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Probable Future

by Alice Hoffman
Probable Future

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780385507608
ISBN10: 0385507607
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Alice Hoffman’s most magical novel to date—three generations of extraordinary women are driven to unite in crisis and discover the rewards of reconciliation and love.

Women of the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinor can detect falsehood. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people’s dreams when they sleep. Granddaughter Stella has a mental window on the future—a future that she might not want to see.

In The Probable Future this vivid and intriguing cast of characters confronts a haunting past—and a very current murder—against the evocative backdrop of small-town New England. By turns chilling and enchanting, The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows’s legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Her potential to ruin or redeem becomes unbearable when one of her premonitions puts her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. Yet this ordeal also leads Stella to the grandmother she was forbidden to meet and to a historic family home full of talismans from her ancestors.

Poignant, arresting, unsettling, The Probable Future showcases the lavish literary gifts that have made Alice Hoffman one of America’s most treasured writers.

Review

"[O]verstuffed, ungainly, improbably absorbing....Enough stylish invention here for several novels, but this one's center cannot hold." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"By Part II, The Probable Future becomes The Predictable Novel. The charm wears off, despite Hoffman's continuous, vigorous crafting of imagery and casting of lyrical phrases." Catherine Newton, The Dallas Star Telegram

Review

"Hoffman gives us another over-the-top yet thoroughly appealing fictional confection, with themes and settings that recall her Practical Magic....Filled with vivid (if sometimes sketchy) characters and cinematic descriptions of New England landscapes, this book will be a hit wherever Hoffman is in demand." Library Journal

Review

"[S]himmering....[A] soft and dreamy tale of mothers and daughters, love and fate, that easily envelopes us in its enchanted realm....[T]here's no arguing with Hoffman's storytelling skills, the lyrical writing, the beautifully pieced plot." Nancy Pate, Orlando Sentinel

Review

"Complexly constructed, with intertwined plots, memorable settings, and intriguing characters, this is a magnificent novel." School Library Journal

Review

"The book could be an episode of Oprah: 'Good Witches Who Love the Wrong Men.' But fortunately, Hoffman is saved by her characters, who are nearly as complicated as their relationships with one another." Susan Wickstrom, The Oregonian (Portland, OR)

Review

"Hoffman's ethereal prose reflects the magic of her tale....Ultimately, the fantastic Swallow legend is utterly believable, even though you know it's only the magic of a gifted writer in her prime." Diane Carman, The Denver Post

Review

"At her best, Hoffman uses small miracles to signify a secular state of grace: in one particularly lovely passage, a doctor remembers coming to terms with death. But The Probable Future is mostly not Alice Hoffman at her best. Things are out of balance: too much magic, not enough realism." Sarah Churchwell, Times Literary Supplement (read the entire TLS review)

Synopsis

By turns chilling and enchanting The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows' legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Culminating in an exquisite ending, this story showcases the lavish literary gifts that have made Hoffman one of America's most treasured writers.

Author Q&A

A Conversation with Alice Hoffman

Jennifer Morgan Gray is a writer and editor who lives in New York City.

Jennifer Morgan Gray: The title The Probable Future has many possible meanings. What did you hope to convey about the permanence—and changeability—of destiny by choosing this title? Were there any others you considered and then discarded during the writing process?

Alice Hoffman: Finding the right title is much like being givena gift. The title arrived during the writing of the novel. I realized in the process that “seeing the future” is impossible. There are thousands of possible futures all dependent on

choice and circumstance.

JMG: Did you begin the novel with a particular image, situation, or idea in mind? Or was there one character in particular that sparked your imagination for this book?

AH: The novel began with the image of a young girl who awakes on her thirteenth birthday with a “gift”—the ability to see the way some people will die. The impact of such a gift interested me. I wrote the novel after a period in which I lost many people I loved, including my mother, and I was trying to make some sense out of how unpredictable life and death are.

JMG: I was struck by the significance of names in the book, including Stella, Sparrow, and Unity, to name just a few. Did you write the book with these names already in place, or did you choose them later as the story unfolded?

