The Probable Future

Rating:
Summary: i LOVE THIS BOOK!
Review: In this book hoffman really shows us the magic in her writing. And she creats wonderful images of the characters and the town they live in. some poeple think that this book reminds them to much of practical magick, but i don't agree with that at all! Even though it touches the same subjects, a family divided, humanity, peoples relations to each other, magic and magical powers, i don't think the people, and the story remind me that much of the people and the plotline of practical magick. and though the town and the stting, like the house elinor lives in can bring your thoughts towards practical magic, i still don't really think of those two stories as the same, I see it more as hoffman using and writing about something she knows.

the book is set in a small town in New england. the story is about 3 generations of woman, in the sparrow family. Granmother Elinor, Mother Jenny and Daughter Stella. These 3 women all have difficult relationships, not only with each other but also with people that are involved in their lifes. All the women in the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinore can detect falseness in others, jenny can see people's dreams when they sleep and stella can see the future. the book leads us into their lifes and see how their world changes when stellas gift comes into play.and how they end up in the small New England town where Elinor lives. and how jenny and elinor find that their paths are going the same way after several years of sepeartion...

this is a thrilling read that can bring you much joy. i really love how Hoffman gives such splendid descriptions of the town they move to/move back to... she makes it so vivid.

enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Mothers and daughters
Review: Look and you will find the stories behind the relationships of mothers and daughters. I loved this book, even my teenage (I'm not my mother) daughter loved this book. I can not wait to let my mother read it. This just might be my favorite book of Alice Hoffman.

Rating:
Summary: Another family of witches
Review: Of Alice Hoffman's books the 'witch' books are my favorites although there are so few. A Probable Future is subtler than Practical Magic - the characters are more believable. The story focuses around three generations of Sparrow women and their attempt to reconcile.

Rating:
Summary: Take it to the beach
Review: One of the better Alice Hoffman novels. Take it to the beach!

Rating:
Summary: Take it to the beach
Review: One of the better Alice Hoffman novels. Take it to the beach!

Rating:
Summary: Department of Redundancy Department
Review: Perhaps my brain is addled by the unusual heat we're experiencing, but I felt that the same details, illusions, information, descriptions of rain, of flowers, of smells, were offered over and over again in this novel. I am a huge Alice Hoffman fan, and did indeed enjoy the powerful magic bestowed upon the characters, but as David Byrne said, "Say something once, why say it again?"

Rating:
Summary: possible good read marred by some clumsy plotting/characters
Review: Probable Future had a future. The premise, a family history of girls (the only ones born into the family) coming into a "gift" at thirteen set up as prelude to some family dysfunction has a lot of promise. There are a few very strong characters and some wonderful passages, especially in the latter part. Unfortunately, the story never really lives up to its premise. Stella, newly come into her gifts of seeing people's "probably futures" (seemingly their deaths only), is daughter to Jenny whose own gift of being able to dream other people's dreams led her into an unhappy marriage which has recently ended. She in turn is daughter to Elinor, the stern matriarch whose gift of always being able to spot a lie hasn't prevented her from missing certain truths and has left her, along with some family tragedy, alone and bitter. All three of them are "Sparrow girls" descended from Rebecca Sparrow who long ago was drowned as a witch and who passed on the legacy of a single gift at thirteen. Had Hoffman stopped there and explored the family dynamics she could have had a great tale. Unfortunately, she feels the need to spice it up with some more urgent drama.
The drama comes when Stella tells her dad Will, (a charming man of absolutely no responsibility we are told again and again) that a girl will have her throat slit and asks him to try to prevent it. When it happens anyway he becomes the target of the ensuing investigation due to his strange foreknowledge. The killer then tries to track Stella down to prevent him from being uncovered.
This is by far the weakest part of the plot. The killer's actions make very little sense, the police and judicial systems are implausible at best in their own actions, Will is far too dim, and the way in which the killer pops up and gets resolved is just very awkwardly handled. All of this from a plot arc that is really unnecessary.
The gifts themselves are handled in clumsy fashion and with a slapdash sort of fashion. Stella sees preventable deaths but only of some people. She knows when they'll die, but only for some people. The visions are metaphorical, except when they're literal. Elinor can spot a lie which she takes as meaning she can spot a liar (I'm not clear on if this is her flaw or Hoffman's), but not always. The gifts conveniently occur for plot movement. They are seemingly never discussed among the women yet somehow there is shared information--either an inconsistency or a section the reader should have seen. The biggest oversight with regard to the gifts is the way in which Stella's seems to have almost no emotional impact on her. A thirteen-year-old girl surrounded by people whose deaths she sees who seems to experience little to no emotion? Thirteen-year-old girls have emotional responses to the new paint on their lockers. The impact of her gift was just too easily glossed over.
There are further flaws of too easy resolutions, too shallow characterization, and repetitive imagery where Hoffman batters the reader a bit too much to make a point or simply doesn't trust the reader to catch an allusion or thematic lead. And then there are simply throwaway lines like a character getting into Harvard due only to their SAT's. Harvard turns down kids with perfect scores; nobody gets in based on their SAT's.
Interestingly, by far the strongest characters are also the oldest--Elinor and her doctor. His characterization stands out for its richness and depth, while hers is not as strong but still a highlight of the book. The doctor's son Hap is not drawn as fully but the details are rich and human. The others are weakly portrayed with some being only two-dimensional.
The historical sections are some of the strongest writing and one wishes there could have been more. Just as one wishes Hoffman could have focused more on the relationships among the three generations without the distraction of the murder or a "bad-boy" dispute between mom and daughter that seldom rises above sitcom fare.
People who like Hoffman will probably still enjoy the book despite its flaws. It's more a frustratingly weak book than a bad book. But those looking for an introduction to her work probably want to start elsewhere.


