The River King

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining tale
Review: Haddan, Massachusetts was established long before the exclusive Haddan School was opened. The elite school became a target of hatred by the locals as none of them could afford sending a child to the preppy place. Instead, their children trekked in rain, snow, or freezing cold five miles to another town's public school. The school remains a fixture because the townsfolk recognize the financial gain of having it as a customer of local goods and services, but over the years the division has grown wider than the Grand Canyon.

The troubled community explodes when a student drowns in the nearby river. Though both sides and the police department want to wash away the death that threatens the delicate balance between the outsiders and the townies, Police Officer Abel Grey, fueled by his own brother's suicide, refuses to drop his investigation. As the obsessed cop digs deeper and gains enemies, lives begin to fall apart as shadows and demons from the past seemingly haunt everyone.

THE RIVER KING is a weird atmospheric morality drama that can be interpreted on many levels, but in each case a great social divide rings through the novel. Ethics is the common seed, but varies from person to person due to Alice Hoffman's incredible ability to lyrically paint real people with genuine problems inside an undertone of gloom.

Rating:
Summary: Déja vou
Review: The scent of roses permeates the campus, making weak preppie girls sick and jittery and driving young, unusual and wild photography teacher Betsy Chase into the arms of a local policeman with a complicated family history and piercing blue eyes. The aroma is the calling card of the influence of Betsy's predecessor, Annie Howe, a woman betrayed by the man she wanted to love, driven to self-destruction by his rejection.

The setting is different, an unfamiliar (even to a prep schooler born and raised) boarding school, but Alice Hoffman never strays far from her small, close-nit communities, quiet little towns with politics and long memories, whether they be achingly new developments or established Massachusetts tourist villages.

You see, before I even picked up this book, I'd already read it, because I'd already read two other books by Alice Hoffman: "Practical Magic" and "Seventh Heaven". "The River King" is simply a clever meshing of the two. The similarities are blatantly noticeable; if she hadn't written the first two books herself I'd accuse her of borderline plauguarization. Every character in River King has a long-lost relative residing in one of the other books, from Annie Howe, the depressed gardener, whose love story mirrors that of the first Owens Witch in "Practical Magic" (as well as lending both a convenient warning story for one character to blatantly miss and an even more convenient long-lost parentage for another), to Betsy, whose attitudes and rocky but fated and inevitable love for reckless and unorthodox small-town cop Abe are quite similar to those of Sally Owens, so fell in love with the southern detective sent to shake her sister down for the murder of a missing boyfriend. Sally's teenage daughter, and to some extent her reckless sister Gillian (whose evil boyfriend's spirit's tendency to drive people crazy with the scent of the lilacs that flourished over his illicit gravesite sounds somehow familiar), both contribute ot the formation of odd, entracingly beautiful, and incredibly stupid Carlin Leander, who, despite all the time and effort Hoffman must have invested to make her a sympathtic character, lost me when she continued to date big murderer on campus Harry McKenna long after we knew he was bad news.

So here's my advice: skip "Seventh Heaven", which was boring and provincial, unless of course you love that sort of thing. Hoffman does excell at painting elaborate pictures of small-town society, I'll give her that. If you're the sex-and-magic type of reader, you can still get the small-town stuff (which gets very old the third time around), plus far more exciting fare, in "Practical Magic" (skip the movie though, as it is, like many adaptations, truly inferior.) If you're too lazy to read both books, "The River King" will do, but be advised that it is, like Carlin and Betsy and the ridiculously over-dramatized town of Haddan and its accompanying school, a pale shadow of its predecessors.

Rating:
Summary: A Story of Secrets
Review: The Hadden School, an elite private school on the banks of the Hadden River, has had a very checkered past since it was built in 1858. No child from the town has ever been admitted and the Hadden students and townies never mix. When a student, August Pierce is found dead, floating in the Hadden River, both worlds come crashing together as Abel Grey, town policeman becomes determined, despite the wishes of both the school and the town to close the case quickly, to find out what actually happened. His investigation into possible foul play begins to unravel the secret lives of both the students and town residents. Alice Hoffman spends almost the first half of this book setting the suspenseful and compelling atmosphere, and because her writing is so detailed and at times overly descriptive, it bogs the plot down at times. That said, her writing is eloquent and her scenes so vivid you begin to smell the river and feel the damp, cold air of Massachusetts. This is a story of love, loss, betrayal and finally hope as the characters, so beautifully drawn, begin to come apart, piece by piece, as the truth comes to the surface. The River King is a powerful story told with great insight and wisdom that leaves the reader both sad and hopeful at the end of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: ...many men might pick up this book and think that it's a women's book, but do yourself a favor and read it, along with Practical Magic. She writes with a prose style that makes many other authors seem clunky by comparison, moving smoothly from one character to another. It's a style that allows her to examine issues from different standpoints, or to move tangentially, taking the narrative into a sub-issue. Rather than characterize her writing as a landscape, I'd say it compared well to a symphony.

Ms. Hoffman's subjects are quite moving. While death and love are her subjects, the possibility of love bridging the gulf between life and death is gently, subtly probed. In my own case, it's not minnows. It's red balloons.

A fine work; you'll find yourself looking up from the book from time-to-time and savoring the images she has invoked, and of loved ones living and dead.

Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: Alice Hoffman has done it again. The River King is a great book. I loved the characters. The plot was constructed so well that the book flowed. And unlike some books that you put time into, get to the end and find disappointment, these characters all came to closure. You are not left wondering what happened to anyone.

