I'm beginning to wonder that when the professional reviewers say "This is the author's most ambitious novel to date" that what they really mean to say is this author is in way over their head with this book or the story had potential, but they didn't pull it off.
Loosely based on themes and characters from Wuthering Heights, the book begins with March (aka Cathy Earnshaw) and her daughter Gwen returning to March's home town where Hollis (aka Heathcliff) lives with her brother's son Hank (aka Hareton). She has come back for the funeral of the woman/nanny who raised her. Several characters take on the role of the Wuthering Heights narrator Nelly.
I don't have a lot to say that is positive. I don't.
Problems with this book:

Poorly written in present tense with unclear point-of-view shifts.

The main character March isn't defined enough on her own. If they author was hoping that we'd super-impose Kathy Earnshaw onto March then she made a poor choice. Their personalities seem irreconcilable.

Ultimately, I don't think this stood on it's own two feet. So many of the decisions made by several characters only make sense if you know Wuthering Heights. If you don't, too bad. There is no explanation there for you.
Everything with Hollis felt evil and dirty, which I suppose can be thought of as successful writing, but the world only needs one Heathcliff. Neither characters' cruel ways are a joy to read about.
So many of Alice Hoffman's books are home-runs, but Here on Earth can be skipped, even by great fans.

3/5.0 starts

n  “Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.” n

I've been seduced by Alice Hoffman's dark storytelling many times. However, this adult fiction of hers is unquestionably modeled from Wuthering Heights (maybe one of her favorites..?) so you may abandon all hopes for unpredictability.

Before you write this off, I just want to say that Hoffman's skill with words never fails to draw readers in. Here on Earth is a story of obsession and possessive love - a glimpse of a turbulent relationship between a troubled boy, Hollis, who's been living his life awry and the girl, March Murray, who's willing to oversee it just to be with him.

What probably disturbed me most about the main characters is how easily they disregarded everyone else around them just to serve their own motives and how they failed to see that their love became destructive to them both. It was painful to read. And with regards to Hollis' dissatisfaction and inner turmoil, he was never happy and contented because he was cruel, unrepentant and unyielding. I find it sad that Hollis himself seemed to believe that he's simply a hopeless case and there's no reforming him. March is probably the best thing that's ever happened to him which was why he kept on holding on to her.

All in all, I find the characters well-written and interesting. Apart from the wide use of flashbacks, which I'm not usually a fan of, there are original and gritty scenes in this book that preserves Hoffman's trademark style son  if you're all for intense and tragic love stories, and the author, you may opt to give this one a try.n

Unfortunately, this is the first Alice Hoffman novel I read...I only forged ahead to a couple of her other works through encouragement from my aunt.

At first the book seemed slightly promising; a woman and her daughter returning to a childhood home that holds a lot of memories. But very quickly, I realized I really didn't like March. She seemed whiny, indecisive, and just very lost in general. And then, as soon as we started getting the picture on Hollis, the bad taste in my mouth got worse. An dark, suave, but highly abusive, insecure, and often downright nasty man? And March is still passionately in love with this guy?

Their relationship grew more and more painful to read, culminating in it being downright revolting. I was horrified at the terrible damage that March's stupidity had inflicted on her daughter and others in the town by the end, and her revelation at the end had no meaning because of how sudden and utterly obvious it was.

As is usual with these books, there are one or two redeeming characters that keep the book from becoming truly awful. March's savvy teenage daughter Gwen, who sees everything her mother blindly ignores, is one of them. The bond she forms with the horse and her relationship with the gentle Hank, another redeeming character, are sweet. Otherwise, this book felt like one skewed moral after another.

Okay, so the impression I get is Hoffman wanted to take as many parallels of Wuthering Heights as she could in modern times, and then do a, and then if this had happend sort of thing.

But y'all, one of the reasons books like Wuthering Heights are so spectacular is that you don't need anyone to tell you what would have happened if some particular part of the story went along a different line. The story is so well written, the characters so well defined, that if you have a "what if" question like that, you know the answer. And it doesn't matter if your answer matches mine; that's not the point. The point is you know.

Which makes it feel like an insult to have this book in the universe.

Only reason it's got two stars instead of one is because I thought the third-person present-tense narration was interesting. It seemed to be a bit of a play on the narrative style of Wuthering Heights. To at least give a sideways-from-that voice.

It was confusing as hell at times, when the backtracking happened. (I may never get over my hate of this, and how can I? It's terrible.) Flashbacks and musings were pretty terrible, too.

But it was definitely an interesting approach, especially since it was omniscient. A cool effect, as a concept. Could have been so much more well done, though.

And there were some lines I definitely liked. That's something. Made it worth reading, for me.

But then again, I'm kinda weird.

For me this book is not about romantic love. It is about a brutal, obsessive and controlling sociopath and the damage he does to the people unfortunate enough to think he loves them.

