Customer Reviews

Turtle Moon

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It would appear that I have arrived late at the party since Turtle Moon is only the third book I've read by Alice Hoffman. And while Practical Magic will most likely always remain my favorite, Turtle Moon, will be a close second. Once again as she does in her other books Alice Hoffman presents her readers with wonderful characters who remain with one long after they close the book. In Turtle Moon, she also describes a place both geographically and spiritually so that if we were set down there tomorrow, we would know our way around.

Verity, Florida is the place where more divorced women come to from New York when they leave their husbands. Some come with children who are difficult like Lucy Rosen, while others like Bethany run away on the spur of the moment to leave abusive husbands. Some work at jobs while others hide out with their small children and pawn jewelry for extra cash. And some dread going home to confront their children or to learn that their child has once again been suspended from school. And in this quiet town lives Julian Cash, a policeman with a difficult dog and a difficult past which continues to haunt him. And as if the month of May isn't difficult enough for the residents of this town as sea turtles begin their migration across the streets of Verity, a young woman is found murdered, her baby missing along with Lucy's son who is the worst boy in Verity. Now its up to Julian and Lucy to join together and to find him and the truth out about the murder. And we as readers are like spiders in a web as we move along with the plot, setting and characters of this first rate novel.

Hoffman, as usual has filled her book wth many mystical occurrences and images. She has also filled the pages with themes present in some of her other books. In this case, themes such as relationships between spouses, parents and children, guilt for survivng a tragedy and moving on with one's life despite disappointments. Most of all I see this book as a testimony ultimately to running towards and dealing with ones problems. And as in the past books I've read Hoffman fills her pages with a cast of the most endearing characters. From Lucy and her ex-husband to her Aunt and Uncle, from Julian to his cousin, Ghost, from Bethany to her slimy husband, these are people who will live and breath for you within these pages.

And eventhough I may have been a late arrival, I am now a happy Alice Hoffman fan looking forward to catching up on her older titles as well as her newest book The River King.

Turtle Moon is the fifth book by author Alice Hoffman that I have read. Like many of her other novels, Turtle Moon is filled with a little mystique and an edge of darkness. Turtle Moon takes place in a town called Verity, which is the most humid spot in eastern Florida. Verity is a town where divorced women seem to run to. It is a town where one could find crushed turtle shells on the roads, and it is also a town where weird things happened in the month of May.

Lucy Rosen is one of those divorced women who had run to Verity, and who was also bringing up her troubled son, Keith, on her own. Lucy found her life turning upside down when, on one gloomy night in May, one of her divorced neighbors, Karen Wright, is murdered in her apartment. Not only is Karen's body found in apartment 8C, but Karen's baby daughter is missing . . . and so is Lucy's teenage son, Keith.

As a result, Julian Cash, a broody, silent cop, takes over the case, and find himself taking a special interest in Lucy, as well as her son. Lucy's main objective is to find her son, and to find out who really killed Karen Wright, so suspicion concerning her son will be dropped. Turtle Moon weaves a telling tale of suspense until the very end. Like many of Alice Hoffman's other books, she leaves her characters' futures uncertain and up in the air.

The story is moving and the characters are real. Besides the aforementioned main characters, there's other supporting characters, who add to the wistful feeling of the town of Verity. Turtle Moon is a story that is enjoyable, interesting, and well-written, making Alice Hoffman one of the most intriguing writers of our time.

I don't know how I missed this book in 1992--I must have been living under a rock!!! I highly recommend it.

This story takes place in Verity , Florida, where more divorced women live than in any other town in Florida. Verity itself is one of the characters, it seems: hot, sultry, sweat-soaked. Hoffman's descriptions make you feel the unrelenting heat, see the ripples of heated air, and hear the insects buzzing lazily in the humid air.

There are many wounded souls in Verity, among them Bethany Lee, on the run, with her baby girl, from a custody battle; Lucy Rosen and her 12-year-old son Keith (referred to throughout the book as the meanest boy in Verity), who seems to hate everyone and everything; Julian Cash, the unusual police officer who has become a self-styled expert at finding/tracking people with the aid of his two dogs; and the Angel, Julian's cousin, a ghost who lives near a tree in front of the Burger King.

I love Hoffman's unique vision and her descriptions. One should not read her books looking for solid reality/realism. Nor should her books be read by those looking for a hyped-up story. She lets her characters' actions speak for them in a way that allows the reader to feel their pain and anguish---and their hope. We see the light within each character.