AH: Names most often come with the character for me. If I ever have to change a name for any reason (repetition, another character in another book with the same name) I’m completely thrown—it’s almost as if characters are “born” with their names.

JMG: The town of Unity is as vivid a character as any of the people in the story. Did you base Unity on an actual town, or was it in some ways an amalgam of what a small New England town should be? In which ways is it idyllic? What flaws does it possess?

AH: The town of Unity was named in much the same way as the characters—it arrived along with the place—and of course it is ironic, as the town is torn in two. There is an official history and an unofficial history. One excludes the contributions

of women, such as the Sparrows. That’s the history I’m interested in.

JMG: Many of your novels are rooted in the tradition of magic. In writing The Probable Future, how did you manage to blur the lines between fantasy and reality but still make the plot events seem plausible? How do you trust your readers to

make that leap and still identify with—and relate to—your characters?

AH: I feel that the tradition of literature, of storytelling, is rooted in magic. Realism seems to me a newer, less interesting tradition. I grew up reading fairy tales, science fiction, fantasy. As far as making the leap to belief, as soon as a reader opens a

book he or she must suspend belief—marks on paper become a real world. The next leap, to identify and relate with fantastical occurrences, seems easy to me. The sort of magic I write about is that which is rooted in the real world—the probable and the possible.

JMG: Stella veers from being a recalcitrant thirteen-year-old to a young woman who is wise far beyond her years. How did you strike that balance in evoking her personality, and how did writing her character pose a challenge? Why do you think that many people in Unity are drawn to her, despite her troubled past and notorious family history?

AH: I’ve always felt that adolescence is what makes the person. That time is the most intense, the most difficult, the most amazing time in a person’s life. In the beginning of the novel Stella is a child; by the end we can see the woman she will

become. I think we are drawn to her because she’s true to herself, she’s fearless in an emotional sense.

JMG: This story is told from many points of view. What made you decide to employ this method? Who do you feel is the most reliable narrator of the story? Is there one person who you feel forms the “heart” of The Probable Future?

AH: I’m not sure the writer chooses the story. I think it’s more that the story chooses the writer. I think the heart of The Probable Future comes in thirteen parts—all of the Sparrow women. Because the novel is the story of a town, there are many points of view, all of which flow together into one history.

JMG: It has “additions added on like frosting,” you write of Cake House. This statement also could be a description of the multilayered aspects of the novel. Did you envision Cake House as a physical embodiment of the novel’s shape while

you were writing? How does the house function as a symbol— both good and bad—to the Sparrow women and to the inhabitants of Unity?

AH: I think Cake House is symbolic of history and the way history is told. Story upon story, fact upon fact. The novel is an “anti-history,” if you will, taking history apart and examining the pieces that make up the town of Unity’s past.

JMG: A theme that threads through the book is the strong links of family—and how those bonds can be created by more than blood ties alone. Was there one relationship that you found the most compelling to create? Which was the most

frustrating to write?

AH: Because I began the book soon after my mother died, I was thinking about the complicated and amazing relationship between mother and daughter. It seemed to me that motherdaughter relationships are in constant motion—the way you feel about your mother at sixteen can be radically different from the way you feel about

her at sixty. I was always interested in the importance of grandmothers

and how they enrich one’s life. I was extremely close with my grandmother Lillie. She was the intermediary between me and my mother for many years, and I think girls often feel close to their grandmothers in a way they can’t in a mother-daughter relationship. There’s a freedom, an easing up, a friendship. Those of us who have or had such relationships with a grandmother know how lucky we

are.

JMG: In interviews, you’ve said that your own experiences with illness affected your rendering of Elinor and her battle with cancer. How did your own experience shape her character? How does Elinor learn to live with illness? In which ways does being sick open her mind and her heart, especially in her relationships with her family and with Brock Stewart?

