Story Sisters (Hoffman)

The Story Sisters
Alice Hoffman, 2009
Crown Publishing
325 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307405968

Summary
Alice Hoffman's new novel, The Story Sisters, charts the lives of three sisters—Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination.

Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.

What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks. (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
Hoffman has a child's dreamy eye, in the best possible sense. To her, the stuff grown-ups don't see anymore looms huge and important—insects banging on windowpanes, thunderstorms, a chestnut tree with a door to the "otherworld." She invents a realm where that sense of the fictive doesn't go away, where imagination and reality bleed together.... In the end, The Story Sisters, for all its magic realism, is about a family navigating through motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood. It's Little Women on mushrooms.
Chelsea Cain - New York Times Book Review

It's a rare year that doesn't bring a novel from Alice Hoffman, and those who follow this maddeningly uneven writer have learned to cast a wary eye on each new offering. Will it be Good Alice, poser of uncomfortable moral dilemmas and marvelously rich portraitist of family life (Blue Diary, Skylight Confessions)? Or will it be Bad Alice, blatantly careless plotter and outrageous overdoer of the magic-beneath-the-surface-of-our-lives shtick (The Probable Future, The Third Angel)? The Story Sisters, actually, is In-Between Alice: excessive and over-determined but ultimately so moving that it overwhelms these faults.... [A] radiant finale reminds us what a satisfying novelist Alice Hoffman can be, when she feels like it.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post Book World

At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, The Story Sisters sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them. It confirms Alice Hoffman’s reputation as "a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled.
Chicago Tribune

(Starred review.) The always dazzling Hoffman has outdone herself in this bewitching weave of psychologically astute fantasy and shattering realism, encompassing rape, drug addiction, disease, and fatal accidents. Her alluring characters are soulful, their suffering mythic, and though the sorrows are many and the body count high, this is an entrancing and romantic drama shot through with radiant beauty and belief in human resilience and transformation. —Donna Seaman
Booklist 

Lyrical but atypically monotonous, bestseller Hoffman's (The Third Angel) latest follows the dark family saga of Elv, Megan and Claire Story, sisters plagued by uncommon sadness. As a child, Elv spun fairy tales of a magical world for her sisters, but a period of savage sexual abuse-information about which slowly leaks out—sends her spiraling into years of drug addiction and painful self-abuse. Elv's story is unrelentingly grim, and without Hoffman's characteristic magic realism, its simple downward spiral becomes exhausting. Tragedy after tragedy befalls the family—Elv's commitment to a juvenile rehab facility, a deadly accident, a fatal illness and betrayal after betrayal. When the last third of the book turns to focus on Claire, who has been so damaged by the family crises that she refuses to speak, the slight glimmers of hope and goodness are too little, too late. Hoffman's prose is as lovely as ever: the imagined and real worlds of the Story sisters are rich and clear, but Elv's troubles and the Story family's nonstop catastrophes are wearying.
Publishers Weekly

Once upon a time on Long Island, there were three Story sisters: Elv, Meg, and Claire. Aged 12 to 15, they were all beautiful and well behaved, with long, dark hair and pale eyes. They lived in magical harmony, speaking a private, shared language. Their parents were divorced, and the sisters visited their grandparents in Paris every spring. But their mother, Annie, feels increasingly left out of her daughters' lives. Indeed, darkness is soon to fall. Elv's belief in a secret underworld spins out of control, and she begins using drugs and stealing. Sent away to reform school, she falls in love with a man who is a heroin addict. There are betrayals and accidents, Annie falls ill, and the Story family disintegrates before our eyes. This is one of Hoffman's darkest novels yet, and some of Hoffman's readers may find it too dark. But name recognition advises purchase of multiple copies for libraries, and hope for the family's healing keeps readers, heartbroken yet spellbound, turning the pages.
Library Journal

An act of child abuse has lasting consequences in Hoffman's painfully moving novel (The Third Angel, 2008, etc.). The summer Claire Story was 8 and her sister Elv was 11, a man tried to abduct Claire in his car; Elv jumped in, told Claire to jump out, and it was hours before she returned. They never told their mother Annie or middle sister Meg-their father walked out that same summer-and neither girl was ever the same. As the main narrative opens, when Elv is 15, she's becoming an out-of-control adolescent increasingly at odds with careful, rule-following Meg. Racked with guilt over the unknown horrors her sister endured in her place, Claire tries to be loyal, but as Elv's drug use and promiscuity escalate, she backs away. The desperate Annie finally takes Elv to a rehab facility, enlisting the reluctant support of her selfish ex-husband, who insists it's all her fault. At the facility, Elv meets Lorry, a thief and addict who introduces her to heroin, but who also really loves her. The chronology speeds up after Elv comes home and a dreadful accident seals her alienation from her family. Hoffman paints wrenching scenes of tentative efforts at reconciliation that just barely fail, as Elv becomes pregnant and cleans up, but loses Lorry to his "fatal flaw." A kindly detective brings late-life happiness to Annie and metes out delayed justice to Elv's abuser, but the disasters keep coming. Two sisters grow into adulthood, dreadfully damaged by the losses they've endured and their punishing self-blame for the mistakes they made. Hoffman's habitual allusions to mysterious supernatural forces are very jarring in this context, as is the endless interpolation of memories from the terrible abduction; she could have trusted her readers to get the point with out constant prodding. A radiant denouement shows love redeeming the surviving sisters, and there are beautiful moments throughout, but they don't entirely compensate for Hoffman's excesses of plot and tone. A near-miss from this uneven but always compelling writer.
Kirkus Reviews

---

Discussion Questions
1. When Elv and Claire set out to rescue the horse at the beginning of the novel, what do you learn about the family dynamics and the personalities of the three sisters? How do they relate to one another and to their mother, Annie? Which sister is most like Annie? What does Annie mean when she says,“People who said daughters were easy had never had girls of their own” [p. 4]?

