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The Red Garden

3.65 of 5 stars 3.65 · rating details · 6,763 ratings · 1,308 reviews

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' liv...more

Hardcover, 270 pages

Published January 25th 2011 by Crown (first published January 19th 2011)

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Jun 07, 2011 Will Byrnes rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

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 of q...more 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 of questionable species, people with craft-y skills, people who have been damaged by the world, and those with a drive to wander. Bears figure prominently, both as a source of comfort and danger. Although there are dark doings in some of the stories, I found them, overall, delightful.

Hoffman is a big fan of fairy tales and many of the stories here would fit quite nicely into that genre. There are plenty of classic references as well, from a Tree of Life to elements of the founding of Rome, and more recent lore, such as Johnny Appleseed. And any garden must, of course, refer back to the first one. This is a plot rich with literary and cultural references and those who enjoy digging in such soil will emerge with happily muddy hands.

Through all is a fascination with our attachment to the land. The Tree of Life stands in nicely for the life-giving roots the Red Garden’s characters grow in their home. The red of the primal garden flows through several of the stories in which objects with a source in, or touched by the garden, take on the color. There are nods toward transcendentalism, with characters finding solace only when communing with nature. Some shapes are even shifted. Characters flow from one story into the next, which proceed in chronological order, children in a story appear as adults in a later one. Characters who die early may appear as spirits later.

One gripe I have with the book is that the characters are often very engaging and it was disappointing to have to leave their side after only a few pages. I was delighted by The Red Garden. Alice Hoffman always offers a good read and I found this one better than most.

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Feb 04, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 -- especially whe...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Apr 04, 2013 thewanderingjew rated it 4 of 5 stars

In just under 300 pages, Alice Hoffman takes the reader on a journey through the history of a small town in Massachusetts, Bearsville, aka Blackwood, aka Blackwell, which was settled quite by accident. Four families, traveling with William Grady and his wife, Hillie, become lost in a snowstorm and flounder. Hillie, the stronger and more industrious of the two is ultimately the one responsible for successfully settling there and for their survival. This small town of four families, Mott, Partridg...more
In just under 300 pages, Alice Hoffman takes the reader on a journey through the history of a small town in Massachusetts, Bearsville, aka Blackwood, aka Blackwell, which was settled quite by accident. Four families, traveling with William Grady and his wife, Hillie, become lost in a snowstorm and flounder. Hillie, the stronger and more industrious of the two is ultimately the one responsible for successfully settling there and for their survival. This small town of four families, Mott, Partridge, Starr, and Grady, soon grows to ten, changes its name, prospers and grows still further. Some other names that appear are Jacob, Kelly, Flynn, and Chapman. New families arrive, marriages, births, and deaths ensue. We follow their thread from the 1700’s to the Civil War to the Depression and another war, right up until and into the 21st century.
Because the story felt more like a collection of short stories, it wasn’t always cohesive (but it was always interesting), especially with an audio book since the listener can’t easily review what has just been read. Sometimes the characters jumbled together and names got mislaid in my memory. So many characters were highlighted in the 14 chapters, it was sometimes hard to find the thread connecting them, but there definitely was a thread. A name would occur early on and then disappear only to suddenly recur in a later chapter. Often, it was hard to remember the trail and hold onto the continuity. It was more like there was suddenly an aha moment when everything would click and come together.
Many themes returned throughout the stories: the color red as in blood, apples, red vegetables, red fruit, red soil, red flowers; trees, as in the tree of life; babies born out of wedlock. There were bones, runaways, poets, bears, dogs and other creatures, blindness, magic and the supernatural, gardens with secrets. It was almost as if these qualities were part of some cosmic DNA. There were chance meetings that turned into kismet for some of the characters and there were many moments of tragedy and sadness followed by a story of survival, all of which together were able to knit all of the families that originally settled into a cohesive whole.
There were many beautifully told stories of love and devotion, loss and sadness. The times were hard and courage and perseverance were necessary qualities for survival and success. Each of the families moved through the generations in an almost karma-like fashion, with the character’s descendants morphing and changing, growing into themselves from generation to generation.
With the passage of time, the garden goes through various stages of being planted and productive or lying fallow, in much the same way as the character’s lives progress, depending on the family living near or in the original Brady house at a particular time, but the garden is definitely something that links them all.
After more than two centuries, the descendants of a Mott and a Grady, come full circle and return to their small town beginnings, once again making the garden a sacred place and making the book feel as if it is almost beginning again.
Hoffman writes with a spare prose that is more expressive than books with more than twice the number of pages.(less)

