Lately I have been gravitating towards slightly more 'light' books than usually. This has been a random purchase for my Kindle when it was on sale and has been sitting there for a while. I picked it up in an attempt to actually read the books I already own instead of buying new ones... And was totally captivated. This is a beautifully written book by Alice Hoffman, full of gorgeous paragraphs. The book was originally published in 1987 but has aged fairly well. Not mush happens - this is more a character-driven story than an action packed one. Artist Vonny and her motorbike enthusiast husband André move to Martha's Vineyard and their lives get entangled with others in the community, including Jody, the rebellious teenager and her grandmother. The book captures complex relationships really well. Trigger warning for anxiety and panic attacks though.

Very, very good. Compelling characters with serious flaws who are nevertheless still quite likeable. I love Alice Hoffman! There's no one else quite like her.

I picked up this book on a summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard and was both charmed and entertained by it. The tradition of Illumination Night and the summer gatherings of Methodist families on the island make a kind of magical, firefly-lit ambiance for this tale of people, young and old, whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.

The most fascinating character for me was the agoraphobic young wife, trapped in her house by fears she can barely articulate. Hoffman's treatment of this characters is so realistic and convincing that after reading the novel I felt for the first time that I not only understood this condition; I had lived it.

While the gentle-giant young man is a bit of a surprise for someone reading Hoffman for the first time, she also makes this character perfectly plausible and sympathetic. You can accept the young girl's falling in love with him because we come to care about him ourselves, while realizing that she has the power to break his heart.

As a writer, Hoffman leaves you with the impression that she feels deeply for her characters, regardless of their weaknesses and shortcomings. And putting down this novel, you can feel in yourself a tender-heartedness for others that most books either don't try to evoke, or try and fail.

I really enjoy Hoffman's writing style. I like her characters; they seem so real. She has the ability to show us the very ordinary lives of her characters in an extraordinary way.

ILLUMINATION NIGHT is so beautifully written it almost feels like a fairy tale. I don't remember a book by Alice Hoffman which I did not love. I highly recommend giving this wonderful book a try!

This book was much different than most of Hoffman's, with little of her trademark magical realism. I still enjoyed the story. The characters in Hoffman's books are always flawed. The love they so desperately want always comes at a cost. There's a darkness, a sadness, a weight. I especially loved the Giant, and Elizabeth Renney. While I have to admit there was a bit of a soap opera-ish element with Jody and the neighbors, the writing was just so beautiful and hit every heart string just where it was meant to.

I want to give this book more than just 5 stars. I don't want it to end. I will miss the people in this book.

Ugh. Oh my. UGH!

After this depressive drivel, how on Earth did Hoffman ever get published again?  I finally decided to quit reading this mess. I was sick of the 16 year old trying to seduce her adult neighbor. The final straw for me was when the wife decided to befriend the little Lolita. Because they both watched her son nearly get hurt. REALLY?!?!? For me, this book was fake romantic twaddle. Spare me!

The first time I read this book I was in my early twenties and never married. At that time, I remember rooting for Jody. I recently re-read Illumination Night and now I find myself looking at the characters in a different way since I am in my early thirties and married. This time I rooted for Vonny instead. My favorite characters in the story are Eddie and Elizabeth Renny.
I love the way so many different phases of life are represented in one story.
Another cool aspect of the book is the town; when I re-read the book it appeared the very same in my mind's eye as it had been the first time I read it. It's like the town had been saved in my memory all along.
Alice Hoffman is a brilliant writer!

Loved this Hoffman!

I'm afraid I gave up on this one. I wanted to like it, but the characters feel distant, not entirely sympathetically treated, and their collision courses seemed predictable and unpleasantly disastrous. While I don't require a happy ending for every novel I read, these characters seemed born for tragic trouble. The setting is beautifully rendered, the characters vivid, and their conflicts important. I just didn't feel I was going to gain anything by pursuing them to the ends of their different follies.

This is one of those typical New England books where the very tone of the narrative can only be described as “WASPy.” No matter how intense the situation (vague senses of discontent from never having really lacked anything they needed) everything feels like it’s being related at one remove. All the experiences and emotions disconnected from the reader AND the character experiencing them, somehow.

The conflicts in this book are all interpersonal and very delicate and specific. A marriage quietly going to seed for no apparent reason, an old woman who wants to die, a teenager that is self-destructive because her parents are divorced and her mother is kind of selfish. Basically, people with no real struggle in their lives kind of floundering for direction by overthinking their relationships with other people.

I never realized this type of story is so specific until I read this book. It’s just not for me. It’s not an examination of human nature that I can’t learn anything from, the story itself isn’t exciting, and I don’t really feel deeply for any of the characters. So, it has nothing to offer for me personally. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone.