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Jan 25, 2012

Will rated it:

Hoffman is in familiar, magical turf in this collection of charming and engaging, if not always happy stories. The unifying core is the history of a town, from founding, as Bearsville, which includes a very significant nod to Romulus and Remus, to present, Blackwell, MA, and more particularly with a special garden behind the founder’s house, the Red Garden of the title. It has some lightly magical properties. There are mythical figures to be seen here, as well as spirits, some folks who are o More...

1 comment like (11 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2011

Diane rated it:

From a summary: The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts. Hoffman offers a transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales.

I haven't read an Alice Hoffman book for a few years, but I was intrigued by this one right from the first page. There's something comforting about following families over a three hundred year period -- es More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2011

Jen rated it:

Due to my busy schedule, I often read right before I go to bed. So for me, the mark of a good book is one that I pick up about half an hour before bedtime, and refuse to put down until my eyes are absolutely closing with fatigue. The Red Garden is such a book. It's magical, whimsical, powerful. Although the stories making up a patchwork history of Blackwell, MA are set in different times with (mostly) different casts of characters, you can trace the common themes and family names that wind their More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2011

Michele rated it:

While I enjoyed each individual story, the 2-star rating comes mostly from the frustration I had due to the fact that the stories were just far apart enough in time and with just similar enough names (given names as well as surnames) that I was never sure who was related to whom and what the lineage was. Two things that could have helped with this would have been a) to make the stories just a bit closer in time, historically, or b) to provide a family tree chart at the front of the book. Or bo More...

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Sep 25, 2011

Sasha added it

THE RED GARDEN's structure is that of interconnected stories (like another favorite, Blackbird House), all taking place in one town over the years, the decades, the centuries. It’s both a novel and a collection. A series of short stories that creates wholeness out of the town in which they’re set. And there are shifting perspectives, an array of your usual Hoffman characters: as though from fairy tales, built from hyperboles. There’s the ghost of a young girl haunting a river infested with eels. More...

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Aug 09, 2011

Cori rated it:

My low rating of this book probably stems from having just read Jhumpa Lahiri’s beautiful and haunting short stories. The Red Garden is also broken into stories, connected through a town’s lineage with characters appearing at different ages in different stories. For some reason, I could not connect with this book at all. While her writing style was appealing and easy to listen to, the plot and characters felt distant and a little forced. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around some of the con More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Erin rated it:

Not my favorite book by Hoffman. I am a huge fan of magical realism in books, I love how authors can write a bit of fanciful magic into a realistic book. I think that is how life should be, everyday viewed with a bit of wonder. On this level, The Red Garden delivered. On others, I was left a little wanting more.

The story in this book flows through time like the novel's Eel River, hopping from one generation to the next, with one character being somehow related to another in a pre More...

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May 08, 2011

G rated it:

In general, I dislike magical realism, but I love the brand of magical realism written by Alice Hoffman. I like that fact that Hoffman isn’t a “showy” writer, that she doesn’t depend on plots that carry the reader along at breakneck speed or, despite her fondness for magical realism, gimmicks. Alice Hoffman is, instead, a restrained writer, a gentle and quiet writer, and one who leaves the stylistic pyrotechnics to others. However, she’s a masterful storyteller and a gifted author.

Hoff More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Apr 27, 2011

Jgrace rated it:

The Red Garden – Alice Hoffman

4 stars

[b]The Red Garden [/b] is a collection of short stories that revolve around the history of a small town in the Massachusetts Berkshire Mountains. The bears, bees, eels and winters of this isolated community permeate the stories in magical, metaphorical manner. Each story has a central, eccentric character whose life is somehow different from the norm. There is an underlying mystical or magical realism that ties each of the stories to More...

