Illumination Night » (Reprint)

In a prolific career that began with early writings in the American Review, Alice Hoffman has expanded and developed the idea of family and community -- the forces that bind it together and the forces that drive it apart -- with understated and elegant prose and powerful and complex characters.

With her signature "vivid, convincing characters [and] uncommon insight," (People) Alice Hoffman in Illumination Night follows the lives of an old woman whose last mission is to save her granddaughter's soul; a family torn apart by a wife's fears and a husband's desires-and a high school girl who comes to Martha's Vineyard against her will, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption.

"[A] bright constellation of characters...draws the reader into the dusky, dreamy world of Alice Hoffman." (St. Petersburg Times)

"Alice Hoffman hits bull's eyes on the incomprehensions between the young and the old, on the magic and pain of ordinary life. She is erotic and romantic...funny...clever and humane." (The Times, London)

"Alice Hoffman takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things." (Amy Tan)

"One of the best writers we have today-insightful, funny, intelligent, with a distinctive voice." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

"A major novelist." (Newsweek)

New York Times - Gwyneth Cravens

Subtle touches here and there make this intelligent novel shine. Ms. Hoffman knows how to tell a story in clear language and how to avoid subordinating the meanderings of temperament to logic or plot.