Discovering something new

I discovered a new writer, well actually she's been writing for some time, but she's new to me. Alice Hoffman. Of course, I knew who Alice Hoffman is, I'd even seen the movie version of Practical Magic but I'd never actually read her work before. When the movie of Practical Magic came out, I took the book out afterwards out of the library, but one thing led to another and I never actually read it.

So yesterday I was looking through my bookshelves searching desperately for something to read, having my usual book malaise which generally occurs when I've gone on a reading binge of a certain type of book, and I found a copy of The Probable Future that I had borrowed over a year ago from another secretary when I was temping at Morgan Stanley. I flipped through thinking I'd read a little bit. Well two hours later I was still reading the book. I couldn't put it down.

The Probable Future deals with three generations of the Sparrow family, grandmother, mother and granddaughter. Each Sparrow woman develops a particular gift on her thirteen birthday. Elinor, the grandmother, can sense if someone is lying, Jenny can see people's dreams as they are dreaming them, and Stella the granddaughter, can sense when someone is going to die and how. The crux of the book is what happens when Stella tells her father to warn the police about a woman's death, and then he's arrested for the murder after it occurs. Stella sent to live with her grandmother, and Jenny returns as well when her ex-husband gives an interview to a reporter, and a photograph appears in the paper with her building number clearly visible. The three generations have to learn to deal with each other finally.

So what we have is women's fiction with a bit of magical realism thrown in. The book is rich with imagery concerning nature that is just delicious plus the little tidbits of the Sparrow women's history and the house they live in, called the Cake House. The first Sparrow woman Rebecca's gift is that she feels no pain, which back in the days of the Puritans didn't go down very well.

I'm halfway through the novel, but I dont' want the story to end. Now that I've had my appetite whetted for Alice Hoffman, I'm going to go back and give Practical Magic another shot. Also Elinor Lipman, whose book The Pursuit of Alice Thrift I really liked, has a book I also want to read.

Normally I don't read much literary fiction because it's not what I write, but every now again, I need a break from genre fiction. It's like eating too much chocolate, you need to stop and have a piece of licorice or something a little tarter. Not that I would ever abandon reading genre fiction, I love it, but it's nice to explore other writers.

Any authors you've discovered lately?