connection results in the creation of the red garden, a small, sorrowful plot of land that takes on an air of the sacred. The novel moves forward in linked stories, each building on (but not following from) the previous and focusing on a wide range of characters, including placid bears, a band of nomadic horse traders, a woman who finds a new beginning in Blackwell, and the ghost of a young girl drowned in the river who stays in the town's consciousness long after her name has been forgotten. The result is a certain ethereal detachment as Hoffman's deft magical realism ties one woman's story to the next even when they themselves are not aware of the connection. The prose is beautiful, the characters drawn sparsely but with great compassion. (Jan.) (c)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

According to the critics, The Red Garden is among Alice Hoffman’s recent best. She can occasionally be melodramatic, her stories overrun by fairy tale syntax. Although the magical abounds here—women become eels—there is little, if anything, that is overdone. Not every story is wholly believable, but “Hoffman’s consciously simple style transforms people’s pain into mythic parable” (Washington Post), so that the mythic then becomes lore. Only the Boston Globe cited the collection as somewhat uneven, with the best stories (including “The Red Garden”) absolutely bewitching and the lesser ones simplistic and implausible. But that is to be expected from an author with her own peculiar, enchanting brand of magical realism.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 414 KB
• Publisher: Broadway; Reprint edition (January 25, 2011)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004J4WL6O
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (109 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,136 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #23 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Alternate History

More About the Author

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Alice Hoffman Magic, December 1, 2010

By 

Katawampas (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Red Garden (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This story is pure Alice Hoffman magic. She begins the story in 1750 with the settlers who founded the town of Bearsville, MA (name changed to Blackwell in 1786). Every chapter moves the story to another time period concluding sometime in the 2000's. The book reads like a seamless book of short stories, each chapter informing and building on the previous. Hoffman has a gift for sharply focusing on the main character of each time period as she moves the story of this small mountain town along, revealing an inner truth.

Characters come to town, live, leave, die, wander, return but always carry the thread of the town with them. The characters are so beautifully written, it's hard to choose a favorite chapter/story. The two chapters I enjoyed most were "The Principles of Devotion", the story of a loyal dog living at the grave of his owner and the "Monster of Blackwell", a young man who separates himself from society and lives in the mountains outside Blackwell. These chapters are achingly beautiful.

The red garden refers to the founder's (Hallie Brady) garden where the soil is as red as blood and everything that grows in it is red. Perhaps a symbol of life and death; the connection we all have to nature and each other.

Hoffman doesn't go on and on with flowery prose; her writing is edited, beautiful and powerful. She always manages to capture the beauty of a moment and the setting of the story, infusing it with her understanding of humanity.

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TIME WAS TRICKIER THAN HE'D IMAGINED IT TO BE, January 3, 2011

By 

Pamela A. Poddany "Book Freak!" (Toledo, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Red Garden (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

THE RED GARDEN

Alice Hoffman once again mixes the mystical and logical and bakes us a wonderful array of stories that are sure to please.

THE RED GARDEN consists of a series of short stories all inter-woven and blending together to create one of the best books Hoffman has ever written. As the stories unfold, we first meet one Hallie Brady and a handful of other settlers who are stranded during inclement weather. They survive the hardships of their first winter together and create a new town called Bearsville. This first story or chapter, THE BEAR'S HOUSE, starts in the year 1750, with the final story, KING OF THE BEES, taking place currently.

Hoffman introduces us to a number of engaging characters who are all somehow related to someone in this small Massachusetts town. Each character tells their story and we are constantly meeting interesting, wonderful, and magical people. The same characters pop up here and there throughout the entire book. Each story is different and enchanting, moving through time and history, taking the reader on an awesome journey.

History and fiction blend well together in this book; we are walked through the late 1700's, the Civil War, the Depression, love, family life, new people in town, despair, marriages, affairs, ghosts, hardships, the struggles and victories of every day life, etc; even Johnny Appleseed makes an appearance.

The reference to the red garden -- which seems to bind together this little town -- is a garden where everything grows red -- green beans, lilac bushes, cucumbers, and so on. Is this a magical piece of property?

I literally flew through the pages of this book. Hoffman has always been a favorite author of mine although her past few books were a bit of a disappointment. For me, she totally redeems herself in this new book. This is the Hoffman I love.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading any of Hoffman's works, THE RED GARDEN would be a fantastic place to start.

Thank you.

Pam

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lushly written and magical., January 14, 2011

By 

Sheri in Reho (Rehoboth Beach, DE) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Red Garden (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

If you're all about realism and everything making sense, this is probably not the book for you; however, if you're able to surrender to magical storytelling and a more fairy tale approach, I highly recommend it.

Hoffman begins her series of stories about town of Blackwell, Massachusetts, with the town's original settlers in 1750. Most prominent among them is a true frontier woman--Hallie Brady. Hallie, you see, saves the original settlers from starvation during their first winter, when the menfolk weren't quite up to the task! It is in this first story that the long-running theme of bears and the red garden begins.

The book's title refers to the garden from which it is said only red things grow. There is a history to this garden, of course; a sad one which involves both Hallie and bears...or rather one particular bear whom she befriended that first hard winter. Through hundreds of years and generations descending from those first settlers, Hoffman tells the story of this area, these people and this garden. I think my favorite story is from 1956, called The Monster of Blackwell. A very Beauty and the Beast kind of story--sad but also tender and beautiful.

The writing here is splendid for the most part, though I found the book's last two stories a terrible disappointment--an ending not befitting this lovely book in my opinion. Hoffman does a superb job in describing the environs. I could see it in my mind as I read--always my favorite kind of storytelling. Her way with words is just joyous to read. A few excerpts:

"There were little frogs in the puddles and white butterflies

with green specks on paper-thin wings circling the purple

thistle. The sun was like honey, falling in splashes."

"She felt as if she had stepped into a pool of treachery..."

"The only way to fight evil is with joy, Azurine had written.

Forget everything we've ever been taught."

"I wondered if the electricity at Luna Park had seeped into

his skin, and that was why his meanness grew, like a charge,

burning brighter throughout the spring."

Chances are you may not like all the stories (or all the people) equally, but the sum of the parts is most definitely worth reading. Sit down with a cup of coffee, throw a blanket over your legs and settle in for a trip to The Red Garden.