Practical Magic

I got a pile of nooks at the library the last time I went and one of them was Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. I had seen the movie some years ago but hadn't known it was first a book until I saw it at the library. I've always liked reading about magic, from fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White when I was a kid, to The Once and Future King and The Lord of the Rings when I was a teen, and most recently The Dresden Files. I'm just at the start of the book, but it's well written and seems to be very much like the movie in plot, but I'm finding it a little sad so far.

Here's the Publishers Weekly blurb from the Amazon page ....

Her 11th novel is Hoffman's best since Illumination Night. Again a scrim of magic lies gently over her fictional world, in which lilacs bloom riotously in July, a lovesick boy's elbows sizzle on a diner countertop and a toad expectorates a silver ring. The real and the magical worlds are almost seamlessly mixed here, the humor is sharper than in previous books, the characters' eccentricities grow credibly out of their past experiences and the poignant lessons they learn reverberate against the reader's heartstrings, stroked by Hoffman's lyrical prose. The Owens women have been witches for several generations. Orphaned Sally and Gillian Owens, raised by their spinster aunts in a spooky old house, grow up observing desperate women buying love potions in the kitchen and vow never to commit their hearts to passion. Fate, of course, intervenes. Steady, conscientious Sally marries, has two daughters and is widowed early. Impulsive, seductive Gillian goes through three divorces before she arrives at Sally's house with a dead body in her car. Meanwhile, Sally's daughters, replicas of their mother and their aunt, experience their own sexual awakenings. The inevitability of love and the torment and bliss of men and women gripped by desire is Hoffman's theme here, and she plays those variations with a new emphasis on sex scenes?there's plenty of steamy detail and a pervasive use of the f-word. The dialogue is always on target, particularly the squabbling between siblings, and, as usual, weather plays a portentous role. Readers will relish this magical tale. BOMC main selection.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play the kitchen witch sisters in the movie adaptation of the book ...