AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--SEPTEMBER 2025--ALICE HOFFMAN

Alice Hoffman has to be one of the most prolific American authors this side of Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King. Since publishing her first novel in 1977, she has written over 40 books, including a sort of self-help memoir and several books for children and young adults. Her best known novel remains Practical Magic, which became a film that apparently everyone except me has seen numerous times. It is not the only one of her novels to be translated onto the screen. The River King and Aquamarine also have film versions, and Hoffman wrote the script for the 1983 movie Independence Day (NOT the one with Will Smith). The Dovekeepers was made into a TV miniseries in 2015. Her stories usually contain some magical realism, some romance, some outright fantasy elements blended with a realistic setting and exploration of topical issues. Mostly she’s just very good at the story-telling. Her most recent middle grade/young adult novel, When We Flew Away, envisions the life of Anne Frank just as the Nazis were occupying the Netherlands, before the family was driven into hiding. It arose from inspiration and insights Hoffman experienced while enrolled in the Religion and Public Life MA program at Harvard Divinity School, which she completed in 2024. She also has an MA in Creative Writing from Stanford. Hoffman is a breast cancer survivor who was instrumental in creating a nationally recognized breast health center at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA, where she makes her home.

I've had a copy of The Dovekeepers on the TBR pile for a long time, and just this week picked up a used copy of The Probable Future, so will choose one of those to read in September. What are your choices?

I've read a few Hoffman; Practical Magic, Turtle Moon, Ice Queen, and Dovekeeper. I plan to read The Third Angel because I have this one on my shelf.

I will be reading The World That We Knew for September's challenge. It has been sitting unread on my shelf for too long.

I am currently listening to The World That We Knew.

>4 cbl_tn: Carrie, I put The World That We Knew on the September TIOLI challenge #9, if you are interested.

I am hoping to read When We Flew Away and I added it to my stockpile this month in anticipation.

I know I moved a Hoffman book in the past week or so, but whether I can put my hand on it again at the moment… fingers crossed.

I finished The World That We Knew tonight. My thoughts on the book:

I think that this is the first Alice Hoffman book that I have ever read and if this book is any indication, I certainly need to read more of her stuff - I have several books of hers in the BlackHole already. This story, set in WWII, concerns Hanni, a Jewish woman who desperately wants to get her daughter, Lea, out of Berlin before it is too late. She herself cannot leave because she has a mother who is seriously ill. To secure her daughter's safety, she goes to the local rabbi's wife to have her make a protective golem for Lea, but the she refuses to help. However, her oldest daughter, Ettie, her favorite, agrees to help and Ava comes into being. That is the basis of this magical realism story that unfolds around the characters of Ettie, Lea, and Ava over the course of this novel that is very rooted in the real life happenings of WWII; Recommended (4.25 stars) Mine

I finished When We Flew Away last night...Hoffman's young adult novel of Anne Frank's life in the last couple years of the family's relative freedom in Amsterdam before going into hiding from the Nazi scourge. As usual, Hoffman's writing is wonderful. She works symbolism into the story seamlessly, if a little more obviously than might be done in an adult novel, and her characters are alive on the page in a way that makes this particular story almost too hard to read. The author was especially effective at illustrating Anne's fraught relationships with her mother and her older sister, and her growing understanding of the complicated nature of familial love. Interspersed with the fictional narrative are short sections entitled "What We Lost", which are factual statements of history. Although the fictional account ends as Otto Frank moves his family into the hiding place he has spent so much time arranging, in the hope of keeping them safe until the day when, as he believes, the Americans will come to their rescue, the last of these historical notations leaves no doubt as to the fate of Anne Frank and her family. The author's Afterword describes the effect of reading Anne Frank's diary at age 12 (when a lot of people of my generation would have read it). I confess I wonder at the effect this novel might have on young readers today. Do teenagers still routinely read The Diary of a Young Girl? Do they know the context as those of us who came of age with parents who lived through it did? Hoffman makes a case for the diary being required reading for every child throughout the world..."She was the girl we all are, lovable and exasperating and smart. She was a dreamer and a realist, but more than anything she was a girl who wanted a future. That is something she deserved, and when we remember her, and the fate of her people, we are honoring not only Anne, but all who were lost during the war. Remember us, the diary tells us, in every single line...Remember me."

>9 laytonwoman3rd:, It (Diary of Anne Frank) was required reading for my granddaughters. They read the play. They attend a private Christian school so I am not sure if public schools still have it as required reading.

>10 Kristelh: That's good to know. I wasn't required to read it specifically, but as I recall it was on the suggested list for independent reading when I was in high school. I still have the Pocket Books paperback copy I read back then, published in 1960, held together with some precursor of duct tape...it had a movie tie-in cover with a photo of Millie Perkins as Anne.

Still haven't turned up the Hoffman I saw recently, thats the problem with moving books about!

I finished The Third Angel and I have reviewed it. It starts out slow with characters that are not particularly likeable but it ends up to be pretty good. Settings 1991, 1966, 1952 with interesting interconnectedness. There is the usual magical realism that you expect from Hoffman. I gave it 4.5 stars.

The October American Author Challenge is posted and can be found here; https://www.librarything.com/topic/374032

I started Practical Magic yesterday. I have several of her books (seven to be exact), but haven't read any of them. It may be my imagination, but I think my wife read Practical Magic years ago and passed it to a friend, who passed it to her friend, and so on. Never came back. I got the copy I'm reading at a library sale. Only a couple or three dozen pages in, but I'm interested.

I finished it. Practical Magic. Nice.

>16 weird_O: @weird_O. Some like the movie better than the book.

>17 Kristelh: I guess that's the way of things. I was unaware of of the existence of the film when I started reading the book, but I did check it out. I got the impression that characters were purged, which has always been the way of adapting books to screenplays. Now that I've finished the book, I may look again at the film.

For what it's worth, I've commenced to begin reading of Death's Acre by William Bass and Jon Jefferson. Nonfiction. Bass is the forensic anthropologist who created the so-called body farm at Knoxville, Tennessee.

Hey...it's October! See >14 Kristelh: above.

Finally put my hand on the as yet unread Hoffman book I have, The World that We Knew, which I will start next week.