Illumination Night
By Alice Hoffman
(Berkley Trade, Paperback, 9780425183267, 272pp.)
Publication Date: February 5, 2002
Categories: General
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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 desires—and 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.
Alice Hoffman is the author of fifteen novels: Blue Diary (2001), The River King (2000), Local Girls (1999), Here On Earth (1997), Practical Magic (1995), Second Nature (1994), Turtle Moon (1992), Seventh Heaven (1990), At Risk (1988), Illumination Night (1987), Fortune’s Daughter (1985), White Horses (1982), Angel Landing (1980), The Drowning Season (1979), and Property Of (1977). She is also the author of three children’s books: Aquamarine (2001), Horsefly (2000), and Fireflies (1997).
Born in New York City, and raised on Long Island, Hoffman graduated from Adelphi University and received an M.A. from Stanford University, where she was Mirrielees Fellow. She currently lives near Boston with her family and her dogs.
“Daringly mixing comedy with tragedy…[Hoffman] has created a narrative that somehow makes myth out of the sticky complexities of contemporary marriage…Her characters are branded onto one’s memory.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Vivid, convincing characters…uncommon insight.”—People
“[A] bright constellation of characters…draws the reader into the dusky, dreamy world of Alice Hoffman.”—St. Petersburg Times
“Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things.”—Amy Tan
“Not-so-delicate questions are raised in a wonderfully delicate way in Alice Hoffman’s latest novel… Explorations of the tangled strands of parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment are made achingly vivid by Hoffman’s ability to ground them in the finely etched details of her characters’ daily lives.”—Newsday
“There is a cumulative power to Illumination Night that is wondrous…It’s enough to make one search out other books by Alice Hoffman.”—The Chicago Tribune
“Reading an authentic prose stylist of high order is an uncommon privilege.”—The Boston Globe
“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)
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