The Unknown Writer: The Story Sisters

Haunting Hoffman
Book Review: Audible.com version of Alice Hoffman's The Story Sisters

A quick, happy fix? Not this novel, but magically like life, if you can endure and hold on through the dark, rough squalls of the storm, you will find rich, warm yellow light on the other side. I find this a more satisfying read than The Third Angel, which I loved, but this The Story Sisters is more lyrical, despite the tragedy lurking around every echoing corridor, beauty survives, joy bursts up like tomatoes of gold and green and brown in surprising places. Elv and Meg are fully drawn characters, even if they frustrate you to near death with their angst and self-loathing. But life has bad things, and often we lie to ourselves, hardly admitting that dark secret from back when, but it is always there, the demonic shadow, following along, pouncing upon every doubt, whispering in punctuation to every flaw. Alice Hoffman shows us that despite the bad things in every story, life is worth living, it is magical, and to my heart this story comes close to my two favorites The Probable Future and Practical Magic. Nancy Travis reads dramatically and does subtle voices that do not intrude, and flows in great rhythms and cadences. The Story Sisters, no romantic fluff here, but true romance, bone deep, painful, mysterious and haunting. Funerals with nary a wedding, and more than a couple of calamities. But there is also invented language, fireflies of crystalline enchantment flitting all about the story. Read this novel once, and it is assured you will read it again.

Art et Amour Toujours
Douglas Christian Larsen