Skylight Confessions

On the night her father dies, Arlyn is certain that the man she is meant to be with will walk into her life. But fate seems to be playing a trick when John Moody knocks on her door to ask for directions. Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their marriage is dangerous territory, tracing a map no one should follow. It leads them and their children to a house made of glass in the Connecticut countryside, to the rooftops and avenues of Manhattan, and to the blue waters of Long Island Sound, all in a search for family and identity.

Walking this path of ruin and redemption are Sam, their son, a brilliant, explosive artist who is drawn to self-destruction and dreams; Blanca, the beautiful loner who tries desperately to protect her brother from his destiny and lives her own life in a world of books; and Will, the grandson, who is left a legacy of broken pieces he needs to put together, an emotional and mysterious puzzle made up of people who don't know the first thing about love.

Here is a family so real, so tragic, so devoted, it is as if they have written their own riveting history-a quest for love and truth. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. No one who reads this book will ever forget it or look at their own family in quite the same way. Skylight Confessions is a luminous and elegant work of true originality.

"Achingly beautiful and filled with heart-wrenchingly real characters: one of Hoffman's best." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Hoffman's shimmering, multigenerational melodrama bewitches with supernatural imagery." Booklist

"Hoffman's gift for framing otherworldly elements in down-to-earth language intensifies the flawed resolve of the tragic Moodys as they desperately pummel their way through loss and grief and, maybe, redemption. Highly recommended." Library Journal

"Be warned...that Skylight Confessions may bewitch you, to use the obligatory reviewer word for Hoffman, but it may also move you to tears. More than once....[A]nother spellbinding tale that will send you into the woods." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Even when the plot sounds like leavings from a soap opera, Hoffman saves the day with her control of the story and her signature fairy dust." Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[T]hose who feel that one of literature's tasks is to challenge such fantasies are likely to wonder at the gap between Alice Hoffman's high reputation and the thin literary skills on display in her latest work." Wall Street Journal

"Every culture needs fairy tales, and in the subconscious depths of this novel is an image of people leaping from the twin towers like flaming birds, transformed by magic, able to fly away." Los Angeles Times

"[A] haunting meditation on the curse of bottomless grief, a wickedly hard spell to break." Cleveland Plain Dealer

This stunning new novel about three generations of a family haunted by love is from the bestselling author of Practical Magic and The Ice Queen.

Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love.
Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their difficult marriage leads them and their children to a house made of glass in the Connecticut countryside, to the avenues of Manhattan, and to the blue waters of Long Island Sound. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. Ultimately, it falls to their grandson, Will, to solve the emotional puzzle of his family and of his own identity.

Alice 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. Ms. Hoffman has also worked as a screenwriter for many years and is the author of the original screenplay Independence Day, a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Weist. Hoffman's short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, Premier, Self, Southwestern Review and many other magazines.