I found this book to be beautifully written. I am now on a quest to read many more Alice Hoffman books. I love the subtle way she incorporates magical realism into her stories, just enough so they are still relatable to everyday life.

3 stars. Overall, I was disappointed with this book. We are introduced to March Murray, who has returned home to attend the funeral of her childhood housekeeper/nanny. After the funeral, she makes the decision to stay indefinitely, as she has reunited with her teenage flame Hollis. Theirs is a complicated love, and for the remainder of the book it spirals out of control. Along the way, we encounter a variety of eccentric characters. I found the characters in this book to be weak, and I think this is what brought my rating down.
Hoffman is a great writer~ I look forward to reading more of her works.

I like dark books. That being said, this book goes several shades past dark. I couldn't put it down even when the story line played with normally stable anxiety levels.

Hoffman's mother/daughter characterization is spot-on. She pulls no punches, but when the mother turns into the child and the child becomes the adult, I started to pray for a miracle. The ride from Chapter One to the end of the book led me down a path filled with people beyond repair. With love that hurt.

Love isn't supposed to be that way.

The hell was that?

I picked this up—fortunately free from one of those little libraries from the side of the road—because Hoffman's voice, often lyrical and dreamy, usually makes my writing muse happy.

This made the muse and every cell in my body angry.

Apparently it's a retelling of Wuthering Heights. I've never read that book nor seen/read any of its adaptations. All I know about it, I've gathered from cultural osmosis.

Near as I can tell though, March ain't no Cathy and Hollis ain't Heathcliff.

The basic story is that for some reason, when March is a young girl, her father brings home an orphan boy, Hollis, that he picked up off the streets from the big city of Boston. Yeah, it makes no damned sense. Who does that? The kid is sullen and weird and March's older brother, a sullen and weird rich boy, picks on him. This, is supposed to be why Hollis grows up to be a psycho.

March, meanwhile, insta-loves him and in time he...mostly he like fucking her because he's a teen boy. They have a passionate, elicit teen romance. He eventually leaves. She eventually marries a very nice man, moves to California and has a daughter.

But she pines for Hollis. Oh, how she pines. When a family friend passes away, March returns to her hometown. Hollis has moved back years ago, and in revenge for a multitude of stupid slights, has bought the whole town and is the resident rich asshole.

March instantly leaps into an affair with Hollis, dumping her husband and neglecting her daughter (who falls in love with her cousin).

Hollis is vile. Not in a good way. I like anti-heroes. Heck, I once spent years writing a 200K fanfiction of MCU's Loki, a guy who blew up New York city. But Loki is smart and funny. Hollis has the charm of a soggy dog turd. Ultimately, we find out he once earned a living brutally killing horses, so, yeah, fuck that guy. No, don't fuck him. Run him over with a truck. Repeatedly. Amusingly, his end is in a truck, though he doesn't suffer enough for me.

March is worse. Her only personality trait is longing for Hollis. No career, no hobbies. Supposedly she's a jewelry artist, but that's just a few sentences in the book. I'm not sure what she does when she's not fucking Hollis or ignoring her daughter. Given that her husband reminds me of my own spouse, I hated her extra-hard for cuckolding such a decent man.

The only likeable characters in the book are March's daughter, Gwen, Tarot the old racehorse and Sister the terrier. I was really hoping Tarot would kick either March or Hollis (or both) to death.

Oh, and compared to Hoffman's usual writing, the prose was tepid and pedestrian. Like she was phoning this shit in.

I don't know what Oprah was smokin' when she recommended this book, but it must've been some primo grade stuff.

SOME SPOILERS:



Here on Earth was the second Hoffman book I read, following closely on the heels of the magnificent Practical Magic, but it's by far my favorite. I had a strong emotional reaction to the book even before I found out it was based on Wuthering Heights, one of my obsessions.

When March Murray returns to her hometown after some 15 years, she alternately dreads and craves a reunion with her childhood sweetheart. Hollis, now a wealthy and darkly handsome man, knows it's only a matter of time before she comes to him. When the two reunite, despite March's husband and daughter, they descend into a twisted and passionate relationship that might destroy them both.

Complicating things are Hank, the son of Hollis's enemy whom he's raised since infancy, and Gwen, March's 15 year old daughter. The two teens fall in love, though their relationship is far healthier and sweeter than the older generation.

Hollis was "adopted" by March's father, a respected attorney, and terrorized by Alan, her wastrel brother. When Mr. Murray dies, Alan relegates Hollis to the attic and treats him like an untouchable. It's this horrible youth that hardens an already stoic nature, and Hollis grows into a bitter, angry man who sleeps with half the townswomen and smothers March with his sick love. Will she give him a well-deserved kick in the ass? Will Hollis actually change for the better? Will Gwen and Hank run away together?

No to every question. That's why this book, and Wuthering Heights, are so emotionally devastating. Characters never achieve happiness or transformation. What March believes is love with Hollis is simply nostalgia for the boy she loved as a girl, and his brand of love is nothing but desperation to dominate the woman who got away.

