Blackbird House (Hoffman)

Blackbird House 
Alice Hoffman, 2004
Doubleday
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385507615


Summary
An evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet:

Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late.

From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

From the writer Time has said tells "truths powerful enough to break a reader’s heart" comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 16, 1952
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Adelphi Univ.; M.A., Stanford Univ.
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts

Born in the 1950s to college-educated parents who divorced when she was young, Alice Hoffman was raised by her single, working mother in a blue-collar Long Island neighborhood. Although she felt like an outsider growing up, she discovered that these feelings of not quite belonging positioned her uniquely to observe people from a distance. Later, she would hone this viewpoint in stories that captured the full intensity of the human experience.

After high school, Hoffman went to work for the Doubleday factory in Garden City. But the eight-hour, supervised workday was not for her, and she quit before lunch on her first day! She enrolled in night school at Adelphi University, graduating in 1971 with a degree in English. She went on to attend Stanford University's Creative Writing Center on a Mirrellees Fellowship. Her mentor at Stanford, the great teacher and novelist Albert Guerard, helped to get her first story published in the literary magazine Fiction. The story attracted the attention of legendary editor Ted Solotaroff, who asked if she had written any longer fiction. She hadn't — but immediately set to work. In 1977, when Hoffman was 25, her first novel, Property Of, was published to great fanfare.

Since that remarkable debut, Hoffman has carved herself a unique niche in American fiction. A favorite with teens as well as adults, she renders life's deepest mysteries immediately understandable in stories suffused with magic realism and a dreamy, fairy-tale sensibility. (In a 1994 article for the New York Times, interviewer Ruth Reichl described the magic in Hoffman's books as a casual, regular occurrence — "...so offhand that even the most skeptical reader can accept it.") Her characters' lives are transformed by uncontrollable forces — love and loss, sorrow and bliss, danger and death.

Hoffman's 1997 novel Here on Earth was selected as an Oprah Book Club pick, but even without Winfrey's powerful endorsement, her books have become huge bestsellers — including three that have been adapted for the movies: Practical Magic (1995), The River King (2000), and her YA fable Aquamarine (2001).

Hoffman is a breast cancer survivor; and like many people who consider themselves blessed with luck, she believes strongly in giving back. For this reason, she donated her advance from her 1999 short story collection Local Girls to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Hoffman has written a number of children's books, including Fireflies: A Winter's Tale (1999), Horsefly (2000), and Moondog (2004).

• Aquamarine was written for Hoffman's best friend, Jo Ann, who dreamed of the freedom of mermaids as she battled brain cancer.

• Here on Earth is a modern version of Hoffman's favorite novel, Wuthering Heights.

• Hoffman has been honored with the Massachusetts Book Award for her teen novel Incantation.

• When asked what books most influenced her life or career, here's what she said:

Edward Eager's brilliant series of suburban magic: Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, Magic or Not, Knight's Castle, The Time Garden, Seven-Day Magic, The Well Wishers. Anything by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, J. D. Salinger, Grace Paley. My favorite book: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
[W]ith every loss comes the triumph of the human spirit. Hoffman doesn’t wrap it up with a pretty bow. She makes it real. Her characters survive with grit, persistence, the passage of time, and occasionally, some pretty twisted mental and physical hang-ups. But they are survivors and their survival left its mark on me. READ MORE …
Kathy Aspden, AUTHOR - LitLovers


Fire, water, milk, pears, halibut…play important symbolic and sometimes almost magical roles. This may not be the subtlest of literary devices, but Hoffman's lyrical prose weaves an undeniable spell.
Publishers Weekly


[A] change for Hoffman whose fiction often features…a bit of magic.… [H]haunted-and haunting-characters populate the tales, which are also notable for their intense sense of place. Hoffman's many fans should welcome this little gem with enthusiasm. —Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Library Journal


[E]ntrancing.… Hoffman…orchestrates intense romances and profound sacrifices. Those who live in Blackbird House, by turns brilliant, crazy, and courageous, follow their dreams, endure nightmares, and find that their numinous home is as much a part of their being as their parents' DNA.
Booklist


With a dozen stories, some more clearly connected than others but all set in the same farmhouse on Cape Cod from the time of the British blockade to the present, Hoffman creates a continuous narrative built up through a sense of place.…. A quiet but deeply moving achievement of lyric power.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How does "The Edge of the World" set the tone for Blackbird House? How would you characterize the house—is it frightening, soothing, mysterious? Did your feelings about the house change as the book unfolded? If so,how?

