Last word first: Lyrical and moving. 3.5/5 (Yes, I'm doing ratings out of five now... look at my review policy for more info about what it means) Would Joe like this book? Nah.
Description: Green is the quiet one, the one who is more comfortable with plants and animals than she is with people. Her sister Aurora is the bright one, the dancing one who loves people and is loved by them. They are perfect together. When Green loses her entire family in a terrible fire, she doesn’t know if she can stand to continue living herself. As she girds herself in thorns and anger, she protects her heart, but she might be losing her own sense of who she is.
My thoughts: I enjoyed this story. Hoffman’s writing style manages to say a lot with very few words; the book weighs in at a slim 116 words, yet each page conveys vivid pictures. Told in the first person from Green’s perspective, Green Angel examines the grieving process in the mind of a young girl left all on her own. Combining elements of a survival story and a more reflective narrative, this book used a dreamy-yet-vivid style to convey the strangeness of a world in which nothing is what it used to be.
One of the many wonders of fiction is that it allows us to experience an event, and perhaps even learn a lesson from that experience, without the experience itself. You can go ahead and say “time heals all wounds” or “help others to help yourself,” but without the background of experience, even a fictional one, they seem clichéd and trite. I have never experienced a grief like Green’s, but I was nonetheless moved by her journey of grief and recovery.
The book wasn’t perfect. I thought the metaphor of the ashes in the eyes was a little over the top. It made something TOO literal, and then it wasn’t treated literally, which bugged me a little. That said, Green Angel was a well-crafted, fairy-talish book, and I liked it.
About Alice Hoffman: Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, Self, and other magazines. Her teen novel Aquamarine was recently made into a film starring Emma Roberts. (from the bio on her website)
3 comments:
I really like Alice Hoffman. She's another modern day magical realism writer. Have you ever read Practical Magic? I think I need to re-read it for my blog soon. It's really grand. Great review btw. You have me wanting to read this one.
Great review! My only read from Hoffman was "The Foretelling" a few weeks ago, and I loved it. I'll look for this one too :)
Nice review! Thanks :o) I haven't heard of this book before, but will keep an eye out for it!
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