AH: I feel that illness can define you. In illness one has the opportunity to try to spend the rest of one’s life as the person he or she wants to become. Sometimes, of course, this isn’t possible—pain, circumstance, violence can be forced upon someone. But sometimes it is possible to let your illness lead you to an understanding of the world you didn’t have, and couldn’t have, before your illness. I think my experiences with those I loved in times of dire illness and dying, although filled with sorrow and pain, have been the experiences that have taught me the most about what it means to be human. As for my own illness, as a breast cancer survivor I have met amazing women, those who survived and those who didn’t, who have enriched my life in ways I could not have imagined. I’m in awe of these women, including many of my readers whom I’ve met when on book tours. The character of Elinor revealed her illness to me during my writing of the book, and I think she saw her dying as a chance to right some of the wrongs in her life, to throw off pride and ego, and get to the heart of her life: those she loved. Her family and friends.

JMG: This book is steeped in history, especially that of Unity itself. Did the story of the town come first, or did the tales of the present-day characters? Along the same lines, how did you create the history of the thirteen generations of Sparrow

women, and that of Rebecca Sparrow in particular? Did you extensively research the era of the Salem witch trials in order to effectively convey her story?

AH: Stella Sparrow came to me first, in the here and now. But no character comes unencumbered by a personal history— just as no person does. The ghosts we carry with us, the ideas and experience of our ancestors, reverberate in the present. The theme of witches and witchcraft for me often has more to do with women’s history than with spells and magic. That women have drawn strength from controlling health—medical issues, birth issues—has also made them threatening. The same is true for “witches”—strong women in touch with the natural world. Women who can’t be controlled are often viewed as dangerous. I always find it amusing to see, even still, how many little girls dress up as witches on Halloween. There’s a pull to “our” history: brave, mysterious, powerful.

JMG: Each of the Sparrow women becomes embroiled in a romance of sorts that she wouldn’t normally have considered. How do the men who surround Elinor, Jenny, and Stella—including Will, Matt, Brock, Jimmy, and Hap—act as foils to

them? How do they complement them? How does the women’s choice of men affect their evolution as characters? Or do you think that they really have a choice in the matter?

AH: I thought of The Probable Future as my own version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—everyone is with the “wrong” person, who at first seemed “right.” The mystery of love, who you fall in love with, and why, is endlessly fascinating. I think behind all these pairings in The Probable Future is the sense that love is not only blind, it’s dumb! The choices you make can be based on what you“think” you should want, who you “think” you should be. That’s what some of the characters in the novel discover, thankfully, before it’s too late.

JMG: At the end of the novel, Jenny and Stella are grappling with death, yet they seem both truly alive and in tune with each other. Did you picture this hopeful conclusion from the outset? How do you envision their continued development,

both in relation to the outside world and to one another?

AH:When I begin a novel I don’t predict a conclusion. That isthe fun of fiction for me—the journey of discovering who the characters are and how their lives will turn out. They often surprise me and start to make their own decisions. That’s how I know the writing is going well. But I do think that by the end of the novel Stella and her mother, Jenny, are amazed to find that they can view each other as “people,” not just as extensions of one another as “mother” or “daughter” but as complex and fascinating women.

JMG: Is there a particular subject or topic that’s currently piquing your interest and imagination? What can readers look forward to reading next from you?

AH: I’ve just finished Blackbird House, interrelated fictions that all take place in the same house at the edge of Cape Cod from the late 1700s until the present. I have a little farm out on the Cape, which people said was haunted. In fact it stood empty and abandoned for several years, perhaps because of this. In my fiction, houses are often characters—they matter, they define the action and the people who live inside them. I realized that houses are indeed haunted—by their own pasts, by the lives that have been led in the same rooms you now live in, by the stories left behind. So I invented a history for my house. It was great fun for me to write and, in the end,

I love and appreciate my house even more than I did before.

From the Trade Paperback edition.


