Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable read, but I want to know more
Review: This was the first book that I have read by Alice Hoffman. The author does a wonderful job of making you feel and think like her characters. The only thing lacking was the ending. What became of March and her daughter? Do Gwen and Hank ever reuinte? We need a sequel!!!
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Summary: PASS. Not representative of A.Hoffmans normal work.
Review: First off: I find that ALL Alice Hoffman books are written like fairy tales, and I read them as such. They are strangely magical. Consequently I give her license to be bizarre and off-the-wall BUT...this time she went tooo far. The character's characters were just too unbelievable. Everyone of em is a slave to their past. This is a story about sickness, degradation & destruction. Not a subject matter I personally care to read about and not one Alice Hoffman seems able to properly address. Maybe, like me, she just doesn't care for the subject matter. I don't blame her. Maybe her worst to date. Skip it. BUT what ever you do don't judge Alice Hoffman by this book alone. Read TURTLE MOON , her best to date. Second Nature, Seventh Heaven & Practical Magic are good too. The reviewer from St. Paul, Minnesota says they are currently fashioning a movie out of this book. EEEgods! Heaven forbid! The continuity crew and rewrite team are going to be working over time, that's for sure. Oh Well. This is not a love story by the way. If that's what Oprah told you she is obviously confused as to the meaning of the word love. So be aware... forewarned
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Summary: Response to reader from Minneapolis, July 9
Review: The reader who criticizes Hoffman's lack of ethics is inane. Novels for adults aren't written to carry messages or to teach people how to behave. But if you want to talk about ethics, what do you think of the ethics in Wuthering Heights? Or do only modern novelists have to conform to Dr. Laura's rules for self-satisfied bourgeois behavior? This book was okay -- competent, but not earthshattering.
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Summary: It felt more like poetry than prose...
Review: I just finished this book today, and it absolutely blew me away. Not everything ended the way I would have liked, but sometimes that's for the best. My best friend recommended this to me, and apparently I need to start taking her advice more often! A few things were left unresolved--for example, what happened to Tarot at the end? All in all, it was a fantastic book and I would recommend it to ANYONE.
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Summary: People can overcome addictions and live again!
Review: This book was surprising in that it saves the main character, March, at the end of the book. Just when you believe that the human spirit has deserted a person and they have become a slave to their own needs, they surprise you with a total awareness of what they do and do not need. Sometimes this need is answered and the person survives to make other mistakes, and sometimes the person gives in to weakness and becomes lost in themselves. This novel allows the people to recover and begin living again, giving back the light at the end of a dark tunnel of destruction, of which March and Gwen were both wandering down. Ultimately, that which was destroying was destroyed. This novel also gives the human race hope for the future of all kids who might have been abused and/or neglected. Although Hank was really taken in off of the streets like Hollis had been, he was still a person of compassion. Hank went through self-discovery and found that he would be a better person for what he had seen and experienced instead of taking the easy way out and becoming self-absorbed and manipulative. The reading of the book began sort-of slowly, with lots of descriptive writing which threatened to send the person away from the narrative. However, the end of the book ties all of the narrative together and opens the eyes of the reader to the idea that hope is never dead, and that addictions are not always fatal.
Rating:
Summary: Glad I'm not in her shoes
Review: I liked this story immensely because I thought it was very beautifully yet simply written. Even though it is prose, it was very poetic with it's dreery images of the town, the marshes and the reoccuring images of the tree on the hill. I liked the human-like quality of the horse, Tarot and the little dog, Sister. As you read, you just knew there must be some deep, dark secret that Hollis was hiding. And March Murray was absolutely pitiful, but absolutely believable. It was refreshing to read about the two teens, Gwen and Hank, who seemed the only ones with common sense. I can't wait to try Hoffman's other books.
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Summary: Why the past is better left untouched. . .
Review: For all of us who never get over a past love, a moment, an instance of perfection, this is the book to peruse. Hoffman tells the story of a woman in love with her past, to the great detriment of her future as a mother, a wife, a sister and also an entrepreneur. It is a story that examines a variety of emotions, nostalgia, regret, bitterness, anger, greed and mostly, love. The end effect on the reader is a combination of fear, sorrow and hope. The reader is left dazed, and yet awake. Setbacks to the book include the juggling of tense in sentences and the way in which the story evolves from a poignant love story to a tale of human deterioration and atrophy. I recommend this highly to anyone in love with the past, for you will soon realize how futile that is by the very real account of character March Murray in "Here On Earth."
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Summary: My Heart is wrapped into this book
Review: When I read that this book was like Wuthering Heights I didn't think that it could match the book, but it did beyond what I thought it could do. A friend of mine was reading it and said it was good so I thought I would try it! I am not much for romance stories as a whole, but this one was that and more, it served many places within my mind and soul. Definite must read!
Rating:
Summary: Lovely
Review: This is the book I've always wanted to write. I don't know what to do now
Rating:
Summary: A Disturbing Read with a Lackluster Ending - Skip It
Review: I just finished this book and found it to have been somewhere between disturbing and boring, which sounds like an odd combination. I was totally frustrated with March's behavior and couldn't feel for her at all, and found her blatant disregard for her daughter, in favor of an abusive and manipulative man to be horrible. She became pathetic - not someone for whom I could feel any sympathy. I was unable to see anything in the development of Hollis' character that would account for his ability to emotionally seduce and enslave a heretofore savvy and creative woman, married to a caring, yet somewhat wimpy man. Even the youthful representation of Hollis early in the story didn't convey any charisma that would account for March's obsession - either in their youth or later in their lives. Gwen, March's daughter, was a character that I disliked at the start, yet her attempts to be brave and feisty in the face of her mother's emotional breakdown won me over, and I was glad she emerged as a survivor. Cousin Hank was a nice enough guy, but his character and personality were too bland. I thought that the ending was rather lame, too. I'd hoped that Hollis would have met his fate in a more imaginitive and confrontational way than he did. As the story's end neared, I'd envisioned several dramatic endings (perhaps one involving the Coward snapping out of his self-pity to take a stand?) only to read an ending that I considered to be a dud. Don't waste your time on this one!
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