Review submitted by Luanne Oleas
Here on Earth
By Alice Hoffman
For those over 40 who still wonder about that one person from long ago and why it never worked out, Here on Earth lets you know. March Cooper returns to the rural Massachusetts town she left as a girl without her first love, who left her staring out an icy window for three years before she moved to California and married Richard Cooper.
It’s the funeral of her nanny, Judith Dale, that brings March back, carrying more emotional baggage than the red-eye express in the form of her rebellious, spike-haired 15- year-old daughter, Gwen, and an unrequited love for Hollis. In the author’s own unique style of poetic prose lays bare the tale of what happens when a fantasy love becomes a reality.
By the author’s own admission, Here on Earth is a darker novel than her others. In fact, in the middle of it, she put it aside and dashed off Practical Magic, just to get a break from the novel’s heaviness.
As the relationship evolves between March and Hollis, it becomes evident why he smelled of “some other scorching scent which March would later come to believe was anger.” And also, why it’s always a mistake to say, “Don’t you dare walk out that door.”
The surrealistic picture that Hoffman paints of reality comes from her magnification of the details. The dragonfly caught in your hair, the foxes disappearing and meeting in a circle in the depths of the woods, the horse that would kill a man but die for a teenage girl, and how March’s brother — the Coward — lives in the marshes, and, despite his drinking, was the only one who knew the truth from the beginning. For him, and the choice he makes, she says, “Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.”
This tales lacks some of the magic and spirituality of her other novels. The depth of the subject doesn’t lend itself to “angels landing between your shoulders blades.” It strains the fabrics of the words that weave the story of love that wasn’t meant to be, and what occurs when two people decide to make it happen anyway.
No related posts.
Print This Post
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, December 8th, 1998 at 12:01 am and is filed under Book Review, Holidays 1998.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Pammy, the main character in the 
Many of those 
Editor of The Blue Rose Bouquet since 1998 and a professional writer since 1984,