I love everything Alice Hoffman has written. I'm just sorry it's over. How long before the next book Alice?

Rating:
Summary: Haddan comes alive!
Review: As a storyteller, Alice Hoffman possesses a rare skill. She is able to weave a web where characters seem intimately connected and irrevocably fragmented at the same time. Though I'd argue that the writer's real strength here is not with the development of characters, but rather her use of imagery to compliment these characters.

In many ways, the fictional town of Haddan is the key to pulling off this narrative. Through characters and their actions we see the topics such as death, class schisms and problems of the heart addressed, but it is through the landscape of Haddan that these issues come alive: it's the river that physically divides the school from the rest of the town, that truly gives us the feeling of class distinctions. It's the Hoffman's description of lifeless minnows and this permeation of fragrance from long-vanished flowers that heighten the characters' (and readers') understanding of death. Snow blankets lovelorn men as they struggle not to turn cold, and the orphaned swans stand as a beacon to confused hearts. This is Hoffman at her best.

This kind of imagery has been used masterfully by Hoffman in novels such as "Practical Magic"; here in "The River King" we get the same kind of quality development with even more of an emphasis on some of the very best aspects of Hoffman's style.

Rating:
Summary: carefully crafted and intriguing
Review: This book takes a little while to get going, because there is a lot of description and not as much action in the beginning, but it is worth it because Ms. Hoffman creates her setting so painstakingly and convincingly. The book deals with the cruelties and class rifts that occur in a private school and the working-class town where the school is located. The book has riveting images and strong, believable characters. It will probably give some parents second thoughts about sending their children to private school, especially since some of the hazing rituals probably had some grounding in reality.

Rating:
Summary: Mythic tone and intimate characterizations make magic
Review: The combination of mythic tone and down-to-earth characterizations make Alice Hoffman's fourteenth novel a beguiling read that lingers in the mind long after the last page is turned.

Set in fictional Haddan, Mass., the story revolves around the divide between a snooty private boarding school and the town itself. The Haddan School was built on the banks of the muddy Haddan River in 1858, the year of a horrific storm which flooded the town and the new school worst of all so that: "To this day, frogs can be found in the plumbing; linens and clothes stored in closets have a distinctly weedy odor, as if each article had been washed in river water and never thoroughly dried."

Each five-mile trek to the nearest public high school in "weather so cold the badgers kept to their dens" increased the locals' animosity toward the boarding school, "a small bump on the skin of ill will ready to rupture at the slightest contact." But over the years town and gown have reached an accommodation. The school gives money and the town stays out of school affairs.

Into this atmosphere come two new students, poor but strikingly beautiful Carlin Leander, and quirky, brilliant misfit August Pierce. Long desperate to escape her rural Florida home, Carlin has gained admittance on a swimming scholarship and has high hopes that Haddan will be the start of her new and better life. August has no such illusions. For him, this is just the latest in a misery of schools, though he hopes to stick it out for his father's sake.

But Carlin fits in no better than August who has been admitted to the moldiest and most exclusive of the dorms by dint of his on-paper accomplishments. While Carlin discovers that her clothes are impossible and her roommates don't even speak the same language, August's housemates band together against him. An unlikely duo, drawn together by despair, the two become best friends until Carlin, flattered, begins dating the most popular, most handsome boy on campus, August's chief enemy, a boy of easy charm and loathsomeness.

Vaguely aware of the emotional maelstrom ever brewing among their students are new teacher Betsy Chase, who supervises Carlin's dorm, (St. Anne's, so called because a beautiful local girl, who married an esteemed headmaster, hung herself in its attic) and her fiancé, Eric Herman, an aloof, ambitious sort who supervises August's dorm.

When a student drowns, the Haddan Police Department quickly accedes to the school's wishes and closes the case. Except for one detective, Abel Grey, whose brother committed suicide at about the same age and whose lonely life has been haunted and emotionally arid ever since. Investigating at the school, Abel meets Betsy and it's love at first sight, though Betsy remains committed to her wedding plans.

As Abel's investigation gathers momentum, the various characters are forced to take sides. Their decisions and actions reveal inner cores of weakness or strength. The story moves toward a mythic climax, but each decision is individual, quirky and human. Hoffman's protagonists are appealing and real, complete with uncertainties, selfishness, fears and courage.

The atmosphere, tinged with otherworldliness, with ghostly presences wafting through the hallways and lingering at the fringes, lends a timeless, bittersweet melancholy to an affirming, enchanting story of love, personal integrity and hope.

Rating:
Summary: My, Oh My
Review: What a great read! Alice Hoffman has done it again - written a compelling tale with belivable characters. This haunting novel is lyrically written, one can almost feel the New England air. A must read for all Hoffman fans, and an excellent choice for those new to the author.

Rating:
Summary: Everything that a novel should be......
Review: Alice Hoffman has a command of the written word that is equaled by very few authors. Her exquisite prose employs all five senses, and when the reader opens one of her novels magic happens. Sights and smells subtlely drift from the pages; the sounds of a summer night and the taste of icy winter air, the caress of a breeze; all entice you to enter her world. As with her other novels, The River King allows the reader to see into the hearts and souls of her characters. Love is the thing that drives us and makes us human, Ms. Hoffman tells us. But be careful about whom and how you love, and about who loves you - while love defines us, it can also destroy us. Alice Hoffman's skills as a writer are at their finest in two of her earlier works, Turtle Moon and Practical Magic, but each of her novels, including The River King, are pleasures that a fiction lover should not miss. I would caution you to be careful when you enter her worlds - you may never want to leave.