Skylight Confessions

On the night her father dies, Arlyn Singer does something drastic out of desperation to just leave the fate she believes will be hers if something doesn't change. She decides that the next man she meets will be her one true love and the person to whom she will tie her life and her destiny. That man turns out to be John Moody, and little does Arlyn know at the time that she has made a deal with the devil and very little will turn out well for her or the family she will eventually leave behind. Moody is a good family name for these people, because that is essentially what they all turn out to be, especially Sam, the son who is brilliant but very troubled.

Alice Hoffman is one of the greatest writers working today. Brilliant does not begin show more to describe her. The best word I can use to describe her work is luminous. From Practical Magic to The Probable Future her work is breathtaking in its depth and clarity. Few people writing today portray such complicated multidimensional characters, especially women, as well as Hoffman does. In this latest outing, however, I feel that she falls somewhat short of her previous achievements. This book is good, but she has set such a high standard for herself in previous work that I don't think it deserves a place among her best books.

The biggest problem for me is that ultimately the characterizations, usually her strong point, just don't seem to totally hang together. Also, while she has written some unlikeable characters in the past, I found Sam to be so thoroughly unredeemable as a person that it was distracting. (Spoiler alert!) Sam is the most self-pitying, selfish, cynical, annoying character to come along in a long time. It never makes sense to me how so many people come to love him, for I could find nothing loveable about him. He constantly rails against his father's coldness and selfishness and yet he is exactly like his father. Sam is boorish and snide, cold to his own son and completely unreliable in everyway to everyone who ever cares about him. So I just could not wrap my head around how all of these women in his life found him to be so mesmerizing and special. To me he's not special at all. He's just a typical drug-addict who blames everyone else in the world for his problems, never lifts a finger to help himself or anyone else and constantly imperils those around him, either emotionally or physically or both. I wasn't sad at all when he died. Usually Hoffman is so good at making her characters emotional logic for their actions clear. Here, and of course it could just be me, I couldn't see it. What some of the characters did and felt just never made sense to me given who they are.

Even with this disappointment, this book is still worth reading, because Hoffman continues to shine with her use of language and metaphor and there are some lovely, moving moments that transcend the problems I had with the characters. And as usual there is that bit of magic that suffuses all of her books--the ghost of Arlyn, who brings together some unlikely people, which changes the direction of their lives. And there is love in this story as there is in all of her books. To me, that is in some ways what all of her books are about--the transformative power of love, whether for good or bad, and what happens to people when they are without love. Even though Sam is a waste, his sister and son go on to do something with their lives, and at the end there is the hope for something better. show less

I am not sure what I think about this book. On the one hand, it kept me reading. But it felt overloaded with magical realism, I like that in smaller portions. There are parts of the book that I could not stomach like Aryln vowing to marry the next man she saw soon after her father's death. She seemed so irrational that I could not believe it. She does marry a rich man in a glass house, the man that she saw. I didn't like how she forced him to marry her by being there constantly and chasing after him after she settles her father's estate.

Aryln has two children, the first was a son with the man she married and she had a daughter from another later relationship. I did not like Aryln or her husband. I understand why her son was damaged but show more it was so painful to read about his change from very bad to much worse.

It kept my interest but I didn't feel I learned anything from it, it was so dark and strange. show less

Every time I pick up an unread Hoffman novel I am amazed by her skill with the written word. The way she can form a sentence, twist it into something ethereal and beautiful, it always leaves me breathless. I always feel cleansed and well-read after a Hoffman novel, as though the books I finished leading up to her works were trivial and here is something of worth to spend my time on.

Following four generations of the Moody family who live in the Glass Slipper in suburban Connecticut, Skylight Confessions begins with Arlyn Singer and John Moody as they meet under strange circumstances and form a bond that will affect their children and their grandchildren to come. Under the glass roof and clear walls of their house, secrets are kept and show more hidden. Mysterious occurrences are swept under the rug, and lives are forever changed by the decisions of others. Following the Moody children into their separate lives as they’re drawn back to the Glass Slipper, Hoffman tells a truly character driven story, so intent are we upon Arlyn and John, and the residents of the glass house that we easily forget there’s a world beyond them.

