Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout 4*

 

Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout

 

Elizabeth Strout is an author who feels more like a dear old friend, or that cousin you like to be seated next to at a wedding. Her writing is both accessible and complex, as are the characters she creates.  Oh William! is the story of Lucy Barton as a woman who has divorced her cheating first husband, remarried, and lost her second to cancer. It is a family novel, examining the relationships between both parents, children, and their extended family, and it is a love story, though not a romance.  As many of Strout’s books do, it is sprinkled with historical fact that shaped the lives of the people living through events… like the POW camps in Maine, but the characters of the novel. The result is characters so authentic that I found myself looking to see if I was reading memoir.

 

At the heart of the novel is the secrets kept by both William, the cheating husband with whom Lucy retains a lovely friendship, and recently widowed Lucy.  The big secret that they investigate doesn’t feel any more important than the dozens of other revelations these characters give in this captivating book. Fans of Lucy Barton and Olive Kittredge will not be disappointed. Newcomers will be charmed by Lucy’s quirkiness.  And everyone will be saying “Oh William!”

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman 4*

 

The completion of the Practical Magic story of the Owens family and their curse in matters of love makes the swing around to complete the circle.  The primary settings are the house on Magnolia Street where the Owens family has lived for generations, with trips across the ocean and back to the place of the original pond where the curse began in England.  As with any good series, this one tied up loose ends left open in the prior books and created a landscape all its own.  Fresh characters join the beloved one, and we feel immediately at home in the libraries and homes of the characters.

 

Hoffman’s writing has been called lush, and for this reader, some places where a bit too lush, especially once the action moved to England. But the story and characters were worth wading through a bit of brush and marsh, the ending is surprisingly inevitable.  I was charmed by the explanations of love for this family… “you stayed when you wanted to run away. You held on when you knew you had no choice but to let go.”  I wish I had the whole series to read again.