Practical Magic ~ Alice Hoffman

Practical Magic
By Alice Hoffman

This is probably one of my all-time favorite stories, whether as a movie or a book.  I first fell in love with the movie in my twenties.  It’s everything a young woman wants in a story – a romance, a comedy, some kick-ass heroines who end up saving themselves and a whole lot of magic. 

The movie led me to the book.  The two play out differently and the book is told in a slightly different way, but this was the first introduction to magic realism I had in a book format.  (Of course, one might look at magic realism as a modern fairytale and, in that respect, say that they had been reading such stories since they could read.)

Sally and Gillian are as different as night and day and yet so close that they can finish each other’s sentences.  Sally is dark haired while Gillian is blond.  Sally is the responsible one, while Gillian is the lazy one.  Their parents died when they were young and they went to live with the aunts, who lost their loves when they were young women themselves. 

Sally and Gillian hope to find that their aunts are charlatans, but that isn’t the case.  When a young woman turns to the aunts for a love potion because she is obsessed with an older man, she gets more than she bargained for.  The older man becomes obsessed with her and suffocating in his love.  When the girls see this played out, they make a vow never to fall in love.

Of course, fate has other ideas, but it isn’t a smooth road.  Love comes to each of them, but not easily.   This seems to be the manner of things for Owens women.  They live under a curse when it comes to love. 

This story is a modern fairytale.  Most fairytales take the line that love can set you free but, in this story, love can be entangling, even obsessive.  It is a book of extremes, things that don’t or can’t happen in real life and things that people don’t or won’t say in real life, happen here.  The writing itself is somehow magical.  Give it a chance to cast a spell on you.