12/09/2005 10:54 AM
Posted by VeggieSteph

Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman writes perfectly lyrical prose that dances through your head while you read. Blackbird House is no exception. Blackbird House is a collection of short stories about many families who all occupy Blackbird farm on the outer banks of Cape Cod. Each story is different and takes place during different times, but the farm ties them all together and meets their needs in different ways.


Blackbird farm is first home to John Hadley and his family. The Hadleys build the farm, and his wife Coral spends many years building and planting, listening to the call of the white blackbird. Lysander Wynn is a broken man, who has given up hope a future and love until another broken soul finds her way to his farm. Their children make up the next story, where two sisters fight to save their happiness with the help of an old witch woman. Larkin Howard is a young man whose hands are stained by cranberries. He has no hope of love, and seems to be content to work the bogs day after day. One day he meets a woman, who inspires him to move outside of himself and make a great sacrifice. Violet and Haley are sisters who both fall for the same man. Violet loses his love, and grows to see the on love that has always been there. Violet then goes on to raise a family on Blackbird farm, losing family, and gaining a new granddaughter-in-law who matches her wit and will. Grace Farrell and her boys break New England tradition and help a troubled wife in great need on a winter’s night. The Cooper family is made up of hippy parents and two children who never understand their parents until it is too late. The Stanleys buy the farm as a summer place, fixing it up year after year. They hope that the summers away will help strengthen the bonds with their troubled son. Katherine and Sam also buy the farm in hope that it will help heal the breaks in their family, and help heal their sick daughter. Later their daughter Emma inherits the farm, and finishes off the book with her story. She ends up at the farm thinking she will sell the property, but instead finds herself among memories too great to ignore and a future she wasn’t expecting.

Alice Hoffman intertwines all of these characters using the farm and the town surrounding it as the main focus. Some of the characters are from the town, some are out-of-towners, but all are lost in one way or another. They are searching for the truth in themselves, for love they didn’t think they needed, and solace in other people. The blackbird, the ocean, the cranberry bogs, and sweet peas frame each story in different ways, offering signs to those who will see them. Alice Hoffman brings the scents, the cold, and the beautiful crispness of Cape Cod to life with her prose. You feel as if you are there, and you get to know each of these characters easily, despite the fact that they are only characters in short stories. They could be relatives, or they could be you.

I found Alice Hoffman accidentally. I liked the movie Practical Magic, so I picked up the book. Her writing grabbed me with its poetry. (The book was so much better than the movie.) I read The Probable Future next, and I picked up three more of her books at Half-Price last time I visited. She’s one of my new favorite authors, and worth checking out if you like writers like Anita Shreve or Toni Morrison.