Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic #1)

One of the Book of the Month selections last fall was The Rules of Magic, the recently-released prequel to Hoffman's classic Practical Magic, which has also been adapted to the screen in a version featuring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the main characters.  I've seen the movie, and liked it quite a bit, and the prequel intrigued me--but I felt like to be on the same page, I should read the original first.

To those who've seen the movie: the book is very different.  But I think they are equally good, in different ways.  The book has less of a focus on the trouble brought on by the vile Jimmy and more of a focus on the relationships between the two sisters, the growing-up of Sally's daughters, and the powerful ways in which love affects all of their lives.  Jimmy and the trouble he brings are still present, but they don't provide the same central propulsion that they do in the movie.  Additionally, while the movie takes place on the island in Massachusetts, the setting moves away from there after the first part of this book, instead being set mostly in a small community in New York where no one has ever heard of the Owenses and never thinks they might be witches, which in itself lends a very different atmosphere to the story.

This book definitely falls into the magical realism category.  Fantastic things happen and are treated as just everyday happenstance, not just by Sally and Gillian and their family but by others around them.  The Owenses might be the source of the magic, but it's not strange in and of itself.  Magical realism tends to have a definite writing style associated with it; not a ton of dialogue, but a lot of prose narrative relating what's happening, probably because the characters commenting too much on the magical events would contribute to breaking the spell, as it were.  That said, the characters still feel real and complete and the events of the book, while of course strange and unreal, still seem to ring true.

The focus of the book here is on the relationships between the characters, with the Jimmy subplot being just that.  The sisters, the aunts, Sally's daughters--the ties between all of them are stretched and warped and torn, and the story here is both that separation and bringing them back together, with a few extra folks thrown in for good measure.  Luckily, this is a definite strength of the book.  Hoffman shows that you can absolutely hate someone for what they've done or what they've pulled you into, but love them and want to help them at the same time.  Additionally, part of the "relationship" aspect of this is Sally and Gillian's relationships with themselves.  Both ultimately fled Massachusetts and the aunts, leaving their whacky childhoods and accusations of witchcraft behind, but are forced to come back to their heritage and embrace it in order to solve the problems that rear their ugly heads.  The climax isn't very climactic in a movie sort of way--there's no possession, no calling of the phone tree, etc.--but is extremely climactic in how you can see Sally and Gillian change.  It might not look monumental, but it certainly feels so.

It's a slow story, a lot of wandering rather than racing, backtracking and then jumping back to the present.  Some people feel like they should have been included more than they were--like Gary!  Where the heck was all of his page time?  Ben got so much in comparison, and even the teenage love interests got more.  But overall, it still felt, well, magical, and I really enjoyed reading it.

4 stars out of 5.