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Apr 10, 2011

Laurie rated it:

This set of small stories/vignettes spans 250 years of life in Blackwell, MA, originally named Bearsville by its founder, a woman by the name of Hallie Brady. She saved the founding expedition by giving them the milk of a hibernating bear. An odd place of calm bears, women who are really eels in human form, an apple tree (planted by Johnny Appleseed) that never fails to provide fruit and can bloom in winter, and the ghost of a young girl who drowned in the river, the Blackwell of these stories c More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 14, 2011

Elisha rated it:

I like Alice Hoffman. She writes beautifully and all her stories are infused with magic of some kind. This book is really a collection of short stories about a town in Massachusetts called Blackwell. It starts in the 17th century with the first settlers and then moves up into modern times - each chapter is a generation or so ahead of the last one.

I loved how she maintained some continuity throughout the book by mentioning characters from former chapters in latter ones. A chara More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

I wasn't as enthralled with the "magic" of the Red Garden as most other reviewers. Some of the stories were a lot of fun to read, others just dragged on. I never quite bought into the mystery of the garden, its red soil, and its inability to grow anything that wasn't red.

The story where the "paleontologist" from Harvard comes out was by far the worst. Hoffman confused paleontology with archaeology and should have done a little research before writing the nonsense s More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2011

Diane rated it:

The Red Garden is delightful collection of (14) interrelated stories, each story builds to set the stage for stories that follow. Set in the fictional, New England town of Blackwell, MA, the town, founded in 1750, by settlers William and Hallie Brady. It was formerly called "Bearsville", but was renamed in 1786 to encourage newcomers to the area. Located somewhere in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, the "red garden", is the place where only red plants can grow, and w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 21, 2011

Jeannine rated it:

Most reviews of The Red Garden see it as a series of linked stories covering the history of small Blackwell, MA (aka Bearville) from its founding in 1750 to almost the present day (1990s). I began reading the book this way but it started to feel repetitious. The stories are too tenuously connected to be read as a novel-like series of linked stories. The sister of a character in one story may appear on the fringes of the next, but the significance is hard to find.

I enjoyed the book more More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2011

RNOCEAN rated it:

The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in its history and in our own lives. In exquisite prose, Hoffman offers a transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions. From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fea More...

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Feb 11, 2011

Karen rated it:

This novel is not a winner for Hoffman. The main character is the town of Blackwell and it's founding family. Hoffman takes us through about two centuries of the family, with stories of the family members. The problem with the novel is the stories are to fragmented. Hoffman divides the chapters into time periods, and gives the reader what amount to vingettes of family members in this periods. When she moves to the next chapter and next time period it is hard to tell how the characters in the cur More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2011

Alayne rated it:

When one goes through a bit of a reading slump it’s always a delight to be pulled back into the love of literature by one of your go-to, favorite authors. You know you’ll never be disappointed, and I was not when I picked up Alice Hoffman’s latest release, The Red Garden.

A self-proclaimed love letter to Massachusetts, The Red Garden is a compilation of linked short stories revolving around the town of Blackwell. From the day Blackwell is founded, it becomes a town like no other. Whet More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2011

Erica rated it:

The things I like most in Alice Hoffman's books are: gardens, sisters, the effects and affects of ancestors on later characters, old houses, and history/nostalgia.
This book has them all, so of course I liked this book.
It evokes moments from many of her other stories - a woman inadvertantly forming the path her family will take for decades to come (Practical Magic), the life and death of gardens with specific emphasis on tomatoes (The Story Sisters), following lives to create the full More...

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May 31, 2011

Linda Branham rated it:

This book takes place in a specific area, a small town in Massachusetts ... and each chapter tells the a story of the people who lived there during that time. At first I didn't think I would like the book... but I ended up loving it.
The first main character was Hallie Brady... she is a unique and determined person, who even makes friends with a bear. Each Chapter is a time in the future.. a descendant of Hallie.
Hallie's story begins in 1700's - each descendants story builds upon the p More...

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Dec 18, 2011

Patricia rated it:

I usually enjoy reading Alice Hoffman's novels and admire the quality of her writing. However, I was somewhat disappointed with this collection of inter-related short stories. The Red Garden covers roughly two centuries in the history of Blackwell, Massachusetts, a small town in the Berkshires. The original name of the town was Bearsville, but the townspeople changed it to Blackwell, fearing that the mention of bears might deter new people from taking up residence. Hallie Brady, the woman who More...