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May 04, 2013 Steve Lindahl rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Red Garden is a collection of loosely connected short stories. The connections come primarily through the setting, Blackwell, which is a small town in rural Massachusetts once known as Bearsville. A few characters show up in multiple stories, but for the most part each story moves years forward so the characters from one are now either dead, missing, or old enough to be living through their memories. I love Alice Hoffman's writing style. This book, like the others I've read (The Third Angel...more The Red Garden is a collection of loosely connected short stories. The connections come primarily through the setting, Blackwell, which is a small town in rural Massachusetts once known as Bearsville. A few characters show up in multiple stories, but for the most part each story moves years forward so the characters from one are now either dead, missing, or old enough to be living through their memories. I love Alice Hoffman's writing style. This book, like the others I've read (The Third Angel and The River King) is best described as magic realism. That's a term that has been used in many ways, but in Hoffman's case I intend it to mean a set of circumstances that begin with a realistic feel but sometimes branch off in interesting ways. The Red Garden has a garden where everything planted in it turns red. It also has a number of bears who have unusual relationships with some of the humans. It has a young, female spirit known as the Apparition. And of course it has characters who know things others don't. These are just some of the examples where Hoffman steps away from the world's definition of reality and into her own.

I prefer Hoffman's books, such as The River King, where characters remain in the story longer. With this collect I felt as if I was starting over again with each new tale. I didn't realize that would be the case when I began reading the book. I enjoyed the latter stories more than the earlier ones because by that time I understood where Hoffman was going.

The Monster of Blackwell was one of my favorites in the collection. It's Hoffman's version of the Beauty and the Beast story. In this case an ugly, misfit young man comes to the woods outside Blackwell. Children in the town catch glimpses of this man and label him a monster. But when Kate Partridge, a teenaged camp counselor, has a group of children in the woods this monster saves one of them from a bear. (Bears are constantly appearing in all the stories.) Kate falls in love with this man despite their different backgrounds.

The stories are a mix of heartbreak and happiness. This is my third Alice Hoffman book and I intend to read more.

Steve Lindahl – author of Motherless Soul
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Mar 21, 2013 Annie Smidt rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

A multi-century historical novel set in the Berkshires seemed, in theory, like a pleasant diversion, but I found this book pretty unengaging. Rather than some kind of intergenerational epic, it comes across more like a collection of short stories in which characters are somehow related but are also so shallowly depicted that it's hard enough to remember whom you're reading about, never mind how they fit into the bigger picture of families and events.

Many of the stories felt unfinished, or finis...more A multi-century historical novel set in the Berkshires seemed, in theory, like a pleasant diversion, but I found this book pretty unengaging. Rather than some kind of intergenerational epic, it comes across more like a collection of short stories in which characters are somehow related but are also so shallowly depicted that it's hard enough to remember whom you're reading about, never mind how they fit into the bigger picture of families and events.

Many of the stories felt unfinished, or finished insignificantly and I kept waiting for ends to be tied up, or at least revisited. In fact, for about the first third of the book I was sure it would snap out of the superficial mode and start to follow particular characters more deeply, using the first third as some meaningful backstory. But no, the whole thing went on in the same vein.

The idea of places and objects that show up again and again through time, relating to different characters in different eras is pretty fascinating, but I think, because the characters were so under-developed, and one didn't care that much about any one in particular, it was hard to fully appreciate the weighty significance as many encountered the recurrent tropes.

I admit, the use of one house, described through time from being a town founder's first, hard-won abode in the 18th century to its tenancy by later relations and its final position as the town historical museum in the modern era did strike a chord with me. Perhaps because I find house histories so fascinating, or because I've spent a lot of time in historical houses which are no longer in private hands (especially as a docent in a house museum). Somehow, this story made it more real to me that these museums were once, real, vital, every day places for people.

For all the moving through time, this book actually didn't spare much time for historical detail or the kind of almost fetishistic description of daily life in other periods that many historic novelists indulge in (in a good way). And since the characters were, also, not very detailed, the bulk of the book was pure plot. People moving from point a to b and desiring c or d then getting it or not.

There was a disturbing repetition in the way women were described — all were remarkably "beautiful" and about half were labeled with stereotypical feisty redhead epithets. There were also a lot of instances people hooking up without knowing each other, in every era, on account of some ineffable mystical attraction. Seemed like a bit of cop out to avoid describing why characters felt things, or what, in detail, they felt.

