Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507210008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By HILLEL ITALIE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The author doesn't meet with the press very often. In fact, she doesn't care much for leaving home at all. The world, she will tell you, is a scary place. It's easy to get hurt. You can lose a person, someone you love.
``I keep thinking about this article I read somewhere about this girl who went to the prom and a pipe fell on her head and she died,'' Hoffman says. ``That's my vision of the world.''
In no way, however, does the roof fall on this interview. The conversation is nonstop, and so is the coffee. The 43-year-old Hoffman seems to fit right in with this suburban crowd, with the kids in Little League uniforms and the young couples lifting babies into high chairs.
But there are contradictions to this writer, a split between the Alice Hoffman who wears glasses and high-top sneakers and the Alice Hoffman who has written 11 novels, including ``Turtle Moon,'' ``Second Nature'' and, most recently, ``Practical Magic'' (G.P. Putnam's Sons).
In her own life, Hoffman is a wary soul, ``the most pessimistic person alive.'' As a writer, she takes off for the stars. She concocts erotic love affairs, women who shrink bad little boys and gardens where lilacs grow and grow. She dreams up ghosts and giants and magic potions, a world where loved ones are discovered as often as they're lost.
``I feel like when I'm writing, I'm writing to make myself more optimistic. I'm also pessimistic, but I guess there must be a kernel of complete optimism because that's what surfaces. It feels like being in a trance,'' said Hoffman, who lives near Boston with her husband and two children.
``From the minute I could read and escape from reality, to me it was complete magic. To walk to the library, that was the biggest thrill. How cool it was picking those books, being able to escape into time.''
Her imagination is the major source of her fiction, but here are more details about the ``real'' Alice Hoffman: She was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, within miles of the diner where she is interviewed; her parents were divorced when she was 8; her influences include Faulkner, Marquez and Grace Paley, whom she credits with helping her believe a woman could write fiction.
The typical Hoffman setting is a provincial town or suburb, in New York or Massachusetts, where everyone seems pretty much the same - except for that one household. In ``Seventh Heaven,'' that means a single mother; in ``At Risk,'' a young girl with AIDS; in ``Second Nature,'' a man raised by wolves.
In ``Practical Magic,'' Hoffman conjures up a pair of witches. The novel's first section is set in a Massachusetts town where everything that goes wrong is blamed on two gray-eyed spinsters from the house on Magnolia Street, the one surrounded by a black, wrought-iron fence.
The house has no clock and no mirrors, and every room is dark. Mice live under the floorboards and ivy grows wild on the porch. The only neighbors who dare go inside are desperate women willing to do anything for the spinsters' special love potion.
``When I was 12,'' Hoffman said, ``that was when I really got interested [in witches]. That's a kind of time when you feel like you're losing your powers. Traditionally, that's really been true, like in junior high, if you're smart, you're not so sure it's a good thing. The whole idea of witchcraft and dreaming about witchcraft is very powerful.
``I went to Salem before I wrote this book. I just sort of walked through the house where the first set of girls came to give their hysterical complaints. ... It's very scary to go up there and walk around. It's still kind of a spooky place. You wonder what can happen. I was thinking what it felt like to be so singled out, to be so without hope.''
Much of ``Practical Magic'' centers on the spinsters' nieces, Sally and Gillian, who vow as children never to let passion ruin their lives. That promise, of course, doesn't last long.
Gillian, for instance, ends up involved with a violent man, a common scenario for Hoffman, who loved reading ``Beauty and the Beast'' as a kid. In her debut novel, ``Property Of,'' a teen-age girl pursues a gang leader. In ``Illumination Night,'' another teen-age girl falls in love with a giant.
``I was affected by fairy tales, told in a very matter of fact voice,'' Hoffman said. ``The voice of fairy tales is an everyday voice, and suddenly there's a knock on the door.''
Meanwhile, Sally falls in love and gets married, only to have her husband die at an early age. She then closes herself off for so long that when love comes back into her life she has to lean against a doorway to keep from fainting.
There's an interesting duality in the way Hoffman writes about love. On the one hand, she tells us to be careful. An early novel, ``White Horses,'' reads like an attack on fairy tales, against the fantasy of a man on a white horse coming to save you.
At the same time, few writers celebrate love as warmly as this one. Things don't always work out for her characters, but they're always better off for trying. Hoffman's advice at the end of ``Practical Magic'': Fall in love whenever you can.
``I fought against the idea of the man on a white horse when I was growing up. That was the myth, waiting to get married and then your life would begin,'' she said.
``For me, it was a very kind of ironic thing all the time. My mother was left. She was divorced, but it wasn't her choice. This is something I learned from her, that you can't depend on being rescued. It's why my heroines are so very optimistic.
``I think it's dangerous to be naive and feel love can rescue you,'' she said. ``On the other hand, it's the only thing that can rescue you. It's the conflict of relationships, something you have to be aware of, not to fall too far one way or the other. That's the struggle of being in love.''
by CNB