2. In the opening story, "The Edge of the World," a fisherman and his son are lost at sea. How do they haunt Blackbird House, both literally and figuratively? In which ways are the other characters, themselves floundering and lost, seeking to be found? What other ghosts—both literal and metaphorical—are present in the book?

3. When Coral finds eggs with holes in "The Edge of the World," she views them as omens "of lives unfinished." What other omens does Coral notice? How are these omens similar and different from the signs that Maya’s mother perceives two hundred years later in "India"? How is the white bird an omen?

4. Why do you think that Vincent stays away from his childhood home for so long in "The Edge of the World"?What do you suppose his mother’s reaction is upon his return? Why do you think he is fearless about the sea?

5. The image of drowning courses throughout the book, from the literal loss of life of John and Isaac (in "The Edge of the World") to Lysander’s accident ("The Witch of Truro"), to the characterization of Emma’s parents as "two drowning people" in "The Summer Kitchen." What about the act of drowning is so potent in describing loss, either of life or of love? In which other ways does the power of nature play a role in the book?

6. Love at first sight occurs with many of the couples in Blackbird House. Name them. How does this thunderbolt of passion change and shape their lives? Which couple do you think is best suited for one another in the book? The worst? Do you believe in love at first sight?

7. Sibling relationships are very important in Blackbird House. How does sibling rivalry inform some of them,such as Violet’s relationship with Huley (in "Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair")? How do siblings form a support network for one another, such as Emma and Walker ("The Summer Kitchen" and "Wish You Were Here") and Garnet and Ruby ("The Token")? Which sibling pair do you consider to be the most loving and supportive toward one another? Does one pair remind you of you and your siblings?

8. "I realized I would have to be careful about who I became," Garnet says in "The Token." What drives her toward this revelation? How does Garnet’s relationship with her mother change as a result of it? Who else in the book has an epiphany that’s driven by the behavior of a parent?

9. Why does Larkin promise Lucinda he will "change the world" in "Insulting the Angels"? How is this uncharacteristic of him? What change does Larkin himself want? Why do you think that Lucinda leaves the baby with him and goes off to fight?

10. Violet sees books as a passageway to something greater. How does knowledge broaden her horizons? In what ways does it stifle her? Do you think she’s correct when she wonders, in "Lionheart," if sending Lion to Harvard was the "greatest mistake she’s ever made"? Why are Lion, and his son after him, so adored by Violet?

11. "When he kissed her, he felt as though he were swallowing sadness," thinks Lion, Jr., of his love for Dorey (p. 116, in "The Conjurer’s Handbook"). What about Dorey attracts Lion? How does their relationship overcome its mournful circumstances to take flight? What similarities do Dorey and Violet share?

12. How does Maya turn away from her parents in "India"? In what ways does she emulate her brother in her dismissal of what her parents stand for? Do you think they come to a better comprehension of one another after Kalkin’s death? Why or why not?

13. "Loneliness can become nasty and hopeless," Hoffman writes on page 162. Which characters allow loneliness to fill them with bitterness? In contrast, who enjoys time alone and grows as a result of it?

14. In the book, there’s a reluctance to meddle in the business of others—from "The Wedding of Snow and Ice,"where neighbors ignore the physical abuse occurring next door, to "The Pear Tree," a chronicle of a family’s struggle with a troubled child. Why is the community so hesitant to become involved in these situations? What about Blackbird House might encourage the isolation of its inhabitants? How is this similar to or different from your personal experiences in a community?

15. How does Jamie’s experience in "The Wedding of Snow and Ice" shape the course of his life? What about it sparks his decision to become a doctor? How is he similar and different to Walker, another young boy (in "The Summer Kitchen") who decides to enter the medical profession?

16. Emma wishes for "the person she could have been if she hadn’t been stopped in some way" (p. 219) in "Wish You Were Here." Who else in the book has a dividing line between the person they were and who they are now? Do you have a point in your life that’s as significant? What is it?

17. What compels Emma to reach out to the boy at her door at the end of the book? How does the boy share striking similarities to Isaac in "The Edge of the World"? How does Hoffman bring the story full circle in the novel’s last scene?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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