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Sep 29, 2011

Jamie rated it:

I adore Alice Hoffman and this book was just as intriguing as any of her other books that I have read. Hoffman has a way of taking the written word and spinning magic and mists out of them. This book was set up a bit different than most I have read by her; it’s a collection of short stories all about the same Massachusetts town and spans generations and centuries. Each story was contained within its own capsule, but was threaded together with the rest of the book. Overall to me the tone was of l More...

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Aug 03, 2011

Glee rated it:

The structure of this book was similar to a couple of books I've read lately - and in all cases, I did not realize that they were collections of loosely connected stories, rather than a novel, until I had started to read them. In this book, the unifying theme(s) are the community, its original inhabitants and their descendants, and the effect of the land on them -- over a 250 year period.

The writing is elegant. Lovely prose. And some stories were compelling, others not so much. Wha More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 03, 2011

Marialyce rated it:

Like a breeze on the gentle air, Alice Hoffman's new novel transports the reader to the land of Blackwell where images of ghost, bears, collies, poetry, apple trees, and people blend into the scheme of living. In this beautifully written novel/collection of stories the thing that ties the characters together is the town. The characters' lives for good and bad revolve around lots of wilderness and imagery where the apparition (a young girl who drowned) haunts ann area of Eel Lake and seems to br More...

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Feb 17, 2012

Lormac rated it:

This book was just like "Blackbird House" which I loved. And I loved this one too. I guess I am a sucker for her gimmick of linking short stories by placing them in the same location - this time, Blackwell, Massachusetts - with the characters in each linked to each other as family or friends -and then letting the reader watch as the stories unfold with motifs repeating themselves - in this book, some of the motifs are bears, the river, collies, the rifle... When I call this a gimmick, More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 01, 2011

Snickerdoodle rated it:

Alice Hoffman writes very good stories. I've read everything she's written and never once decided a book of hers wasn't worth the time. This one was worth reading but certainly wasn't her best. Many people have called it haunting and luminous ... I didn't find it to be so at all. It's a collection of short stories. Each one almost good enough to stand on it's own - each wanting to be finished - or more completed than it was. In fact, I might've liked it better if that's what this was. As it was More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 22, 2011

Martha rated it:

What I liked about this book is it tells the story of a place. For over 300 years we’re told the stories of the Blackwell, Mass. Almost a collection of short stories connect by history. The same family names and town folk lore appear again and again in the stories. It’s fascinating to me, the small moments in history of someplace that has existed for so long.

I had a problem remembering some of the names and connecting them to their descendants from one chapter to the next but I was a More...

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Feb 13, 2011

Kim rated it:

Thoroughly enjoying this book. The best Alice Hoffman has written in quite a while. Many times it is helpful to see a book in three parts, the spine, the story and the theme. It helps me clarify my thinking about the book. For this book I would say that the spine is Hightop Mountain located right outside the town of Blackwell. The story contains the town of Blackwell, Massachusetts and the founding families. Themes would include family/heredity, magic, people on the fringe of society by th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 17, 2011

Kathy rated it:

The Red Garden is the story of the town of Blackwell, Massachusetts, populated by charming and memorable characters. A series of short stories (which is becoming a favorite arrangement of mine)the book has the feel of a novel because of the even current of the stories through history. It starts with the story of the town’s founder, Hallie Brady and continues through several of Hallie’s descendents or the descendents of the other original townspeople, and the way their lives crisscross throughout More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 08, 2011

Amy (SpedBug) rated it:

Although I've read a couple of Hoffman's books that I didn't particularly care for, as a whole I like her writing and her charaterization. In this collection of short stories, there is a common thread: a town by the name of Blackwell, Massachusetts and a garden in which only red plants will grow.

The stories are told in chronological order and often have ancestors of the first settler, a brave and wild English woman, as the main character(s). Over two hundred years are spanned from t More...

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Apr 06, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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