Skylight Confessions contains the usual hint of magic that Hoffman is known for, but the writing is a little less sad than the previous works I’ve read by her. Or maybe I’m just accustomed to her tone now. The story of the Moody children is beautiful and touching, and in such a short book it’s amazing that we come to know them as well as we do.

Another remarkable Hoffman with all my favorite trademarks, empathetic with a hint of magical realism. All in all, a fabulous book and another great addition to my library. Highly recommended to those who have not read an Alice Hoffman novel yet. show less

Alice Hoffman sure has her niche - magic, New England-based, destined love - but how does she manage to make it so compelling each time? This is one of her more realistic novels (the only magic here is a half-hearted haunting), and it describes the family in such clarity that I can't forget about them. John Moody's change is unexpected, Sam is tragic and vividly real, Cynthia has a fascinating motivation. Hoffman again manages to make one feel saddened at this particular fate while also feeling satisfied that fate will have its way. Lovely.

Completely exhausted I climbed into bed early one evening. Grabbed the book sitting on my bedside table. The one that had been sitting there for months, maybe even a good year, unread. It was Alice Hoffman's Skylight Confessions. Like most of Hoffman's stories you get to know the charters through the course of the quickly developing plot. Before I knew it I was sucked in and didn't move until I had read the book, cover to cover. At the center of the story, almost a charater itself, is a house called the Glass Slipper. Built of glass the home requires care and expresses pain just as the people in the story do. One can almost imagine looking into this house and seeing rooms of pain, hope, love and disspare. Among them the skylight window show more where a young man escapes. The book was a diversion. During those hours, nothing else existed but the story and the peace I gleaned from this brief escape from relativity. show less

From a Friends of the Library booksale . A darker book by a favorite author of mine. Her usual mysticism is there in bits and pieces -- a race of people that can fly, but open their wings only at the last possible moment before disaster, pearls that absorb the poisons of the body and spirit, changing color and luminescence. Her lyric prose is present too, though in scattered in snippets.

I found this a rather sad story, though Hoffman still captivated me with the recounting of this poor dysfunctional family. It was heartbreaking to read of Sam, the brilliant, gifted son of Arlyn and John, mismatched but brought together by destiny and a teenager's belief that she will spend her life with the next man that crosses her threshold. Given show more that she's a teenager, and it's the night of her father's death, it's not surprising that the outcome is not golden. Sam's despair crashes and destroys not only himself, but the lives of all those who surround him. I know there was major symbolism I wasn't catching in the story, and bits of magical realism floating past, but all I felt was the blackness of Sam Moody's isolation, the depths of his despair, depression and addictions.

There are others who feel this book is the pinnacle of Hoffman's writing. Indeed, the writing itself is all it's cracked up to be. One of the things that I love about a Hoffman story is that she can bring you through an emotional wringer, but ultimately you end up with a positive outlook -- the Hope that flys last out of Pandora's Box. For the first time in my reading of a Hoffman novel, I found myself wishing for more, not because I was so in love with the characters and story, but because I was wishing for Hope. Perhaps Will, in his balance and normalcy is supposed to be that, but I turned the last page, and felt I was left hanging. show less

The first book I read by Hoffman was such an exciting find...she wrote about connections with forces not seen, which I enjoy reading about.
There is some of that in this book, but the tale is much more disjointed. It feels like she was tossing in as many unusual events as she could think of, without care for how disconnected they were from the story. Yes, I can kind of see how she wanted to weave a tale of what happens when you just follow thru on spur-of-the moment impulses, but it's not a clear read. It actually took over a year to read it, & the only reason I finished is that I had it stored in my car as an emergency book for times when I had to wait & didn't bring a preferred book. At no time did the story get me involved to the show more point where I wanted to bring it into the house & get it finished. I just feel a sense of relief that it's done. show less