As always, Hoffman mixes realism with fantasy "...he cried so hard that when he finished there was a pile of tiny pebbles at his feet". Or "The air all around the town limits is so thick that sometimes a soul cannot rise and instead attaches itself to a stranger, landing right between the shoulder blades with a thud that carries no more weight than a hummingbird."

I loved this---Lucy's thoughts regarding her son: "There is, after all, strong brown soap for poison ivy, iodine for cuts and bruises, mud for bee stings, honey for sore throats, chalky white casts for broken bones. But where is the cure for meanness of spirit?"

A memorable book!

Hoffman is known for her use of magical realism, or a tendency to weave supernatural elements into the everyday world. She does this through use of her rich, lyrical prose and fantastical, almost mythical characters. While the latter is less evident here than in some of her other works (although an angel appears several times as a minor character), this book does showcase Hoffman's detailed and descriptive writing style. Usually, I don't enjoy books with as little dialogue as this one, but to compensate, Turtle Moon offers complex characters whose interwoven histories draw one into the story, an intriguing mystery involving the murder of a young single mother. Although I have disliked some of Hoffman's other novels, I enjoyed this one enough to continue sampling her work.

STORY BRIEF:

Karen is divorced with a baby. She is on the run from her ex-husband and moves to Verity, Florida. Twelve-year-old Keith is the meanest boy in town and lives with his divorced mother Lucy. Julian is a policeman who uses dogs for police work. Julian rarely uses words and believes that bees and mosquitoes don't sting or bite him because he is too ugly. There is a murder. Keith runs off and may be a witness.

REVIEWER'S OPINION:

This book is fantastic for its unique, odd and mesmerizing characters. I loved reading about these odd people, but as a story, there were too many unanswered questions and too much sadness for me. Throughout the book, too many people lose loved ones. This includes Lucy, who loved and raised Keith. But from the time he was born, Keith never loved Lucy as most children love their mothers, which had the effect of Lucy losing her own child. The worst part of the book was the ending. Someone is about to be killed, a dog saves his life, and then the dog is killed when he didn't have to be. Two days after reading the book, I was still grieving for the dog. Why must great authors do this? Why do authors want to depress their readers? On balance, I do recommend the book, but only if you think you can handle the sadness at the end.

Please see VB's comment at the end of this review for some excellent points.

CAUTION SPOILERS:

Some of the things I liked about the book follow. I loved Julian's and Lucy's odd relationship. I've never seen anything like it. They never talked or acknowledged it. Julian always assumed she would leave him because he was ugly or for some other reason. I was intrigued that he was attracted to her because she was lying. I loved the way Julian just looked at the high school yearbook pictures of two people and could tell much about them, and he was right. I loved Julian's oddities and perception. I loved the relationships between a boy and a baby, and also between the boy and a dog.

I did not like that there were so many unanswered questions. Why did Karen leave her husband? What was so bad about him? Why did his parents want the baby so badly? Why was Lucy unhappy with a far away look in her high school yearbook picture? Why did she leave Evan and New York? Why didn't she and Keith ever get along? Why did Julian decide not to pursue the man who had hired the kidnapper? I assume it was to keep the boy from having to testify. I could be wrong. The story around the character Angel was vague, confusing, and incomplete - especially his interaction with Shannon. That was so confusing that I'm not sure what my questions are. I'd be more willing to accept all the unanswered questions if the ending had been happier.

DATA:

Story length: 275 pages. Swearing language: moderate to strong. Sexual language: none to mild. Number of sex scenes 2. Total number of sex scene pages: 3. Setting: unspecified time, think 1980s, Florida and New York. Copyright: 1992. Genre: human relationships fiction with mystery and romance.

