Synopses & Reviews
With her signature "vivid, convincing characters [and] uncommon insight," (
People) Alice Hoffman in
Illumination Night follows the lives of an old woman whose last mission is to save her granddaughter's soul; a family torn apart by a wife's fears and a husband's desires-and a high school girl who comes to Martha's Vineyard against her will, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption.
"[A] bright constellation of characters...draws the reader into the dusky, dreamy world of Alice Hoffman." (St. Petersburg Times)
"Alice Hoffman hits bull's eyes on the incomprehensions between the young and the old, on the magic and pain of ordinary life. She is erotic and romantic...funny...clever and humane." (The Times, London)
"Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things." (Amy Tan)
"One of the best writers we have today-insightful, funny, intelligent, with a distinctive voice." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
"A major novelist." (Newsweek)
Review
"[A] bright constellation of characters...draws the reader into the dusky, dreamy world of Alice Hoffman." St. Petersburg Times
Review
"Alice Hoffman hits bull's eyes on the incomprehensions between the young and the old, on the magic and pain of ordinary life. She is erotic and romantic...funny...clever and humane." The Times, London
Review
"Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things." Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses
Review
"One of the best writers we have today insightful, funny, intelligent, with a distinctive voice." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"A major novelist." Newsweek
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"Like Anne Tyler, Hoffman spins a story enchantingly, with the undeniable force and vividness of a dream, and a dream's own logic." Ms. Magazine
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"Alice Hoffman is a real writer who pleasures us as she teaches, distracts us from real life as she illuminates it." Judith Rosner
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"Vivid, convincing characters...uncommon insight." People Magazine
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"Explorations of the tangled strands of parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment are made achingly vivid by Hoffmans ability to ground them in the finely etched details of her characters daily lives. Newsday
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There is a cumulative power to Illumination Night that is wondrous...Its enough to make one search out other books by Alice Hoffman. The Chicago Tribune
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Reading an authentic prose stylist of high order is an uncommon privilege. The Boston Globe
Synopsis
With her signature "vivid, convincing characters [and] uncommon insight," (People) Alice Hoffman in Illumination Night follows the lives of an old woman whose last mission is to save her granddaughter's soul; a family torn apart by a wife's fears and a husband's desires and a high school girl who comes to Martha's Vineyard against her will, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption.
Synopsis
Beginning on the night of the Grand Illumination, a festival of lanterns held each summer on Martha’s Vineyard, this novel is a modern chronicle of a marriage and a bittersweet exploration of an extraordinary passion. Illumination Night follows the lives of a young blond giant who is as beautiful as he is frightening; an old woman at the end of her life whose last mission is to save her granddaughter’s soul; a family torn apart by a wife’s fears and a husband’s unrealized desiresand the high school girl who comes to Martha’s Vineyard against her will, who steals husbands and cars, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption. Both riveting and reflective, this is a story of “parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment” (Newsday) that brings to light the talent that has made Alice Hoffman an acclaimed bestselling author.
About the Author
Alice Hoffman, an American novelist and screenwriter, was born in New York City in 1952. She earned a B.A. from Adelphi University in 1973 and an M.A. from Stanford in 1975 before publishing her first novel, Property Of, in 1977.
Known for blending realism and fantasy in her fiction, Hoffman often creates richly detailed characters who live on society's margins and places them in extraordinary situations as she did with At Risk, her 1988 novel about the AIDS crisis. Other novels include The Drowning Season (named a "notable book of 1979" by Library Journal) and Seventh Heaven, which first gained Hoffman a broad national audience. She has also written many screenplays, including adaptations of her own novels.