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a_co , April 27, 2007
The book I read The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman. This story has a lot of settings but there are two major settings. One is the Cake House that is designed like a wedding cake and this house is a house a lot of people avoid because of the past with the family. The Cake House is were mother and daughter enemies put them aside and wok together. The other major setting is the Tea house, the tea house becomes the third home Stella lives at and were she gets her first real kiss from a boy just like Stella?s dad, a bad kid. If she didn?t move to this house she might of gotten murdered so it is the teahouse that keeps her alive. This book also has a lot of important characters but the major characters are Elinor, Jenny, Will, and Stella. Elinor is Jenny?s mother who deserted her when her husband died; she left Jenny to care for herself, which may be the reason why her and Jenny don?t get along very well. Elinor has a special gift she got on her 13th birthday that made her and Jenny?s relationship even worse, she can tell when someone is lying. The next major character is Jenny, the daughter to Elinor and the mother to Stella. When Jenny was a senior in High School she ran away on her 13th birthday with Will her ex-husband now. Jenny and her daughter Stella?s relationship are like her grandmother and her mother?s relationship, disagreeing and disliking of each other. Jenny?s special gift she got on her 13th birthday was she can dream other people?s dreams and because of that gift she feel in love with Will. The next major character is Will who got charged with a murder. He went to the police station to warn them but turned out that his warning made him become a suspect to the murder. Will?s self-centerness made his daughter Stella?s safety unsafe. Also because his self-absorb ness he let Stella?s birthday present get stolen which is bad because now the robber can find Stella. The last major character is Stella who has one major quality that makes her different then all the other girls in the Sparrow family; she has blond hair instead of black hair, which is odd. On her 13th birthday it was a normal day with the fighting with her mother and complaining. When she was at school she got really bad headaches and head to got home but before she went home she looked at her teacher and saw a bone stuck in her throat. When she got home she called her dad and they went out to dinner. At the restaurant the saw a lady getting her throat slit and this is what started the whole murder case. If you haven?t figured it out Stella?s gift is she can see who people are going to die. As the story goes on she is forced to move to the Cake house for her safety from the reporters. She must start high school without any friends but there she meets two boys that could be her true love. One is Hap a nice smart boy who has know her family and family friends. The other is Jimmy a kid like her father, a troublemaker, but when she is around him she feels I nervous nauseas stomach felling she doesn?t feel when she is around Hap. Everything is happing so fast and the next thing is she is forced again to move into the Teahouse for her safety because her self-absorbed dad ruins her safeness. At the Teahouse she feels more at home with her friend Liza, thee owner of the Teahouse. When her mother moves back to the teahouse she meets Matt Wills brother and they fall in love. In this book I think Alice Hoffman is trying to accomplish writing a good book and a lesson of a lot of things can happen in your life good or bad but those problems are still easier to overcome with family even if you aren?t close. Alice Hoffman is known for her magical and fantasy but at the same time real tone to her writing. Her attitude is she uses real places that mean a lot to her but she doesn?t always use real events that happened. Her themes of her book are sometimes to understand because she writes in a magical fantasy way. I think that the theme of this book is appreciate what you have and what is given to you even if you don?t get the point of it or don?t like it because it can come in handy later on in your life. Some quotes from the book that are important to the book are ?You have to do something, Stella argued. You just have to.? This is important because of what Stella said made her father keep his promise and tell the cops about what is going to happen to that lady and then that make him a suspect of the murder. The other quote is ? No. No. Not the apartment. The little house. Someone stole it.? This is an important quote because when he tells them it was stolen he is admitting to doing something wrong and it puts Stella?s safety in jeopardy. This book I believe is mainly all success. What I really liked was the magical feel to the book and how real most of it can be without the special gifts. What I didn?t like about the book was how Alice left some questions of mine unanswered like did Matt and Jenny get married or did they ever find the murder. This book will have lasting value for the people that read it but maybe not forever. For instant like I will remember this book until I forget about it but I do think in like 5 year people will still read it. I think that Alice did accomplish her goals by writing a really good book and I did learn those lessons that she was trying to teach the reader. I recommend this book to anyone who likes Alice Hoffman and even to those who don?t read Alice Hoffman.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780385507608
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
06/01/2003
Publisher:
BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL
Pages:
336
Height:
9.48 in.
Width:
6.38 in.
Thickness:
1.13 in.
Number of Units:
1
Series Volume:
GTR-558
UPC Code:
2800385507600
Author:
Alice Hoffman
Subject:
Suspense fiction
Subject:
Clairvoyants
Subject:
Psychological
Subject:
Mothers and daughters
Subject:
Suspense
Subject:
New england
Subject:
Grandmothers
Subject:
Domestic fiction

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