The Story Sisters: or, Alice Hoffman, Again. And again. And again.

Ooooh Alice Hoffman. I love me some magical realism, but the problem with Alice Hoffman is that I feel like I've read Her Book about fifty zillion times. So why do I keep reading them?

Reasons Why I Keep Reading Alice Hoffman Even Though Every Book Feels the Same:  

 1. The atmosphere is always (usually...always....usuallaways) reliable. Sometimes I want that autumnal, crisp, lonely, spare feeling, and Hoffman delivers every time. Remember The Probable Future? Ahhh, so good and leaves-crunching-under-your-feet, and falling into that hoobity-boobity-spookity-cookity category of books that I read at the same time-- Ami McKay's The Birth House (not especially hoobity boobity, but incredibly good and autumn-ey) and Celia Rees's Witch Child (very  hoobity boobity and autumn-ey), for example.

2. You can count on a mildly interesting, magical tastical story. And that's fun! It adds atmosphere, and sometimes you just WANT that atmosphere.

3. Because this one might be THE ONE! You know, the next Here on Earth or Practical Magic.

But the thing is...

It probably isn't.

It's probably another Blackbird House or The Ice Queen. It probably plods along at a neutral, enjoyable, this-is-fine-but-I-have-no-urgency-toPUSHHHH pace for a couple hundred pages and then you pick up something that will leave a stronger impression on you.

So how does The Story Sisters stack up? It's the same.

The story sisters are sisters three, Elv, Megan and Claire.  The youngest and oldest, Claire and Elv, are closer to one another than either of them is to Megan on account of something AWFUL that happened when the sisters were all younger. As Elv turns into a bitchy teenager, never telling anyone about the AWFUL something or getting help for it (which really makes the reader,errr, me, ANGRY), she pushes her family away and gets into drugs and then bad things happen and then a REALLY bad thing happens, and then everyone's really sad. Time goes by; Claire hangs out with her grandmother in Paris and will-she-won't-she like Elv again, or be happy again? 

I picked up this book because a) I wanted to go to Paris (I travel by book; it's so cheap) and b) I wanted to go to New York, two location promises this book gave me. But I didn't really FEEL Paris, or New York, so it was kind of a bust. The drama is dramatic. The magic is.... not terribly magical. The premise, as told by the back of the book, is that Elv has created this magical hoobity boobity land and she tells people stories about it (yay, a Story sister tells stories). But the stories are not terribly intricately woven. They are not especially interesting. Yes, the sisters have a secret language that only they can understand. But this seems a little.... done before. 

I dunno, I felt very blah about this book. I read it to the end because I had hopes-- I always have hopes for Hoffman, she of Practical Magic and so forth. But.... it was kind of a yawn-er.

5.5/10

Read it if you:

1. love Alice Hoffman forever and will therefore read anything she writes (this one's got your name all over it);

2. are into the idea of a pretty steadily depressing story;

3. like a book that ends will. That's where the .5 came from. I thought the ending was good. And not just because the book was over. It was just a good, solid ending.