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Loading... Blackbird Houseby Alice Hoffman
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  countrylife | Nov 6, 2009 |  I enjoyed this book,but thought it was a bit strange. I think it is an interesting idea following the history of a house and it's occupants. But the characters in this story were just weird. (  ) tjblue | Sep 12, 2009 | I picked up a copy of Blackbird House at my local library because I'm a big fan of Alice Hoffman's work. Her book The Ice Queen is one of my favorites. I really had no idea what this book was about. After reading it I have some mixed thoughts on it. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. It didn't grab me, I found I had to push myself to read it and finish it. The book is a collection of short stories based on people who lived in a farmhouse in Cape Cod called Blackbird House. The stories vary from different times and events. From a mother whose sons and husband are lost at sea, to a woman who loses the man she loves to her more beautiful sister, to a pair of brothers whose only wish is to leave the small town and move on to better things. The stories are all intertwined in some way. The writing was wonderful as usual Alice Hoffman style. ( ) naidascrochet | Sep 2, 2009 | alice hoffman is brilliant. i found the ending a bit abrupt though. (  ) auntycaz | Aug 31, 2009 | A flowing collection of short stories centered around the various occupants of house on Cape Cod ("the edge of the world"), Blackbird House was an enchanting little read. I especially liked that, even though the main character was a house, the stories made me want to go outside and watch lightening bugs or pick strawberries and sweet peas. The other characters, all human except the white blackbird, were real and flawed but hopeful in most cases although they were no strangers to tragedy. I enjoyed the historical aspect as well. Massachusetts is rich with history, so I imagine the author had plenty of options to choose from to help guide her stories. ( ) susanaudrey | Jul 7, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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With ¿incantatory prose¿ that ¿sweeps over the reader like a dream,¿ (Philadelphia Inquirer), Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future, with 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.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400)
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And at first I was enjoying the stories, historical fiction set on Cape Cod, of fishermen, cranberries, ponds and gardens. But each story was so filled with tragedy of one kind or another, that, although they (all but one) ended with a tiny little thread of hope, it was just too sorrowful a trip through time. Especially the chapters set in more modern times. If tragedy is your thing, you may like this book. I won’t be bothering with this author again.
To be fair, there was one plus for me: having just returned from a vacation in that area, it was pleasant to ‘see’ it again through the richly drawn setting.
No, two. This phrase: “I read books as though I were eating apples, core and all, starved for those pages, hungry for every word that told me about things I didn’t yet have, but still wanted terribly, wanted until it hurt.” (