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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION HOF | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION HOF | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Test A remarkable new novel, luminous with passion and mystery, from the incredible bestselling author of Seventh Heaven. Hoffman, one of the finest writers of her generation (Newsweek), transports readers to Florida--a place where anything can happen during the month of May. A transplanted New Yorker and her son have no idea what Verity holds in store for them.
Author Notes
Alice Hoffman, an American novelist and screenwriter, was born in New York City on March 16, 1952. She earned a B.A. from Adelphi University in 1973 and an M.A. in creative writing from Stanford University in 1975 before publishing her first novel, Property Of, in 1977.
Known for blending realism and fantasy in her fiction, she often creates richly detailed characters who live on society's margins and places them in extraordinary situations as she did with At Risk, her 1988 novel about the AIDS crisis. Her other works include The Drowning Season, Seventh Heaven, The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, The Ice Queen, and The Dovekeepers. Her book, The Third Angel, won the 2008 New England Booksellers' Award for fiction. Two of her novels, Practical Magic and Aquamarine, were made into films. She has also written numerous screenplays, including adaptations of her own novels and the original screenplay, Independence Day. Her title's The Museum of Exteaordinary Things, The Marriage of Opposites, Seventh Heaven, and The Rules of Magic made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Combining aspects of a suspense thriller and a romance, and including such surefire elements as an abandoned baby, a youngster on the verge of juvenile delinquency who is reformed, two dogs and a supernatural character who provides the requisite touch of fantasy, Hoffman's new novel has commercial success written all over it. But some readers will fail to find the enchantment provided in such previous works as Illumination Night and Seventh Heaven . The town of Verity, Fla., starts to steam up in May, when the humidity and temperature soar. (Among the things readers must accept is the dreadful, oppressive May heat; one is tempted to ask, if it's so unbearable in May, how do people live through the summer?) Verity is full of divorcees, and when one of them is murdered, Keith Rosen, ``Verity's meanest 12-year-old,'' finds her baby, who was in fact the object of an aborted kidnapping, and runs away, instinctively hiding the threatened child. This development brings together Keith's divorced mother, Lucy, and the town's surly policeman, Julian Cash, a loner with a tragedy in his past. Despite the murder and a stalking assassin, this is really a fairy tale: Keith bonds with the baby and tames a vicious dog (``No one has ever known him the way this dog does''); a ghost/angel falls in love and brings redemption to Julian, and several people begin new lives. Hoffman lards her slick plot with ponderously sentimental observations, the kind of bromides that could be embroidered on a pillow. But she knows how to manipulate suspense and tug the heartstrings; with its cinematic flow and larger-than-life characters, her novel will make a wonderful movie. BOMC main selection; QPB alternate; film rights to Universal. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Hoffman has nine novels to her credit, including the acclaimed Seventh Heaven and her newest creation, an edgy yet lyrical tale set in the disorienting heat of a small Florida town. May in Verity is a month of madness as "the sea turtles begin their migration across West Main Street, mistaking the glow of street lights for the moon," and people are seized by bizarre, sometimes destructive, passions. And, as if this isn't peculiar enough, Hoffman also makes Verity, Florida, the "Divorc{{‚}}ee Capital of the World," an improbable mecca for ex-wives and their children fleeing nasty husbands, revengeful in-laws, and Long Island. One such transplant is Lucy, mother of a troubled and troublemaking 12-year-old named Keith. As Lucy tries to cope with her son's unhappiness, her hair turning green from chloride, and her job covering deaths and cultural events for the local newspaper, a fellow sufferer living in her building is murdered, and her baby and Keith disappear. Lucy's panic and unflinching devotion to her son endear her to Julian Cash, a reticent police officer scarred by a tragedy in his youth and far more enamored of dogs than people. As Hoffman brings these two unlikelies together, the oppressive heat of May takes on a decidedly sexual tone as the lovers take the murder investigation into their own sweaty hands. Hoffman handles romance, suspense, and the healing properties of love and understanding with aplomb and a dash of magic. (Reviewed Feb. 15, 1992)0399137203Donna Seaman
Kirkus Review
A mix of murder and magic in the Florida sunshine as only Hoffman (Seventh Heaven, 1990, etc.) could conjure it. Verity, Florida, once known for live alligators, is now better known for alligator salads (a mix of spinach, peppers, avocado and chopped eggs, tinted green), as well as for having more divorced women from New York than any other town in the state of Florida. Lucy Rosen is one of those women. She has recently moved to Verity, and what she doesn't know yet is that in May, when the turtles come out and crawl across the roads, anything can happen. People go crazy. Dogs bite. Ficus hedges burst into flame. This particular May, a woman in Lucy's condo complex is murdered, her baby is missing, and Lucy's own son, Keith, has vanished as well. With the assistance of Julian Cash, a reclusive Verity policeman, Lucy sets out to find out who committed the murder and what has become of the missing children. The fact that the ultimate resolution of these mysteries is only partly plausible doesn't really matter in the end. Because Hoffman's strength is that she deals in dreams. She knows all about the everyday things that defy simple explanations- -lovers who suddenly turn cold, turtles who mistake streetlights for the moon. The Florida she paints here is not the one promoted by any chamber of commerce. With a climate that is both mesmerizing and malignant, it is a place where dragonflies' wings catch fire and strangler plums drop down from trees, leaving dents in parked cars. It is a place where rattlesnakes crawl into telephone booths and angels lurk outside the Burger King. It's a place where anything might happen. And, naturally, it does. Pure Hoffman: her take on the tropics is haunting, hypnotic, and hot as a fever dream. (Book-of-the-Month Dual Selection for June)