2. The importance of storytelling is a central theme of this novel. What purpose do stories serve—for the individual and for society? Do you see any parallels between the Story sisters and other literary sisters, such as the Brontë sisters or the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women? Can imagined worlds be both positive and destructive? What is the thin line between storytelling and deception/ denial, and how does it come into play in the novel?

3. After her abduction, Elv begins to invent the world of Arnelle. It’s a way for her to escape reality, but her fairy-tale world becomes a trap of its own. Discuss the otherworld that Elv creates and how it functions. What are the rules of Arnelle and how do they relate to Elv’s abduction? Why does Elv later decide to change the story by “going over to the other side” [p. 69] and joining with the “demon world”? Can you understand and have compassion for her when she turns her back on the “human world”?

4. Fairy tales typically include common mythic elements, including the battle between good and evil, the idea of “the quest,” and the notion that sacrifices must be made in order for an individual to earn wisdom and faith. How are the qualities of fairy tales incorporated into the novel?

5. Each chapter begins with a “fairy tale” from Elv’s Black Book of Fairy Tales, the stories she tells to her sisters. If you read them in order, what do they tell you about Elv’s inner life? Are fairy tales often a psychological map, a way to get to truth via mythic and symbolic references? If so, how?

6. On the day of Elv’s abduction Meg is reading the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. Why is this significant? Meg also reads Oliver Twist and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Why might these novels appeal to her? Which author does Claire read in Paris, and why do you think this novelist would appeal to her considering her unique vision of the world? Are there novels that you feel affected you greatly at certain points in your life? If so, which ones and why?

7. Why does Elv keep her abduction a secret? Whom is she trying to protect? Why does Claire go along with her decision? Is keeping another person’s secret a sign of loyalty or does it—as Meg asserts—make you an accomplice? How did your vision of Elv change as you learned more details about her abduction?

8. When Elv’s family brings her to Westfield, she feels betrayed. Why does Elv place such a high premium on loyalty, and how do you think she defines it? How does each family member react to the intervention? Are there situations where it’s necessary to deceive loved ones in order to save them? Have you ever faced such a situation with a loved one?

9. First at the Westfield School and later in prison, Elv strongly identifies with Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. What parallels do you see between Elv and Hester? In what ways does Elv imagine herself to be “marked” and set apart from others? Have you known people who have made a youthful mistake that has haunted them?

10. What stories does Lorry tell Elv about his past, and how do they mirror her own tales of Arnelle? Why doesn’t she feel betrayed when she learns that Lorry’s “true-life” stories about living below Penn Station with the mole people are in fact fiction? What is the distinction between a story and a lie? Do you think Lorry gave Elv what she wanted or needed? How do you view the love they had for each other?

11. When Annie hires Pete to track down Elv, the two strike up a friendship that leads to romance. What do you make of Pete’s decision to stay with Annie and pursue a relationship with her even though he knows he doesn’t have much time left with her? What does that decision say about his character?

12. After Meg dies, her sisters are emotionally lost, shattered by the tragic circumstance of her death. Elv disappears and Claire withdraws deep inside herself, refusing to speak or relate to others. Why does Elv run away from the scene of the accident? Does she want to be found? Who does Claire blame for Meg’s death and why? Why does it take an outsider such as Pete to understand and try to assuage the sisters’ guilt?

13. While in prison, Elv works with abused and abandoned dogs and later takes a job with an animal shelter. After Meg dies, Claire’s constant companion is her dog, Shiloh. Lorry’s stories revolve around a heroic dog as well. How does the relationship between human and dog relate to the theme of loyalty? What impact do the dogs have on the sisters and why?

14. As a detective, Pete is in the business of uncovering secrets. But he is also a keeper of secrets when he feels it’s necessary to protect those he loves. Why does he pose as an author when he visits the man who abused Elv? Is this man correct when he says people are unknowable and that “everyone has their secrets” [p. 286)? Do you feel Pete has made a moral decision when he frames the man who is responsible for so much of the damage in the Story sisters’ lives?

15. In Paris, Claire leads a solitary life and speaks only when necessary. She avoids love and relationships and suffers from intense guilt. What does Claire mean when she says that “she and Elv were two of a kind” [p. 227]? Do you see the similarities between the sisters, even though their lives take such different arcs? What role does art play in reconnecting Claire to the world?

16. How does motherhood change Elv, and what does she discover about the nature of maternal love? Do you think we often understand our parents best only after we ourselves become parents? What stories does Elv pass down to Mimi? How does the telling of family stories help Elv and connect her to the past? What role does Mimi play in bringing Elv and Claire together again? Do you see a future for the Story sisters? If you were to write the next five years in the sisters’ lives, how do you imagine Claire and Elv’s relationship will progress? Would you agree that the major theme of The Story Sisters is the possibility of redemption and forgiveness? (Questions from the author's website.)

top of page