Illumination night

By Alice Hoffman

Subjects: Parenthood, Young women, Grandmothers, Teenagers, Fiction, general, Martha's vineyard (mass.), fiction, Large type books, Massachusetts, fiction, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, Friendship

Description: Vonny lives on the island of Martha's Vineyard with her husband Andre and son Simon. Their neighbour Elizabeth, a woman in her seventies, falls from an upstairs window and her granddaughter Jody is summoned to nurse her through her convalescence. The scene is set for a magical story of love and loneliness, of terror and human frailty, of the mystery and grace of ordinary experience. Alice Hoffman's ability to fuse the domestic and the mythic in a narrative of such gentle yet magnetic force confirms her stature as one of the most gifted of American novelists.