Practical Magic
Book Summary: The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.
One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic…
Review: This piece falls into the “I did not know this was a book” category of my reading this year. The difference here is that while I was completely absorbed into Howl’s I found myself bored by most of this book. Other than the flash back bits about the Aunts, who are honestly life goals, it was mostly like a weird third person journal of Sally being a single mother. As I listened to this as an audio book from the library, I don’t have a great idea how long the chapters are, but in audio you could cut them down to 45 minutes and basically have all the interesting bits you could want. For example, the WHOLE movie plot takes place in THE LAST THIRTY MINUTES OF THE BOOK. Am I still going to read the sequel? Yes, because I’m a literary masochist and I’m trying to make up for not reading since middle school when I would devour a book a week.
But enough about the things I don’t like. Let’s discuss what I loved. I LOVED the further insight into Jet and Francis. The only thing I wanted more as a child to be movie Sally was to grow up to be Francis. The woman is just so aesthetic. There’s a long story about lightning striking in town and eventually you learn that the aunts are single because the only men they’ve ever loved were struck two brothers killed by lightning strikes while running through the town center, a place known for lightning, to prove their own love for the aunts. And the weird lightning theme keeps popping up, maybe as a person who has been struck, I notice it more, but I saw it, and feel like it could have been developed more. I did also find the very practical explanations for the magic in the book to be pretty adorbs. For instance, when the aunts in the movie banish Jimmy’s soul there’s A LOT of magic, but in the book they legit dissolve his body with lye and pave over it with a patio! I snorted my tea when I got to that part, it was great.
There’s not a whole lot left to really say about everything, these book reviews are mostly just for me to practice my writing and organizing my thoughts to become a better blogger. And to help me get more content up so I can try to sus out more of my niche. Though so far, we are edging towards Morticia’s crazy sister who lives on a desert farm, so that’s fun.