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Summary: Local girl reviewes local girl
Review: This is a novel about a girl named Gretal and what it was like for her, her family, and her friends growing up. You are with her as she struggles with many issues including her parents divorce, her mother's cancer, love, teen pregnancy, school, drugs, and her brother's death. The setting is a little town where everyone knows everybody, and by the end of the book you feel like Gretals neighbor. It is a book about real relationships, tragedy, and devotion. The plot flows well and you see the characters very vividly. I feel it was a very enjoyable book. It was not difficult to read or to follow. It is filled with emotion of all kind and although the book is a fiction, the relationships were very believable. I recommend this book for anyone who has ever been happy or sad.
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Summary: This Should Have Been A Full Novel
Review: Alice Hoffman proves (yet again) what a wonderful storyteller she is. Her novels are so full of power, plot, setting, movement and all the truly wonderful things that make a great book. "Local Girls" is a selection of closely woven short stories about four main characters. The stories are told threw the eyes of young Gretel who you just dearly love. You almost feel cheated that this is a full force novel. The characters that Hoffman created certainly have the power to have carried it. I found myself wanting more and more from each of them. I wanted to see the full arch of the story. But, it certainly didn't distract from how much I enjoyed this selection of stories. I found the struggle of older brother's rise and fall from success especially heartbreaking and readable. With each book Alice Hoffman shows her talent for any subject matter. I find her very talented and very entertaining. I love her stuff.
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Summary: Another Beauty From Hoffman
Review: I would like to preface my comments by explaining that the three stars are only because I hold Ms. Hoffman to such high standards, but I did find this book truly wonderful. Local girls is a collection of stories that travel through Gretel Samuelson's adolescence involving her beautiful, best friend, Jill, her self-destructive yet intelligent brother, Jason, her vibrant aunt, Margot, and her cancer-ridden, abandoned mother, Frances. What I love about Hoffman is that she doesn't feel the need to glorify her characters, instead she allows their imperfections to crawl through us and realize the beauty that exists anyway. Her language is breathtaking as usual, and she continues to incorporate the wonders and hardships of desire that we experience every day. The stories are either told to us by Gretel, or narrated by Hoffman. It is a lovely book and yet there is not enough of it. I would have preffered a novel rather than a collection. I needed more substance to illustrate the development that took place between stories, because there appeared to be significant chunks of the characters that I never got to see. I was very unsatisfied with Jason's character in particular. The book reflected the strength of women, but Jason was a significant part of the story line, and so much was left unsaid. I do recommend this book though, as well as other Hoffmans' namely: Practical Magic (don't see the movie), Here On Earth, Second Nature, and Seventh Heaven. She is a magical, sexy, illuminating writer.
Rating: 
Summary: familiar
Review: Hoffman writes so well, so wonderfully, you can't help but read page after page, being swept along by her marvelous craft, by her magical realism. In that sense I wasn't disappointed in this slim novel that actually reads as a collection of short stories revolving around the central characters. But much of this is ground that Hoffman has covered elsewhere. I've already read about the amazing flowers in Practical Magic. I've read about the dangerously seductive boyfriends. And I had trouble with the age of the main character. It seemed awfully fluid from chapter to chapter. Despite all that, this is still a good Hoffman read. It might not have moved me as much as her previous books nor necessarily covered new territory but it was entertaining and highly readable all the same.
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Summary: Hoffman keeps putting brillant books on the table!
Review: I have read Practical Magic, Here on Earth and Property Of, but by far this one captures the essence of an emerging and growing youth beyond what even we can describe it to be for ourselves! I finished the book in under 20 hours, which included sleeping! Hoffman weaves a spell that entraps your mind and keeps you reading in till the book is done and you are wishing it would never end!
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Summary: Almost but not quiet
Review: Started off with maximum potential. However the plot never really took off. There wasn't a magor conflict in the story, and I kept anticipating when one would be created. It was defintly a page turner, but only because it got interesting and then nothing really ever happened.
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Summary: Lush and lovely
Review: This book of interconnected short stories is a wonderful look at how sensuous and graceful a story can be. Instead of cramming everything she can into each of the short stories that make up this book, Alice Hoffman lets the tales unfold on their own time. It might take three stories to understand the motivation of one character, but it's worth the time it takes to get there. I don't think this book was intended to read as a novel, so I am mystified at comments of supposed missing depth. Hoffman's book is a connected series of stories in which the reader is free to fill in the gaps. I give her credit for experimenting with this form.
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Summary: Too depressing with very little
Review: Started out OK but just didn't quiet take off or maybe I just didn't like the direction it took off too. Either way it just didn't make it for me. Too depressing with very little hope. Read TURTLE MOON instead....it's her best.
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Summary: Almost, but not quite....
Review: While this book definitely had it's moments, overall, I must say I was rather disappointed. Not quite a novel, not quite short stories, it was terribly disjointed and the change in viewpoints served little purpose. One chapter in particular seemed to be a waste of paper, "The Boy Who Wrestled with Angels"...ridiculous. I couldn't even care about that character...let alone his downfall. Not a wonderful read, but maybe worth a glance from the library.
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Summary: Wonderful. I read it in an afternoon.
Review: Alice Hoffman is so insiteful. Page 188 she writes about jealousy between close friends: "...it's coveting something you'd never actually want in real life, but still desire in your dreams, the ones you simply can't shake, even now, when you're not a kid anymore and should know better than to traffic in envy. Each wants a part of the other's life." Wow, well said!
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