In all, the writing isn't terrible, and I sure a careful analysis would surface the interconnections of themes and characters in a way that might make it all more meaningful. But it didn't really catch me because it reads like superficial and plot-driven mythology.(less)

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Feb 20, 2013 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Reading groups

Recommended to Maria by: Librarian

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

This book was pretty good, I guess. It was kind of the history of a town called Blackwell, Massachusetts. Each chapter was about a different person, starting with the person who settled there and started the town, and following down through the generations of her posterity to the present time. Each chapter was basically unrelated to the last except for one or two characters who had aged. Each layer added upon the history of the town. People moved into town, people moved away. The last few chapte...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Michelle Farmer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like some other readers, I too found The Red Garden a little difficult to track. I enjoyed all the individual stories but found the connection between them often hard to find. I would have liked to read more about the connection of the bear in the garden late in the story brought back to the original story of how he came to be there. I guess it's a little like finding stuff in the garden when you move into a place, you never really know how it got there, what the story is behind it and it adds t...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Shonna Froebel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Needing an audiobook for my commute, I grabbed this off the "New" bookshelf. The book is a series of vignettes set in the small town of Blackwell, Massachusetts over a period of three hundred years. Starting with ill-prepared settlers getting stuck there in a snowstorm and surviving due to the fortitude of one woman, the town has a long history. We see bears, eels, bees and other wildlife. There are families that appear and reappear in the various times. There are people on the run, and people l...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars

A friend and I are on an Alice Hoffman kick and he encouraged me to grab a copy of The Red Garden. "Read and we will discuss". And since I will do anything for a dinner and a book discussion, I was on the case. Since I love books with interconnecting stories, this book hit the spot with me. The unifying theme is the history of a small town in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts and the people who have lived there. I love that area so I was predisposed favorably to like the book even...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Michele rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 both...more

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Sep 25, 2011 Sasha Martinez added it

Shelves: books-read-in-2011

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 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. There’s the ghost’s sister who ran away with a horse trader. There’s the widow who fell in love with a man who planted apple trees. There’s the apple true that bore fruit all throughout winter, feeding the town that once steered clear of it.

The first ones—and Hoffman begins with the very founding of the town—are pure folklore. Though treated casually or matter-of-fact, as with the young wife who lies alongside a hibernating bear. Later on, these first stories—fact, as we know them—do turn into folklore in the next couple of years, woven in the collective memory. As the chronology progresses, the stories are more grounded on reality as we’re familiar with it. And this is where Hoffman shines: her unobtrusive whimsy. The fairy tale details are more unexpected. Contrasted with reality, they’re more disarming, fascinating, even disquieting.

Hoffman takes advantage of the limitations of her structure: the images are there, made stronger with every glance, she needs only to return to them. The tone’s established. And since Hoffman’s (and this particular book’s) strength lies on both image and tone, isn’t this recipe for the best book an author in control can produce? The tone is constant—and isn’t this the tone I’ve encountered in the fifteen books prior? From here on in, it’s only a matter of sustaining for the author. And, well, making it new. Something, I admit, Hoffman fails to do the more stories you read. The haziness gets away from the author’s control, the collective of images tend to appear willy-nilly. As a collection, this isn’t tight enough. As a novel, even less so.

I realize that Hoffman’s been one of those authors whose books just fell onto my lap [i.e., finding her in book sales, and the accompanying “Okay, I’ll read you, then” shrug]. Also, I suspect that her recent writings just feel like earnest yet ultimately pale imitations of her work from the 90s.

Like The Red Garden, which, while good, just isn’t her best. And, for some reason, I expected this—I am not devastated.(less)

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Aug 09, 2011 Cori rated it 2 of 5 stars

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

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Aug 05, 2011 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 previous chapter, w...more

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May 08, 2011 TheGirlBytheSeaofCortez rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-authors, contemporary-authors, family-dramas, magical-realism, linked-stories

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.

Hoffman’s late...more

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Apr 27, 2011 Jgrace rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 the next, even when the c...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Laurie rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Mar 14, 2011 Elisha Condie rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 character I liked fro...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Elizabeth Van Orden rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 she wrote. I went to graduate s...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 where passions run hig...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Jeannine rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 as I bega...more

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Feb 15, 2011 RNOCEAN rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle

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

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Feb 09, 2011 Alayne Bushey rated it 5 of 5 stars

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. Whether the deat...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gardening, growing-up, historical-fiction, love-and-romance, animals, magic, real-life-fiction, short-stories, women-and-girls, family-saga, supernatural, audiobook

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 story (The...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Isis rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is very much a Hoffman book, and is clearly written later in her publishing career. She has an incredible talent for interweaving stories that can easily stand on their own, but when combined create a vivid and rich tapestry that leaves the reader wondering about the characters and wanting more of their stories.

"The Red Garden" is a novel that could easily be one of short stories, but instead it is a rich story of a town and several of the characters and families that are the heart an...more

This book is very much a Hoffman book, and is clearly written later in her publishing career. She has an incredible talent for interweaving stories that can easily stand on their own, but when combined create a vivid and rich tapestry that leaves the reader wondering about the characters and wanting more of their stories.

"The Red Garden" is a novel that could easily be one of short stories, but instead it is a rich story of a town and several of the characters and families that are the heart and soul of the town - at least on the surface. When you look deeper you can see the secret heart & soul of the town itself - something many of those that peopled the town were oblivious to, though most seemed to discover the town as an individual at some point or another in their own lives.

