Nice read, slightly confusing but a beautiful book anyway. 3.45 stars
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Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman was the first book I bought on my new kindle fire. It was a great one to fly through during a summer day on my new kindle! (This book was free to download with Prime reading) This book mostly fulfilled expectations- the book shared the stories of two families in particular, a married couple and their son and a grandmother and her granddaughter who live next door. The start of this book was just how i could have expected, but as the book continued, it surprised me with elements I could not have expected- the sexual relationship between a father and his sixteen year old neighbor, a commentary on mental health problems as the mother was facing them, a weird and strained relationship between fathers and daughters, a commentary on death and how each person, young and old, sees it, and, but far the strangest and least expected aspect of the novel, a sexual relationship between a high school student and a giant. While all of these things didn't necessarily prohibit me from enjoying the novel, they did seem to be stories of their own that were hardly explained enough.
However, I did enjoy this book and it took me a day to read, so not bad :)
I would recommend this novel to someone who enjoys sappy realistic fiction but is not to afraid to take a chance on some new ideas (and is older due to the detailed sexual scenes, swearing etc.). Good read, did enjoy, give it a try!

Truly beautiful, full of emotion.

I loved this book. The giant Eddie and gray eyed Jody, Vonny and Andre, Simon and Samantha, and Elizabeth Tenney will stay in my mind for a long time. Having the giant paint miniatures was genius. Having diminutive Simon love basketball was genius. Having Jody become a strong caring women despite starting as a delinquent was wonderful. Having Simon fall in love was tragic and tore me up when Samantha died. Having Vonny create great pottery links her as a mother to Eddie's mythical status as a father with his artistry. Mrs. Tenney starts the book trying to fly by jumping out a window and ends many years later by flying away in death. Eddie recovering at last is a really nice way for the story to end.

DNF @ 32%

This is not one of Alice Hoffman's strongest works. Her characters all feel so one-dimensional, and her 4 year old character is far too precocious. I'm not really interested in where this story is going because the plot is meandering and I don't think there's going to be a point to it at all.

This is my sixth Alice Hoffman novel and it definitely was the least enjoyable one for me. It was a quick but very disappointing read for me. However, I am hesitant to say this was solely the book's fault. The fact is, the past few years my reading taste has been changing (and it still is), so this may have influenced me. To what degree it has done so is the million dollar question.

Now, I adore Hoffman's lyrical writing style. Her capability to put human emotions into words and display human behaviour through scenes more often than not strikes a cord with me and because I adore it so much, I often forgive her for meandering plot lines and endings that sometimes fizzle out like a snail left out in the sun. That is to say, I don't find her endings particularly strong generally - with the exception of The Third Angel.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying at all that every book should have a clear and structured plot, just that I typically prefer books to be a nice balance between character depth/growth, a strong plot and fitting ending. But Alice Hoffman is one of the exceptions to my rule as it were. Her books are character studies rather than anything else, and I enjoy them as such.

But I struggled with Illumination Night. More so than the others I've read, this read like 'a year in the life' of the main characters, rather than a story with certain events. I had so many issues with this one. I felt bored and uncaring about the lackluster plot. I felt like Hoffman had forgotten to make some of her characters likeable - I didn't like any of them except for the Giant. And I especially got annoyed with Vonnie for being such a bland and passive character. I grew impatient with the many character viewpoint shifts because it prevented some of the main characters becoming three-dimensional.

What is even worse, is that by the end of the book I realized that I had only written down one great passage. Only one! Neither did I feel that I have grasped what the book has been really about underneath in this little tale that went nowhere (Hoffman is great at using magical realism/symbolism to highlight underlying themes). But I have no idea what exactly Hoffman was trying to say here, which is a shame.

A part of me feels I should read it again sometime, to see if I'll discern what it's about next time around but if I'm honest it's not likely I'll ever make the effort. On the upside... I still have two other Hoffman books on my shelf and I will probably buy her prequel to Practical Magic at some point. So it just got a whole lot more interesting for me to read these in the foreseeable future.

For those of you who are new to Hoffman I'd say, don't start with this book. It'll probably put you off reading anything else by her hand and that would truly be a shame.

This author writes pretty well, but the question I have regarding this story is: Why?

This is the tale of Andre and Vonny, and their young son Simon. Simon is very small for his age. This is a source of inexplicable concern to his parents. Next door, they have an elderly neighbor, Elizabeth Renny, who for some reason is always referred to by both her first and last names in the narrative text. Elizabeth's teenaged granddaughter Jody, rebellious product of a broken home, comes to stay with Elizabeth Renny. She develops a crush on Andre. She and Andre have sex in a shed. Vonny develops agoraphobia, though it's anyone's guess whether this is due to heredity, her subconscious knowledge of her husband's interest in Jody, or her concern over her possibly abnormally short son.

Later, Jody falls in love with the local freak, an unusually tall young man referred to as the Giant. Howzabout that, folks? We have an abnormally short child and an abnormally tall young adult *in the same story.* Who'd've thunk? Vonny struggles with her agoraphobia. Elizabeth Renny struggles with aging and encroaching blindness. Andre struggles with being an asshole. Jody struggles with whether she should elope with the Giant or figure out some semblance of a normal life. Simon gets a pet rabbit. Simon is witness to a tragedy he doesn't understand.

These story threads, while running parallel to one another and occasionally crossing, seem disconnected and forced, rather as if the author had been writing two novellas and thought oh, what the hell--I'll just put them together. That worked really well for George Eliot with "Daniel Deronda," but if that is in fact what's happening here, it didn't work. I was left not knowing why this story was told, or why I should give a good goddamn about any of it.

I really don't get the story. Sorry to say, I even don't like this book. The characters are annoying, confusing and disgusting. Only Simon grabbed my attention.

Gladly give this book away to my fellow book moocher.

I stayed up and read this until my eyes hurt! I love her books!!

This book started out very well...but like many of Hoffman's books,it dissolves into too many fantastical plot lines and characters.

Couldn't put it down. Not once. Read it in a couple of hours straight. Hypnotic. Beautiful. Hoffman is a magnificent storyteller.

Audiobook

Kind of a sad book - but then that's par for the course with Alice Hoffman. I had to take a break because I just was not in the mood to read about adultery but then got back to the book which ended up better the second half. Although that said, I wish someone would have come back to town although there was a kind of happiness finally for the last character in the book (finally!).

Vonny and Andre live in Martha's vineyard with their son Simon and live next door to an old women whose granddaughter ends up moving in. The story just follows them around for two years. There was really no story line or plot here and the characters felt one dimensional. I enjoyed the writing and I loved the giant but everyone else was pretty hard to sympathize with except maybe the old lady. I understand showing a characters weaknesses but you still have to humanize them for the reader, everyone has their strengths as well. Nothing even happens in the story really and the ending felt lke it came out of no where and was pointless. Not sure what Hoffman was trying to do here.