Abandon your stark reality. Leave behind your job, your hobbies, and your responsibilities for about 250 pages and come to Verity, FLorida, where, "Every May, when the sea turtles begin their migration across West Main Street, mistaking the glow of street lights for the moon, people go a little bit crazy," Enjoy May. In Alice Hoffman's "Turtle Moon" we are presented with a town so full of hopeless outsiders and restless natives that each character has a story to tell and each finds his/her place among this compelling surrealistic story. With solid characters which possess histories beautifully illustrated and detailed, human relatioships are explored enough to provide a certain insight into such mortal meddlings but not an excess of such so as to drown the work in sentimentality. When a woman is murdered and her infant daughter missing, suspicions arise around a 12 year old hoodlum who disappears at the same time. The rest of the narrative follows the mother of this pre-teen and a police officer set to track him down. Under the May moomlight events proceed and things emerge from each person in the town yet the book keeps from falling into a meldramtic saga. In direct contrast, Britain's periodical, the "Independent on Sunday" claimed Hoffman's work to be a ". . . psychological thriller. . . " but this is wrong, too. Instead, "Turtle Moon" lies between the two concrete terms, effectively combining an almost dreamlike trance with suspensful conflicts. The hazy atmosphere in which most of the novel takes place can be compared to Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in way of the surrealist nature that surrounds some of the characters. While no one within the pages stands to be immortal, an angel falls in love and an unfavorable man cries stones in his childhood. An important point to mention here is that none of this could take place if it weren't for the setting of Verity and the impressive protrayal which almost causes you to feel the heat and humidity radiating from the Florida sky. Perhaps one fault to be found in this work lies in the suspicion that the plotline becomes a little too coincendental toward the end which can lead us to believe that Hoffman is perhaps acting in excess as she tries for a climactic finale. However, the fact remains that if it weren't for coincedences, there wouldn't be much of a book in any case, so a little forgiveness can be issued here. As an escape book written for women by a woman, things work well in "Turtle Moon". Characters develop, plot intrigues, and setting haunts us if for nothing more than approximately 250 pages. But then again, isn't all we need?

From the first lines of this novel, you know that you are in good hands--the hands, the eyes, the soul of a poet. Alice Hoffman is a master storyteller, her language sumptuous, her stories captivating, her messages clear and vital, if not always happily-ever-after.

Turtle Moon is about the dead coming to life. We discover one character after another--Julian, Keith, Lucy, Arrow--to be among the walking dead, shut out, by their own design, from all that is rich and true in life. Dead man, dead boy, dead woman, dead dog walking.

In the course of this novel, all receive new opportunities, and all--however reluctantly--return to the world of the living, the feeling, the loving, the trusting.

As with most Hoffman works, there are attention-getting subplots, touches of mystery, flourishes of magical realism, the occasional symbol--perfectly poised, subtle yet clear--and vivid description to spare.

Hoffman writes to celebrate the miracles, the madnesses, the daily sorrows, the tentative victories that come with being alive. Living, she insists, is always better than going through the motions.

Turtle Moon has everything--even a ghost living in a tree--waiting for, well, just waiting. This is Hoffman at the height of her powers.

I first read this novel when it was published in 1992 and have reread it periodically. It never fails to cast its spell. Hoffman is a writer of great subtlety. It is easy to gobble up her books but, if you do, you miss much of their charm. The clarity of her prose and her talent for hovering on the edge of the magical is so perfectly balanced that you find yourself taking the most impossible occurrences for granted.

I love Hoffman's men. She has a delicious way of creating very tough, almost brutal men who are, none the less, irresistible. In Julian Cash she has created the most tantalizing character so far. He, and Stephen of "Second Nature" remain my favorite Hoffman men. Julian is a haunted man with a bit of a chip on his shoulder who only needs the right sort of woman.... and Lucy proves to be that woman.

I am not a fan of "romance" in the contemporary sense of the word. But this is classic romance. Julian reminded me for some bizarre reason of Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre" --- gruff and impossible and just dying to be loved. Now, that's a compelling hero!

TURTLE MOON is all a mystery should be. It is scary, seductive, sensual, complex, and logical. Furthermore, it has a supernatural element. I found TURTLE MOON totally enjoyable, although I wished at times the narrator would have slowed her pace.

This my second Hoffman book, the first being "Here on Earth", and it reinforced my opinion of her writing. Hoffman is a talented story teller who adds an interesting otherworldliness to her novels but there is not much else about her style to grab on to. The prose is basic, the characters under developed, and some of the events are so implausible that they become irksome. She also tends to recreate the divorced or unhappily married woman with a mixed up teenager in her books. In this particular book the numerous divorced female characters all blend together. This makes it difficult to remember who is who and what their histories are (something that you need to follow for the story to make sense). All in all, Hoffman is a great read for the train or beach she but doesn't really challenge or satisfy me.