Of course this raises questions of all sorts. Did the town truly have its own personality, or was the personality simply echoes of those that had come before? And if that is the case, how does the reader account for the town's early years? Those years when only one or two people discovered the true nature of the distinct personality of the area that would eventually grow to be Blackwell?

The stories and characters have a lyrically haunting feel to them, one that seemed to grow deeper and strong as the book went on. The characters take on a life of their own and stay with you throughout the book. So much so that I found it a shock to have reached the end of the book.

The fact that many characters share the same names through the generations helps keep their individual stories in the forefront of your mind, and makes it somewhat challenging to keep them from blending together - rather like the continued growth of a character, just done over generations versus one restricted lifetime. By continually reusing names you get to watch the characters grow and develop right along with the town itself - almost as if the characters are trapped in and endless cycle, coming back over and over - not just to learn a lesson but to also perpetuate the life of the town.

Well worth the read, and short enough to read in an afternoon, or just read a short chapter when you can, as the characters will continue living in some part of your mind between readings (whether you know it at the time or not). (less)

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May 31, 2011 Linda Branham Greenwell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, historical, fantasy

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 preceding st...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Susan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Well, normally I like Alice Hoffman, but I did not like this book. It covers the time period from 1750 to present. It is about a small, fictional town somewhere in Massachusetts, founded in 1750. And each entry (there are 14 of them) involves someone a decade later who was related somehow to the person in the entry before them. I found it boring...and it was hard to keep track of how each person was related to the previous people...or perhaps because I was not very interested, I neglected to kee...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Patricia rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 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 is generally regarded as the town's founder, is commemorated every August with a play put on by the inhabitants.

The stories focus on various residents of Blackwell at different points in its history, but the main character is really the town itself. Most of the stories are about the descendants of the original settlers. In one story, John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) and his brother pass through Blackwell, stopping to plant apple trees. Legend has it that the oldest tree in town, known to the residents as the Tree of Life, was planted by Johnny Appleseed.

Many events take place in a natural setting, such as the nearby woods, the eel-choked river or the garden to which the book's title refers. Usually there is a gap of several decades or more between the stories. That made it difficult at times to keep track of how the younger characters in the stories were related to their predecessors. The residents of Blackwell face wars, poverty, hunger, disease, injury, or death. A disproportionate number of the characters die tragically at a young age. Women and men in the town also appear to have a disproportionate number of casual sexual encounters with strangers. I'm not suggesting that there is a connection.

These stories contain the blend of reality and the supernatural that Hoffman typically gives her readers. Perhaps I am becoming too familiar with the formula. Maybe I thought the stories were overly morbid or melancholic. It could be that I just prefer reading novels to short stories. In any case, I hope the author will go back to writing her full-length novels and give me a chance to develop a deeper bond with the characters. (less)

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Sep 29, 2011 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars

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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About Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing. She currently lives in Boston and New York...more Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing. She currently lives in Boston and New York.

Hoffman’s first novel, PROPERTY OF, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. She credits her mentor, professor and writer Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, the writer Maclin Bocock Guerard, for helping her to publish her first short story in the magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff then contacted her to ask if she had a novel, at which point she quickly began to write what was to become PROPERTY OF, a section of which was published in Mr. Solotaroff’s magazine, American Review.

Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published a total of sixteen novels, two books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults. Her novel, HERE ON EARTH, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. PRACTICAL MAGIC was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, AT RISK, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s advance from LOCAL GIRLS, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA. BLACKBIRD HOUSE is a book of stories centering around an old farm on Cape Cod. Hoffman's recent books include AQUARMARINE and INDIGO, novels for pre-teens, and The New York Times bestsellers THE RIVER KING, BLUE DIARY, THE PROBABLE FUTURE, and THE ICE QUEEN. GREEN ANGEL, a post-apocalyptic fairy tale about loss and love, was published by Scholastic and THE FORETELLING, a book about an Amazon girl in the Bronze Age, was published by Little Brown. This fall Little Brown published the teen novel INCANTATION, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year. In January 2007, SKYLIGHT CONFESSIONS, a novel about one family’s secret history, was released on the 30th anniversary of the publication of Hoffman’s first novel.

Hoffman’s work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Weist. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, Self, and other magazines. Her teen novel AQUAMARINE was recently made into a film starring Emma Roberts.
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Quotes from The Red Garden

“The sisters were glad to be together. They had the easy sort of relationship where they didn't have to speak to be understood.” — 6 people liked it

“They say that dogs may dream, and when Topsy was old, his feet would move in his sleep. With his eyes closed he would often make a noise that sounded quite human, as if greeting someone in his dreams. At first it seemed that he believed Sara would return, but as the years went by I understood that his loyalty asked for no reward, and that love comes in unexpected forms. His wish was small, as hers had been -- merely to be beside her. As for me, I already knew I would never get what I wanted.” — 4 people liked it

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