MAGIC: DO WE REALLY NEED RULES?

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Submitted Date 12/03/2018
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After fifteen years, Alice Hoffman penned the backstory to her very successful Practical Magic (1995) in the form of a prequel, The Rules of Magic. Hoffman's new book takes us back to the ancestry of her Practical Magic characters, then delivers us quickly into 1960s New York where she focuses on the respective childhoods of modern witches, Franny, Jet, and Vincent. A quick and easy read, The Rules of Magic is divided into six parts with beguiling titles: Intuition, Alchemy, Conjure, Elemental, Gravity, and Remedy. The Rules of Magic vis told in a third-person, story-teller voice, bringing this reader back to childhood memories of Ursula Le Guin and Madeline L'Engle.

Hoffman's characters in The Rules of Magic are somewhat predictable and flat. If you can imagine a contemporary witch in New York City, that is the witch you will find in Hoffman's pages. The book seems to have been written for mostly commercial purposes or perhaps to quell the fervor of Practical Magic fans. Plot twists and tragedies are a bit contrived, leaving the reader nothing further to ponder. Need a character out of the way? How about a convenient car crash? Oops. But, actually, I did not dislike the book.

Fitting in, or not doing so, is one of Hoffman's favorite themes. The three witches' struggle to be normal perpetuates until the final realization that they (big surprise) must accept themselves for who they are. "They were therefore all descendants of a witch-finder and a witch, and therein lay the very heart of the curse's beginnings, for they were fated to try their best to deny who they were and to refute their true selves." The conflict, beyond the obvious social prejudice, is love. Any poor soul unfortunate enough to fall for a witch, dies a quick and horrid death soon after, leaving our characters to navigate life with lonely hearts. Hearts that must make magic and pass along their secrets, hence the 1995 Practical Magic. "I'm fated to lose everyone I ever love," April said. "I already know that." "Of course you are," Jet responded in her calm, measured tone. "That's what it means to be alive." I appreciate Hoffman's acceptance of her characters' oddities as she escorts them through her gauntlet of tragedies. Their slowly-evolving self-awareness keeps you reading even if you grow tired of the somewhat precious voice, which I did at times: "By the time she recalled the pale yellow of the daffodils she'd picked that morning, she had reached New York."

In Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel explored similar paranormal talents in her characters but without hitting readers over the head with it. Esquivel allows ghosts to dwell with the living and lets girls manipulate the emotions of others through spells and herbs without asking for fanfare. These occurrences are cultural for Esquivel, historical for Hoffman, but Esquivel delivers her scenes with a calm detachment that sets a better stage for my belief in her. "Nacha appeared there at her side, stroking her hair as she ate, as she had done when she was little." (Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate) Both authors keep us distracted from overt magical thinking by keeping us grounded in real-life universal experiences, making the fantastic seem plausible. But Hoffman's characters observe themselves with a cartoonish delight that might as well don a black pointy hat: "The craft was dangerous and unpredictable, and witches were difficult to control, for they had minds of their own and didn't hold to keeping to the law."

While I strive to weave the supernatural into my own work, it strikes me that I could be even more subtle, perhaps with less exposition surrounding occurrences. I hope to express such things more like Esquivel, less like Hoffman. Without the veil of fiction, the use of magical thinking is tricky. A writer risks the rejection of the realistic along with the fantastic. It is my hope that skeptics see the narrator's world as she saw it, ghosts and all, and conclude that the ghost is not the point, but a symbol of longing, love, connection, and history. Perhaps magic is Hoffman's vehicle to the same end.

Though I find the subject matter engaging, I expected more from The Rules of Magic. Having read Hoffman's mesmerizing River King, and very epic Practical Magic, I was disappointed in the absence of depth and detail. Hoffman is, not unfairly, considered a chick-lit author and because of that bias I am less inclined to take The Rules of Magic seriously. Although an entertaining read, it did not stand strong on its own. When I finished Practical Magic all those years ago, I did not come away wishing to know more about the characters' pasts. Perhaps I had some regret that the book ended. Practical Magic was that good. But I wonder why Hoffman did not choose to go forward instead of backward. Perhaps she still will.

 

 

Hoffman, Alice. The Rules of Magic. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.

Other works discussed:

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. Black Swan, 1998.

Hoffman, Alice. Practical Magic. Berkley, 1995.

 

 

 

 

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  • Mary Jaimes-Serrano 5 years, 1 month ago

    Lisa, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this. I think you make some good points about the way a reader needs to be drawn in and needs to have something to look forward to. I think that there are many sequels that come off this way. I do not know if it is the amount of time before the sequel is presented or the loss of engagement. Thank you for sharing.

  • Miranda Fotia 5 years ago

    I hate it when it seems like the author's heart isn't in it when they write a sequel. Great piece!

  • No name 4 years, 10 months ago

    I definitely agree with this!