Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

From The Week of December 12, 2010

Superficially, Practical Magic is a fun read about coming-of-age witches and the burdens of living with powers they barely understand and do not want to accept, but there's a depth here, a philosophical gravitas, that gives Ms. Hoffman's book unexpected punch. This is, at root, a tale about the choices we make: to reject what we know to be true, to hurt the ones we love, to flee from situations we do not have the courage to face, and to take for granted the loyalty and kindness of good people.

Sally and Gillian are sisters who, after a disastrous fire that claims the lives of their parents, are raised by their two eccentric aunts whose witchy powers, though never overt, are present throughout the novel. Though the freedom they are provided by their hands-off aunts seems ideal for rule-allergic teenagers, the sisters are socially tarred by a community that wants nothing to do with the Owens family or its creepy house. The sisters characteristically react in opposite ways to this rejection. Gillian rebels and Sally sinks inside herself, but both eventually flee the Owens home. Gillian jets to parts unknown, leaving in her wake a string of shattered marriages and broken promises as she tries to outrun her feelings. Sally, meanwhile, settles in New England, not far from the aunts, and raises the next Owens duo, her own two daughters who are just as dissimilar from one another as Sally is from Gillian. Persevering in the face of heartache, Sally endures until, one day, Gillian shows up on her doorstep with trouble in the trunk of her car and a detective hot on her heels, forcing Sally to decide if sisterly love should trump doing the right thing.

There's so much here. Ms. Hoffman engages us in a discussion that ranges from loyalty versus truth to a debate on the good life, pausing at points along the way to ruminate on the sibling dyad and the ways in which it forces us into a kind of polarization of personality. The denial of truth to oneself even pops up now and again to haunt the multiple generations of the cursed Owens girls. This is a busy piece of engaging fiction that, somehow, manages to be totally glossed in easy and affable charm. To the extent that it's possible to write a book that is both light-hearted and deep, Ms. Hoffman has nailed the thing with admirable potency. (3/5 Stars)