Review: Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman

Title:  Illumination Night Author: Alice Hoffman (Author Website) (Facebook) Genre: Adult Fiction Narrator: Suzanne Toren Publisher:  Blackstone Audio,  June, 2014 Length: 7.8 hours Source: Audiobook Jukebox‘s reviewer program

About the Book: (From AliceHoffman.com)

Set on Martha’s Vineyard, here is a stunning novel that brings that beautiful island to vivid life – a novel that weaves together the lives of a little boy who can’t grow, an elderly woman who needs to save someone before she passes on, a blond giant, a young couple, a teenaged girl looking for trouble. Lives of intense erotic longing, of quiet understanding, of willful determination. It is a novel of magic and mystery, and a literary event that confirms Alice Hoffman as one of our finest and most compelling writers.

Related Media: – Grand Illumination Night on Martha’s Vineyard

An Island tradition since 1869, Grand Illumination takes place on the third Wednesday of August. It starts with a band concert by the Vineyard Haven Band followed by a community sing, the lighting of the first lantern, and the lighting of all of the other lanterns.

About the Author:

Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing.  She currently lives in Boston.

Hoffman’s first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. She credits her mentor, professor and writer Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, the writer Maclin Bocock Guerard, for helping her to publish her first short story in the magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff then contacted her to ask if she had a novel, at which point she quickly began to write what was to become Property Of, a section of which was published in Mr. Solotaroff’s magazine, American Review.

About the Narrator:

 

2009 Best Voice in NONFICTION & CULTURE: Suzanne Toren brings a distinguishing warmth and power to her narrations. Her talents extend to both fiction and nonfiction, and in her recording career of 30-plus years she has given listeners heart-wrenching memoirs, lively history, engaging light fiction, and involving mysteries. Her skill with European and Middle Eastern languages and a degree in French literature also help her provide an essential believability to the characters she portrays.

 

My Review: Illumination Night is set on Martha’s Vineyard in present time.  Alice Hoffman description of the island and the interesting collection of characters are wonderful.  I have only read a few books by Alice Hoffman, but I am always impressed with her writing, beautiful and flowing.

Vonny and Andre are the parents of little Simon.  Vonny progresses through agoraphobia, she is trapped by a fear and inner turmoil in her house.  Ultimately her agoraphobia actually brings her closer to her husband.  I love how the relationship between Vonny and her neighbor Elizabeth Renny ultimately helps both women to heal.  Simon experiences tragedy and your heart breaks for this little boy. He is unsure of himself and concerned by his short stature.  I did find the beginning a little slow, but soon I couldn’t wait to put my headphones on to hear about Vonny and the others.

When the author introduced the character Eddie, a gentle giant,  I was thinking, “Yeah, Right”.   But as unlikely of a character, Eddie grows to be one of my favorite character.  He is flawed and a product of his past, but ultimately is a tender hearted young man, who found and lost love. 

Narration by Suzanne Toren is wonderful and captures the emotions of the characters.  I think the narration had a lot to do with my being draw to Vonny.  She sounded like a friend I wanted to keep in touch with.  Characters were distinct, though one of the male voices bothered me at first, but grew on me as the story progressed.   Which fit perfectly with the storyline.

My Rating: 4 – Illumination Night is a story that will stay with you due to the wonderful characters.  I still wonder what will happen to them next.  Alice Hoffman is a talented story teller with great character development.  She has a way with words that really captures you and she has an ability to create sympathetic characters. The story does seem to have a number of story lines going on at the same time, but I did not find that confusing.  The story of Eddie left me wanting for more.    Themes in Illumination Light include, family dysfunction, fidelity, fear and Agoraphobia, and desperation.

My Rating Scale: 1 – didn’t like it; 2 – it was ok; 3 – liked it; 4 – really liked it; 5 – it was amazing

Happy Reading!

**Disclosure – Audio book Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman was received from Blackstone Audio in exchange for a fair review.

Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Title:  Everything I Never Told You Author: Celest Ng (Author Website) (Facebook) Genre: Adult Fiction Narrator: Cassandra Campbell Publisher:  Blackstone Audio,  June, 2014 Length:  10 hours Source: Audiobook Jukebox‘s reviewer program

About the Book: (from Good Reads.com)

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest of the family—Hannah—who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened.

A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another

Book Trailer for Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

About the Author:

Celeste Ng is the author of the novel Everything I Never Told You (June 2014, Penguin Press). She grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a family of scientists. Celeste attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award.  Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize.

Currently she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son, where she teaches fiction writing at Grub Street and is at work on a second novel and a collection of short stories.

About the Narrator:

Cassandra Campbell is an actress, director, and teacher as well as an accomplished voice-over artist. Voice credits include numerous books on tape, documentaries and commercials in both Italian and English. As an actress she has performed in New York at the Public Theatre, the Mint Theatre, and the Clurman as well as many others. Regional work includes StageWest, The Berkshire Theatre Festival, Millmountain Theatre, and The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she a faculty member at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

 

 

 

My Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng is the story of a Chinese/American family in the 1970’s in small town Ohio.  James and Marilyn meet in college and start a relationship despite their different cultural backgrounds.   Marilyn falls pregnant and the couple gets married.  Marilyn gives up her dream of becoming a Dr for her growing family.  This is a sacrifice that Marilyn had a hard time move past. James is always wanting to fit in with their community in Ohio.  He wants his children to have a different childhood than he did. He wants them to feel accepted by their school peers and community. 

The novel starts out informing the reader  that “Lydia is dead”.  While the reader knows this fact, the family does not.  The reader is there as the parents discover the fate of their eldest daughter, the child they each had aspirations for.  The reader is along on the journey as the family unravels at the lose of a child.   Celeste Ng’s telling of the story of Lee family from the point of the death of their child, through the emotional aftermath, is a great structure for this type of story.  Ng develops the characters in Everything I Never Told You in great detail.  I would have like if the  development of Lydia would have been  as detailed.   At the end I was left  wanting to know more  about the final moments and thoughts of Lydia.

The author does a wonderful job of delving into the various ways in which James and Marilyn as parents deal with Lydia’s death as well as how Nath and Hannah deal with the death of a sibling.   The reader begins to understand the family’s fragile dynamics.

The narration of Everything I Never Told You by Cassandra Campbell was very enjoyable.  She keeps a good pace and gives each character their own voice in a natural sounding way. 

My Rating: 3.5 – I would rate Everything I Never Told You higher if I found the ending more satisfying.  Everything I Never Told you is a cautionary tale about the danger of projecting your unfilled needs and dreams upon your children.  Celeste Ng skillfully addresses themes such as expectations, dreams, lost chances, family secrets and cultural isolation.  I applaud the author for a decent debut novel and look forward to checking out additional publications by Celeste Ng.

My Rating Scale: 1 – didn’t like it; 2 – it was ok; 3 – liked it; 4 – really liked it; 5 – it was amazing

Everything I Never Told You was also reviewed on the following  blogs: River City Reading, S.Krishna’s Books, and She Treads Softly. 

Happy Reading!

**Disclosure – Audio book Everything I Never Told You was received from Blackstone Audio in exchange for a fair review.