Reviewed: Skylight Confessions, by Alice Hoffman, Little, Brown and Company, 2007, 262 pages.

I've read a lot of Alice Hoffman (prolific author of 18 novels). She has a way of pulling you into stories that touch on the supernatural but are grounded in reality. Skylight Confessions is no exception. It's the story of a couple of generations of New Englanders, none of them quite happy or fulfilled.
The book starts with young Arlie, not even 17, who finds her destiny following her ferry-boat captain father's death. She seduces a young stranger and seals her fate. Soon, Arlie is a mom and wife trapped behind the transparent boundaries of a famous house called 'The Glass Slipper,' an imposing architectural wonder made entirely of glass and with glass ceilings.
That's where the title comes in, and the end of the book reveals some of the secrets/truths of Arlie and her family. Her distant husband John who seems to resent her for seducing him late one foggy night when he got lost on the way to a party and ended up in her bed.
Their son, Sam, becomes a slave to heroin early on. Her daughter, Blanca, never knows a mother's love and eventually physically escapes across the pond but her own happiness remains elusive. Their nanny of sorts, Meridith, brings a fresh twist to the story and another union that seems to come straight from the fates.
Death before one's time, addiction, emotional distance play along with themes of true love, passion, yearning in this engrossing tale.
"People are haunted because they want to be," says Merrie's husband at one point. And it seems to be true. John Moody is haunted no matter where he goes by the spectre of his beautiful young wife, someone he never seemed to fully appreciate. She lingers about in a diaphanous white dress, her signature long red hair loose, her lips silent. She doesn't reprimand and isn't there as a fright. She's just there. Because he can't let her go. Meanwhile, dishes in the house break and crack at random and ash pours off the roof. Birds get trapped inexplicably inside the house. Her presence is felt by everyone there.
It won't take you long to read and may keep you up past your bedtime (but in a good way).
Thanks, Brandie, for loaning this to me even before you read it yourself!

Prolific Shillington native John Updike has updated the story of his quarter-century year-old riotous novel "The Witches of Eastwick." As a fan of Updike's work, especially the "Rabbit" books, here's one I will be reading in the near future.

Perhaps you remember the movie verison of "Witches," starring Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher as the witches and Jack Nicholson as the salacious "D."

Can't quite get that cherry-pit launching scene out of my head...

Similarly, this sequel left a bad taste in the mouth of AP reviewer Henry Jackson.

However, this is Updike, and Updike does brooding and melancholy well. I look forward to glimpsing the "moments of brilliance" Jackson speaks of.

The aura has vanished from Updike's witches

By HENRY C. JACKSON

Associated Press Writer
"The Widows of Eastwick" (Alfred A Knopf. 308 pages. $24.95), by John Updike: Even the most wicked witches age. And, as it turns out, a sorceress' decline is by turns as painful, lonely and even common as that of any unmagical being.
The aura has vanished from the three witches of Eastwick that John Updike crafted in a wondrous, taboo-filled novel of the same name 24 years ago. In its sequel, "The Widows of Eastwick," Alexandra, Jane and Sukie are still here but, like the author, they are fading — and sometimes gracelessly.
All three are widows now. Having long ago fled the bedlam they left behind during the ill-fated pursuit of Darryl Van Horne in seaside Eastwick, R.I., the once rollicking coven slowly reconvenes, bonding over their mutual losses but mostly reliving past debauchery.
Since they left Eastwick, contact among the three has faded. Alexandra retreated to the southwest, living remotely with a sculptor husband. Jane moved with her own beau to Connecticut, remaining sharp and cynical. Sukie, once Eastwick's gossip columnist, married a wealthy man and became a second-rate romance novelist.
They take steps to dull their pain, such as they feel it. Alexandra, the most emotive and mournful of the trio, travels to Canada alone, then to Cairo with Jane, who has maintained more of her wicked edge and is less apologetic about the past. When Sukie's husband dies, she joins the ladies in their travels, falling somewhere between on the emotional scale.
If it sounds melancholy, it is. All the reunions feel forced: The witches with each other and then later, inevitably, with Eastwick; Updike with the protagonists and their sexual exploits; the reader with the whole bawdy ensemble.
What's odd is that Updike seems to know this. It seems even to be the point. This is supposed to be sad, regretful. His typically descriptive prose is forlorn throughout.
It's a tone he sets early, as when he describes Alexandra's discovery of her husband's cancer:
"They had joined the legion of elderly couples who fill hospital waiting rooms, as quiet with nervousness as parents and children before a recital. She felt the other couples idly pawing at them with their eyes, trying to guess which of the two was the sick one, the doomed one; she didn't want it to be so obvious."
The plot of "Widows" moves slowly, like an aged thing. Even this feels fairly deliberate. Decline is never as rapid as we'd hope, Updike seems to intone. We have too much time to look back, and that can punish. Even the witches seem to get it:
"How lovely, being remembered," Sukie says to Alexandra at one point. Alexandra's reply says it all: "It can be, or not."
Updike, of course, need not worry about being remembered. He will be recalled fondly — though probably not for this novel. One of the most prolific and gifted writers of his generation, he has nothing left to prove.
There are moments of brilliance, but he, like the witches, is ebbing.
Toward novel's end, Alexandra speaks to the daughter of a former lover, Joe. It's an apt coda — whether intentional or not. (With Updike, one always suspects intent.)
"'How has it been for you,' she asked. 'Being in Eastwick for this summer?'
"'It was ... useful,' Alexandra decided. 'It confirmed my suspicion that I belong elsewhere. There was less here than I remembered.'"

Amazon, my go-to site for cheap and used books, has picked their top 100 books for the year, and sadly I have read none so far and never even heard of most of them... If you can recommend any of these (or others!), please let me know.

Here's the first 25:

1. "The Northern Clemency," by Philip Hensher
2. "Hurry Down Sunshine," by Michael Greenberg
3. "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America," by Rick Perlstein
4. "The Forever War," by Dexter Filkins
5. "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel," by David Wroblewski
6. "The Likeness: A Novel," by Tana French
7. "Serena: A Novel," by Ron Rash
8. "So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel," by Leif Enger
9. "The Lazarus Project," by Aleksandar Hemon
10. "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America," by David Hajdu
11. "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America," by Thurston Clarke
12. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," by Stieg Larsson
13. "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves," by M.T. Anderson
14. "Sitting Bull," by Bill Yenne
15. "Netherland: A Novel," by Joseph O'Neill
16. "Home: A Novel," by Marilynne Robinson
17. "Duma Key: A Novel," by Stephen King
18. "Lush Life: A Novel," by Richard Price
19. "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto," by Michael Pollan
20. "The Underneath," by Kathi Appelt
21. "Knockemstiff," by Donald Ray Pollock
22. "A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes," by David Tanis
23. "Pravda: A Novel," by Edward Docx
24. "2666: A Novel," by Roberto Bolano

25. "Alinea," by Grant Achatz