Rating: 
Summary: A Lyrical Masterpiece
Review: This is a wonderful book. It takes you to its sweet bosom and enchants you with life in Monroe, Mass. all sweet and lovely, then it slams you upside the head with heartbreak. Alice Hoffman has done it to me before but never to this extent. This is a book of life...it is sweet and funny and tender and tragic nd ugly and nasty. I read this immediately after reading We Were the Mulvaneys and what a gruesome twosome. The act of rape is ugly but what it does to the lives of people involved is staggering. A great read, not always fun but certainly powerful and insightful A must read.
Rating:
Summary: A 6! One of he best books I have ever read
Review: The residents of Monroe, Massachusetts believe that Ethan Ford is the most dependable and hardest working person in town. The locals consider Ethan so trustworthy, he has his own keys to many of the homes he is remodeling. Besides being an excellent carpenter, Ethan is a volunteer firefighter and a highly regarded unpaid coach. After thirteen years together, he still loves his wife Jorie and their twelve years old child. One knock on their door ends this perfect world. The police detain Ethan for a murder that occurred before he met Jorie. To add insult to injury, friends who worked along side of Ethan on fire calls read him his rights before arresting him. No one believes that the respectful, revered Ethan could commit this heinous crime, but the evidence that he murdered and raped a teen in Maryland seems overwhelming. The statue begins to fall from its pedestal. Anyone expecting a glib tie the ribbon in a bow ending can forget it with Alice Hoffman's deep character study, BLUE DIARY. Instead, the story line is an astonishing look at the impact of an ugly crime apparently committed by the big fish on the little fish in that pond. The key to the tale is not whether Ethan raped and killed in a previous life. Instead the plot is so good due to the depth of the secondary and tertiary cast members whose reactions to the growing evidence against the local hero follow the pattern of grieving individuals. Ms. Hoffman goes where few writers have traveled before as she provides an intriguing, well-written portrait of the human condition. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Story, But Not For Everyone
Review: In "Blue Diary," Alice Hoffman asks an intriguing question: What would happen if someone you knew and loved, was seen on "America's Most Wanted?" Ethan Ford and his wife Jorie and son Collie have lived a model life in the small Massachusetts town of Monroe, until the day a neighbor sees Ethan's picture on TV and discovers his real name is Byron Bell and he's wanted for the murder of a young girl in Maryland. Soon the sheriff is at Ford's door and the quiet little town of Monroe will never be the same. Can a bad man become good? Or has Ethan/Byron simply been pretending to be a local hero and model father for the past 15 years? Ford's friends and family struggle with these questions in "Blue Diary," which is not a murder mystery (Ford quickly confesses) or courtroom drama (the book ends before the trial even begins), but instead a probe into every day human nature. "Blue Diary" also takes Hoffman's unique narrative style (writing each chapter from a different character's perspective) to a new level, as she tells the story in the voice of at least nine of the novel's main characters. The premise that drives the plot is an intriguing one, but the schizophrenic nature of the book makes it hard to get interested in the story line, or get to know the characters, until you're at least halfway through the story. That having been said, I remain a fan of Hoffman's work and, while "Blue Diary" probably isn't for everyone, and isn't my favorite Hoffman novel (that would be "Here on Earth"), it's another unique and interesting tale from this talented author.
Rating:
Summary: Forgiveness is Sometimes Impossible.
Review: In Blue Diary, the Ford's were one healthy, prosperous family. Ethan and Jorie were so happily married, and had a son Collie. Nothing could separate them, at least not as long as the secret stayed hidden-and it was a bad one.
When it came on television that Ethan was wanted for a murder many years ago, Collie's friend Katie was the first to see it. She knew it was Ethan they were showing, though they were naming another man's name. But Katie proceeded to turn Ethan in anyway, reporting that she had seen him, and where he was. The next thing we know, the authorities were at the door taking Ethan away for a murder committed years ago.
Jorie is totally devastated, and all of their lives are turned upside down by the whole thing. When Ethan admits to the whole thing, Jorie has to find out for herself exactly what happens. So when she visits the area where it happened, she goes to the library and gets the cold hard facts of the case. Jorie finds the man who is the brother of the sister he lost so many years ago, and the poor man never recovered from the terrible shock of it. He gives Jorie the diary of his sister as a reminder of what Ethan did. After that, Jorie never will forgive her husband for all of the betrayals. It's simply too late to turn back.
The book was really good overall I thought. The only part that could have been done much better was the ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Capriciousness, not justice
Review: Alice Hoffman is an incredible writer. Reading her prose is like snacking on strawberry shortcake. Each bite is rich, sweet, packed with unbelievable taste. I marvel at her abilities...
However, this book has such a bleak point of view. It deals with incredibly weighty issues of sin, forgiveness, revenge, punishment...and it does it without redemption, forgivness, resurrection or even justice. There is an air of capriciousness about Hoffman's universe. The main couple in this book are "punished" because they love each other too much, apparently. It's like a Greek tragedy without the fatal flaw. One keeps reading, pulled in by the skill of the author, hoping vainly that something good will come of this tragedy.
Some will protest that this is just like Real Life, and to some extent it is. However, most of us read fiction to escape Real Life, not to reaffirm it. We want stories that lift us from the muck and mire of the everyday...not plunge us neck deep into it.
Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: I have never read anything by Alice Hoffman before "Blue Diary," and I have to say that, although I normally do not read this type of book, I really enjoyed it. My normal reading habits involve stuffy non-fiction :), so it was so nice to have a book perfect for a sunny weekend on the front porch.
The plot itself is a bit unbelievable, but Hoffman's style gets you so involved that it doesn't matter so much that the plotline isn't that plausible. She did a wonderful job of making the reader invested in the lives of her characters, and does an excellent job of narrating the passage of time via naturalistic sources (the weather, the gardens, etc). At the end of the story, I find myself leaving some of the characters with a bit of heartbreak, and some of them with a bit of sorrow mixed with a bit of joy, and others...well, wanting to give them a good kick in the pants.
Rating: 
Summary: A big disappointment
Review: I have long looked to Alice Hoffman's novels for quick, enjoyable reads, and taken special pleasure in the hyperbolic descriptions that border on magic realism. Typically, she turns ordinary suburban or small-town America into a place where magic happens. Blue Diary starts out that way, but becomes something else, as the ideal marriage presented in the novel's first chapter turns into a nightmare: the husband, Ethan, is accused of, and admits to, the rape and murder of a teenage girl 15 years before, and the wife, Jorie, has to determine whether his claim that he's not the same person as that murderer-rapist anymore--that he remains the wonderful guy she fell in love with--has any meaning. By focusing at first on their happy marriage, and the Ethan's heroic role in the town's life (as a volunteer fireman, he has repeatedly saved his neighbors' lives at risk to his own), Hoffman puts us in the same position as his adoring Jorie: we don't know how to reconcile the past with the present. As the story goes on, we learn (with Jorie) more about the brutality and sad legacy of the crime, as well as how Ethan--not so admirably--copes with his new circumstances. This is a story that challenges your ideas about whether people can really change, how responsible we are for past behavior, and what it means to repent. At the same time, it remains an enjoyable and quick read.
|