Rating:
Summary: A great story from a great storyteller . . .
Review: Probably, no one would call Hoffman's work great "literature," but she certainly writes terrific books. I've read them all, over the years, and I've enjoyed them all to a greater or lesser extent, but this one may be her best. Still, it perhaps ought not to be the *first* one you read; it seems almost as though all of her previous books have led up to their culmination in The Probable Future. Hoffman has a knack for writing so matter-of-factly about magic and the supernatural as to make them seem perfectly normal, or at least acceptable, in the contemporary world. Jenny, coping with a failed marriage and holding down a boring office job in Boston, accepts her ability to dream other people's dreams. Her mother, Elinor, can always tell a liar. Her thirteen-year-old daughter, Stella, an increasingly wild child with an eye for slinky black dresses and scarlet lipstick, has to deal with the unwanted gift of seeing other people's deaths. But all the Sparrow women of Unity, Massachusetts, of whom Stella is the thirteenth generation, have some kind of gift that first appears on the morning of their thirteenth birthdays. As you learn about the three Sparrow women and the men and boys with whom their lives are entwined, you learn also about Unity, which drowned Rebecca Sparrow as a witch in the 1680s, but which all the Sparrow women have nurtured and given much of their lives to. You learn to appreciate their home, Cake House. And you learn to see how people can change completely, given the proper motivation at the right time. There's a murder in the story, too, though not a mystery, exactly; it's the catalyst that brings Stella and then Jenny back to Unity, to rediscover the directions in which their lives are destined to go. Hoffman also has a knack for spinning out descriptions of people and places in an almost 19th century way -- until Stella dyes her hair and all her clothing black, and other bits of contemporary business jar you back into the present. Magic and magical.

Rating:
Summary: The Faerie Queens
Review: The charm of the mystical and mysterious goings-on of a family have been amusing and interesting to read as in her "Practical Magic," but Alice Hoffman has reached the end of the train line thematically with "The Probable Future," even though the Sparrow women, the Avery, Stewart and Elliot folk hold your interest for a good part of the time.
The Sparrow women (mother Elinor, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Selma) come from a long line of women who have spooked the town of Unity for generations (sound familiar?) based on a number of truths and half and quarter truths, legends and mysteries. And in one way or another the Avery, Stewart and Elliott men have loved them just the same despite all this hocus-pocus.
Hoffman has done this all before, and even though there are some beautifully written passages in the book and the stuff about the Sparrow family traditions are interesting, reading "The Probable Future" is sometimes a chore.
The focus of this novel is the younger group of Unity inhabitants: Stella and Hap Stewart and Jimmy Elliott, Jenny and Will and Matt Avery and to a smaller degree Elinor and Brock Stewart. And this I think is a mistake because it is really Elinor and Brock that have lived full, rounded lives and have much more to say and remember than any of the younger characters, who are more concerned with hairstyles and lipstick and baseball games.
"The Probable Future" is a good novel with some beautifully realized scenes and writing. But Hoffman needs to move on and away from this theme of magic and white witches and concentrate her obviously great skills on other things.

Rating:
Summary: Glorious & Unforgettable
Review: The Probable Future is an unforgettable, glorious, brilliant novel by one of the best storytellers of our time. Alice Hoffman is a stylist; the worlds she creates are amazing. She writes about obsession, love, and death in this book. It's a lesson on learning how to deal with grief in our lifetime, and a page-turner of a story as well. Read it...you won't regret it!