Grown Women Love Fairy Tales, Too!

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman is one of the most delightful books I've read in a long time. It's purely pleasure reading: this story is so beautifully told that, if you're like me, you'll actually feel guilty reading it!

The novel centers on two Owens women, Sally and Gillian (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, respectively, in the film version--which I have not seen). They were orphaned as children and sent to live with their two older, exotic aunts--who just happen to be witches...full-fledged witchy women, with potions, herbs, spells, insects and rodents to prove it. The girls have no structure to their lives at the aunts' house, so Sally becomes the fixer-upper, the meal planner, the laundry-doer--the all-around good girl, while Gillian rebels and pretty much gets in trouble everywhere she goes.

But the trouble doesn't really begin until Sally and Gillian are older, and Sally has two teenage girls of her own: after succeeding at creating a stable, safe, un-magical home for herself and her girls, far away from the home she shared with the aunts, Gillian comes back and screws up everything--but ends up teaching all of the Owens women (herself included) important life lessons in the process.

All of the characters are extremely well-developed in this novel: you can visualize them, you know their voices, and you truly care about them. If I didn't know better, I'd believe that the author is a witch herself, because the descriptions of herbs and spells and other exotica are so convincing. Before you're through with this book, you'll wish you were an Owens women, despite the trouble their family and history get them into. Hoffman has woven a truly magical story, one which unfolds just like a modern fairy tale. I can't wait to read everything else she's written, but I am doubtful that any of her other novels will compare to the beauty of Practical Magic.