Alice Hoffman's books are always magical. This one is more rooted in realism than most. Hoffman's ability to convey the emotions we all have but are often unwilling to admit to, is striking and mesmerizing. ( )

This book uses its setting and characters very effectively to show how the looks of the American dream can be deceiving. When the main character moves to 1960s suburban American, her very presence makes life less perfect and yet somehow more real for the other people who live there. Like most Hoffman, this includes elements of magical realism, including a ghost who haunts not her killer, but his brother, and a mother who uses old spells to keep her child save at school.

Another good read. ( )

Hoffman always writes of the ghosts that haunt people's lives. This book is no exception. However, the more interesting aspect of this book is how well Hoffman has drawn a character that so accurately illustrates the Aphrodite Goddess-type written about by Jane Shiboda Bolen in her book, The Goddess in Every Woman. Aphrodite archetypes are women who, without any conscious knowledge, set off reactions in others for which the Aphrodite-type is often cursed. Aphrodite is called by Shiboda-Bolen the "Alchemical Goddess", the woman who has an inherent sexual charge to her nature, who spurs the unspoken desires in men and the often unacknowledged fears or desires in other women.

The setting of this book is the early-1950s in America, where the first housing subdivisions are being built. Conformity is the Rule of the Day, especially the demand for female conformity. In this era, women were tightly controlled and their sexuality was deeply feared. The housing subdivision was a metaphor for the sameness, the standardization of behavior, of looks, of hopes and dreams that were held as the American Ideal of the day.

Into this world of houses that all look the same and people who never go outside the boldly delineated lines of social expectation that were drawn for them moves Rita, a divorcee with two young children at a time when divorce was still considered scandalous.

Rita sets off a chain of reactions among the residents of the subdivision that transforms each of them. ( )

In the summer of 1959, life in a sleepy Long Island neighbourhood is disturbed by a new arrival who moves in with her cat, Elvis collection and two children. The author's other novels include "Property Of", "The Drowning Season", "Angel Landing", "White Horses" and "At Risk".

This is Hoffman at her best (and that's very good, indeed), giving us an engaging & empathetic treatment of a mother & son who are outcasts in the small community they move into. It has nice light magical touches, especially in her descriptions of everyday suburban scenes. ( )