A “wondrous” novel of fear, desire, loss, and discovery on Martha’s Vineyard by the New York Times–bestselling author of Practical Magic and Seventh Heaven (Chicago Tribune). Elizabeth Renny has only made two decisions of consequence in her seventy-plus years. While the first, marrying her husband, had adequate results, the second—deciding she could fly from her bedroom window—is less successful. … fly from her bedroom window—is less successful. But her flight sets in motion a series of events that will forever change the lives of six residents of Martha’s Vineyard: a young boy who refuses to grow, a wife stifled by her irrational anxiety, a husband tempted by the unknown, a girl flirting with disaster, a gentle giant tortured by his size, and an old woman with nothing to lose.
Praised as “an intelligent novel” by the New York Times and “achingly vivid” by Newsday, Illumination Night is a sparkling and heartbreaking narrative that explores marriage, friendship, youth, yearning, disillusionment, and desire, a book as bright and memorable as the festival of lanterns for which it is named.
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Alice Hoffman’s books are very unique in that she takes small towns in Massachusetts and early settler families and creates stories around each successive family or characters who lived on the land. Her stories of these people, the hardships they lived through, the hardness of the times they lived in is realistic but haunting. She is very …
I love her books. Haven’t read one so far that disappointed me. She weaves a wonderful spell
I love Alice Hoffman’s mix of the mystical and the hard realities. She can make me believe that the most unreal things in her books are possibilities. She always softens the world for me. This book was no exception.