Why does March believe she loves Hollis? He was there when she was an eleven year old kid and was mistreated by her brother. She saw a hurt and terrorized "bad boy," mysterious and aloof. He was her first lover and they left each other as teens before she could ever realize just how unhealthy and villainous he really is, which is why she still retains an attachment to him.

Hollis is incapable of love, but he is very much capable of possessiveness and lust. March was the one that got away, the girl who loved and petted him through his horrific childhood, and ultimately chose another man. He wants to own her and disdains not only her friends, but her daughter. His warped selfishness is evident when he tells March, after they meet again for the first time, that "that baby" was more important to her than he was. Correct, sir.

The only kindness we see on Hollis's part is his adoption of Hank, Alan's son, after Alan falls into alcoholism after his wife dies in a fire. Hollis feeds and provides for Hank, though he certainly never cuddles or praises him, and Hank is the only one to mourn when the book reaches an inevitably pitiful conclusion.

Hoffman is an adept storyteller, weaving beautiful descriptions, ripe emotions, and superstition together masterfully. Character development has never been her strong point, I don't believe, especially when she writes a novel of modest length (Second Nature, another novel, is a good example of this), but this is not a glaring problem with Here on Earth. You do get snippets and pieces of the characters that make them seem alive, but never a deep sense of who they really are and therefore, it can make you especially disdainful of their bad decisions and faults. The setting here is charming, as her settings usually are, and I so enjoy her descriptions of nature and the locales of the town. Hoffman loves magic and superstition, she seems to relish throwing in tidbits about midwives or what townspeople think cures this and that, and tying knots to secure a man's love, and how to make a child stop crying, et cetera, et cetera. It all makes for a magical experience and you wonder if there really could be places like the ones in her books.

I love this book, I really do. I don't understand why I love it so much, along with Wuthering Heights, but this story speaks to something in me, as well as to many others. I give it 5 stars!

This story is not a feel good story. It isn't romantic or sappy. The characters have serious flaws and many of them are unlikeable. However, the book was a compelling read about love. The good, the bad, and the ugly sides of love. Its about the depths a person will go to, or the things a person will forsake, ignore, or settle for in the name of love or what they believe is love. This novel portrays a rather dark side of love that borders on an obsession or a sickness in the case of Hollis and March. It also delves into regret, secrets, friendship, choices, fate, shattered dreams, coming of age, the past,and life in a small town where everyone knows everyone's business.

March returns to the small town in Massachusetts to attend a funeral of the woman, who was like her mother, after being gone for 19 years. She brings her teenage daughter with her on this journey that March starts to regret from the moment she made the decision to return. During her stay she encounters the boy Hollis, now a grown man, from her past that was her first reckless love. As the past mingles with the present, it disturbs the delicate balance March has tried to create since leaving. March is no longer the young girl she was all those years ago or deep down, is she really still the same?

To start, I love Wuthering Heights. I *love* every incarnation of Wuthering Heights that I have seen thus far. This book, which was a modern retelling of Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff's story, failed, in my opinion, in a number of ways. I'll focus mostly on how the book failed as an adaptation, which, as a fan of Wuthering Heights, is really all I care about.
First, the characterization of Mr. Murray - In the original, Mr. Earnshaw was an intense zealot and insisted on raising Heathcliff as his own (plucking him from urban decay) not out of the goodness of his heart, but because of a Christian sense of duty to reform a heathen. Murray was too nice, too pure, and Hoffman never pushed on his characterization, a problem that I found with a lot of these characters.
Second - Heathcliff is supposed to be ethnically "other" in comparison to everyone else in the story. He is described as a gypsy, and in a more recent adaptation, Heathcliff is depicted as a black man. This difference is important because it paints him as someone fundamentally different from everybody else around him, and Hindley and Nellie really focus on his ethnicity as a reason for his wickedness. This attitude, of course, says more about the racist attitudes of the era, than it does about Heathcliff's true nature, but why neglect that in this adaptation? Why gloss over the fact that Heathcliff is likely olive or brown skinned, and perceived as undesirable, not just because of his history but because of a socially constructed hierarchy over which he has no control?
Three - March was not Cathy. Cathy was a spitfire, vindictive and desperate and manipulative, and March was just weak. She was just weak--a weak mother (Gwen was in love with her first cousin) a weak wife, even a weak partner to Hollis.
Too much plot, too many horses. I enjoyed the depiction of the New England landscape, but she focused so much on the damn horse.
Ultimately, I think to categorize Here on Earth as literary fiction is a mistake. It's not thoughtful, or slow-paced or intricate. I found it to be silly, rushed and shallow.

Hmmm. I'm not sure what I thought of this book. The story kept me interested all the way through, but I hated the main characters, mostly. It was a depressing view of life, and I just don't need that. The ending was really not satisfying, and I was ready for the book to end. However, the writing and plot kept my attention.