Illumination night

By Alice Hoffman

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

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.