Blackbird House (thoughts)

Yay!  A short story Sunday, and I’ve actually read some short stories. :)

But, before I forget, if I get into the grad school I want to get into, I’ll be pursuing an MA in nonproliferation studies (at my back-up, it’ll be an MS in defense and security studies).  I’m refreshing my Russian (I studied it all four years in college), because this particular school has a heavy emphasis on second-language ability (and Russian is always important where nuclear weapons are concerned); since my main purpose for the language is current events, I’m polishing it by listening to Voice of America in Russian and reading newspaper articles, then flashcarding any words I don’t know.  I thought it’d be easier to just answer several questions I’ve had in comments in the post itself.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman is a short story collection that follows one house from its construction (in the 1700s) through the present day.  The house is on the coast of Cape Cod, and it sees a fascinating mix of people over more than two centuries.  I can’t remember where I read about this, but I know I read about it online somewhere, since I immediately ran over to bookmooch and snagged a copy.

I’m so glad that I did!  I don’t usually read books set in New England, so the setting was quite interesting.  And Alice Hoffman can write characters.  My only experience with Hoffman was an aborted attempt to listen to Practical Magic on CD (I think part of the problem was the narrator’s voice) years ago, and I wrote her off as author I didn’t like.  Now that I’ve read Blackbird House, however, I’m as zealous as any born again convert.  Those who don’t usually enjoy short stories might find the structure of this collection comforting; since it takes place in the same region, and often some of the same characters pop up in two stories (and there are references to the earlier stories throughout), it provides a more unified feeling than most short story collections.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I fell in love with many of the characters.  Hoffman’s style has just a tiny touch of magical realism (it only really appears for the first three stories, “The Edge of the World,” “The Witch of Truro,” and “The Token”) that I delighted in, and she creates characters that, while feeling realistic, tend to be quirkier than anyone you’d meet in real life.  There are a total of twelve stories, and they all feel precisely the correct length; sometimes, I think that short stories end a bit abruptly, but here Hoffman strikes a wonderful balance.  In the middle is a neat little trilogy, featuring the same girl, Violet, at different stages of her life.  The stories, entitled “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” “Lionheart,” and “The Conjurer’s Handbook,” are some of my favourites from the entire collection.  Especially the last one; it might just be one of my favourite short stories ever.  It felt like Hoffman slumped a bit in “India” and “The Pear Tree” (set in the seventies and eighties, they were a bit too dreary for me), but the final two “The Summer Kitchen” and “Wish You Were Here,” both featuring Emma, pulled the quality back up.

All in all, I couldn’t put this collection down.  It was consistently compelling and, well, achingly beautiful at times.  Highly, highly recommended. :)

Favourite Passages:
I read book as though I were eating apples, core and all, starved for those pages, hungry for every word that told me about things I didn’t yet have, but still wanted terribly, wanted until it hurt. (73-4)
I wasn’t afraid. I had read The Odyssey and I knew there was no way to escape your own fate. I knew that every monster had a beating heart, even those with scales, even those with flame-hot breath that could light the eelgrass on fire, even those whose faces were too terrible to see. (77)
It was cancer and he hadn’t a chance, but every day he sat in the field and watched the sun rise. He still didn’t believe in hospitals, and in his case it wouldn’t have helped. So he waited. He sat in one place for so long the goldfinches took him for a stone and perched on his shoulders. The cold did not bother him, nor did his pain. He swore he saw the sailor who had built our house, the one who had disappeared out on the ocean. There were waves in the field where Padma and Brownie had lived, and my father could smell the sea, only a mile away. He counted blackbirds until they became stars to his eyes. He said my name was the most beautiful word in the universe, and that was why he had called me Maya, but I had never really heard a word. (171)