Magic Lessons

 

Magic Lessons / Alice Hoffman
NY: Simon & Schuster, c2020.
396 p.

I loved Practical Magic when I read it years and years ago, so when this came out I thought I'd read it, even though I've missed the last few titles by Hoffman. This one seemed more appealing to me. 

It was a pretty good read, very Hoffman. It follows the life story of Maria , the distant ancestress of the characters in Practical Magic, and founder of their home and life in the US. It begins with Maria as a tiny infant, abandoned outside the home of a wise woman in England in the 1600s. This is not a time you really wanted to be a witch, and Hannah Owens, the woman who takes her in, eventually feels the wrath of the community. 

Maria escapes to the sea and travels first to Indonesia, where she lives for a few years and encounters a merchant from Puritan America -- this is what leads to her arrival in America to found the great Owens legacy. 

But as you can imagine, New England in the 1600s is not a hospitable place for a strange, witchy woman full of passion, magic and colour. The merchant has changed utterly since his sojourn in the warm and bright tropics and Maria must find her own way in this world. 

Because this is by Alice Hoffman, you sort of know what to expect -- lots of dreamy prose, women's power, magical and uncanny events and a line of family curses. I found it a pretty good read; the parts in England were deep and gave the roots to Maria's story -- the middle part was a bit of an interlude -- then American happened and the familiar ground of witch hunts and the persecution of "difficult women" begins. 

If you like Hoffman's writing you will enjoy this. And if you are a fan of the Owens stories of Practical Magic and beyond, you'll especially appreciate it. There were a couple lines in it I liked a lot and copied out into my commonplace book, but I'd say that I still think Practical Magic is a better book.