Alice Hoffman’s fiction has already been compared to the work of iconic New England fabulists like Washington Irving, but her influences (for books like “Practical Magic,” “The River King” and “The Ice Queen”) also extend to the other side of the Atlantic, residing with writers like The Brothers Grimm or Emily Bronte. It was Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” that inspired a 20th-century interpretation by Hoffman in “Here on Earth.”
So the lilting, romantic mood of her prose in “Skylight Confessions” will come as no surprise, nor will the topic of the powerful hold love and destiny have on the lives of Hoffman’s characters.
Like many Hoffman creations before her, 17-year-old Arlyn Singer is a young woman who believes in fate and true love. When her father dies – leaving an only child who is “just plain and freckly” and minimally educated on her own – Arlyn decides that the first man who walks down her street will be the one she loves forever. As is the case with most fairy tales, the man’s name, John Moody, is a reflection of his soul (Hoffman’s novels are nothing if not fairy tales that address worries of adults, whether the concerns are about love or family or death).
The young couple marry and move into a house built by John’s late father, who was an architect. The house, made of largely of glass, is dubbed “the Glass Slipper.” Of course, the couple’s relationship proves to be a rocky one, involving heartache and misery. Their son, Sam, is an antisocial boy with a near-genius IQ; but John ignores him, taking out his unhappiness with Arlyn on Sam. It isn’t long before the mismatched couple turn to others for the love and understanding they crave. Arlyn’s affair with a window washer even results in a child – a girl named Blanca – whom John never realizes isn’t his (John is too oblivious, too wrapped up in his own misery).
When Arlyn contracts cancer, the two children are left to grow up along with their dad while living in the glass slipper. John, of course, gets remarried (soon after Arlyn’s death) to Cynthia, the woman he really loves. They have a child together, a daughter named Lisa.
Sam, hateful of his father, develops a drug habit at the young age of 16; Blanca withdraws into her own world of books and words. Becoming a true loner, she leaves what is left of her family far behind her. And just when one thinks Hoffman has taken this dark fairy tale past the point of any redemption, secrets are revealed that force one to care about John, the man who turned his back on his young wife and children.
A glass slipper, a mean stepmother, a family living in a shoe – Hoffman whips out all sorts of fairy-tale tropes in “Skylight Confessions.” What’s more, she puts them to good use. And her characters, even those with last names like Moody, have plenty of depth and complexity.
Sure, Hoffman pushes emotional buttons – just as the fairy tales she’s so fond of often do – but she puts her own rich, poetic spin on things. And as “Skylight Confession” builds to a suspenseful climax, she offers such a fitting denouement that one can’t help but smile in wonder at Hoffman’s skill as a storyteller.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
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Skylight Confessions
By Alice Hoffman
Little, Brown, 256 pages, $24.99
