Good Hoffman, Bad Hoffman

 

The Invisible Hours (2023)

By Alice Hoffman

Atria Books, 252 pages.

★★

 

Few authors delve into the mysterious as often as Alice Hoffman. At her best, she’s so spellbinding she makes us suspend disbelief. Occasionally, though, she writes a headscratcher like The Invisible Hours.

 

It starts with great promise. Ivy Jacobs is 16, pregnant to an irresponsible Harvard jerk, and is castoff by her Beacon Hill family. An erstwhile friend takes her to the western part of the Commonwealth, where she falls under the spell of and marries Joel Davis, the leader of an intentional community. There she gives birth to red-haired Mia, but “The Community” is more of a cult than a commune. Numerous reviewers have made comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale and/or Puritan Salem, but those who know Western Massachusetts will find great similarity to the Renaissance Community that thrived in the Gill/Turners Falls area in the 1960s into the 1970s, before founder Michael Metelica succumbed to megalomania akin to what you read in Hoffman’s novel.

 

Davis lays down strict rules, among them repressive gender roles that confine women to nurturing tasks, limit their educational opportunities, arrange their marriages, demand their children pay obedience Davis, and limit contact with the outside world. The high-spirited Mia chafes under such conditions, especially when she discovers literature in the village library–especially Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. Mia is punished periodically, as is Ivy for birthing such an obstreperous child. Mia’s attempts to runaway only lead to more trouble–she even wears letters commensurate to her misbehavior–and considers suicide. Instead, Mia outsmarts Davis and finds a rescuer in the form of Sarah, the town librarian, who spirits her away to Concord and the care of her friend Constance with whom Sarah is in a classic “Boston marriage.” Mia grows up and thrives.

 

Alas, the novel disintegrates in absurdity. Davis, who spirals deeper into obsession and  mental instability, searches for Mia to bring her back to The Community. Most are foiled because–ready?– Mia is often missing in time. Her studies of The Scarlet Letter make her so sympathetic that a visit to Hawthorne’s grave opens a portal between past and present. Hawthorne's melancholy leaves him unable to write. For reasons too contrived to mention, Mia must “save” Hawthorne so he actually pens The Scarlet Letter. Mia eventually befriends his sister Elizabeth and eventually becomes close to Nathaniel. Can she stay? Would that alter history? The less said about Mia’s own daughter, the better. Isn’t the idea of Mia saving Hawthorne’s mental health and career far-fetched enough?

 

Hoffman had plenty of material with which to work if she simply rewrote more of the sad saga of Michael Metelica. Sometimes what actually happened is so weird that attempts at “improvement” cheapen it.

 

 

 

The Drowning Season (1979)

Plume/Penguin, 212 pages.

★★★

 

I needed to read a good Alice Hoffman and plucked The Drowning Season from a neighborhood giveaway box. It’s not a great book, but this, her second novel, suggests that sometimes small doses of fanciful storytelling are better than a whole lot.

 

It follows an unorthodox family that skirts incest were it not for a toss-away plot that its matriarch, Esther the White–her hair color–was adopted. It begins in Russia where Ester and her two brothers, Mischa and Max, a dwarf, live with such horrible parents they conspire to run away. Their journey involves pilfered jewelry, a lusty tattooed man, selling Max to a circus–yes, that sort of thing actually happened–moving to England, and settling along New York’s Long Island Sound.

 

Mischa and Esther marry and raise a son (of uncertain fatherhood) named Phillip. They own a complex called The Compound but they, and eventually his alcoholic wife Rose, must keep a close watch on Phillip. Each summer, he falls into a sort of stupor and would drown himself were he not locked up. Esther is also furious with Phillip because he named his daughter Esther, a major no-no among Ashkenazi Jews. Esther the White is acidic towards Esther the Black.

 

It's an intriguing tale that also involves a Russian caretaker who protects Esther the White and pines for her, a determined fishing community, a developer, Max’s return, Esther the Black’s moody defiance, a punk rocker, and reconciliation. It has a splash of magical realism and is a ghost story (of sorts).  Some readers wanted more, but it felt welcomingly spartan to me.

 

Rob Weir