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Screenwriter Alice Hoffman has not had an easy life. Despite academic success - she first obtained a BA then won a Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, and obtained her MA - she has suffered severe losses in her personal life, with cancer wresting a severe toll from herself and her family. Her philanthropic work is legendary, extending beyond merely writing about diseases to donating profits from some of her work toward research and even help centres. Hoffman's bibliography includes Property Of, The Drowning Season, White Horses, Here On Earth, Practical Magic (which became a successful film, although the author could not envisage herself writing the screenplay) At Risk, Local Girls, Aquamarine, The River King, Blue Diary, Second Nature Turtle Moon, Seventh Heaven and others, both for children's reading pleasure as well as that of adults. Hoffman has been reported as having an intense love for fairy tales as well as sometimes being unable to draw a distinct line between reality and fantasy and her work reflects this. Those of her novels which I have read all utilise heavily supernatural themes which are mixed inextricably with more mundane, earthy topics. The Probable Future deals with three generations of the Sparrow women of the town of Unity, near Boston in Massachusetts. The Sparrows are always born in the uncertain month of March and all wake to an unsettling gift on the morning of their thirteenth birthday. The first woman to bear the name, Rebecca, could not feel pain. Of the current generations, Elinor, the grandmother, can invariably detect lies, except in those she loves, Jenny, her daughter, dreams the drams of others and Stella, Jenny's daughter and her parents' star, can see how some people will die. Rebecca, the first of the Sparrows, wandered out of the woods as a child, unable to speak English and possessed of only a few items which are handed down through her own family or the family of the Hathaways. Each of the items becomes significant in its own right through the ages. The gifts displayed by the Sparrow women never give them unalloyed happiness - Rebecca's own bringing about her murder for witchcraft. Now Stella is horrified to be able to see others doom but later discovers it is possible for the probable deaths to be avoided in some way. Before she learns this, however, she forces her father to try to prevent the murder of a girl she sees in a restaurant as Stella celebrates her thirteenth birthday with her father, ne'er-do-well Will Avery. Will's attempts cause him to become the chief suspect when the murder occurs but the publicity incites the real murderer to endeavour to find and kill Stella. This is a very beautiful book. The prose is poetic and evocative and the themes intriguing. The history of the Sparrow women and their impact on the town of Unity reflects women's struggles throughout the ages. The plot is intricate and many layered but romantic in tone in the best possible sense of that maligned word. The characters are sensitively drawn and likewise reflect women's problems - the problems, for example of women and their alienation from their own children - in a way that will resonate with most women. Don't look for a shallow, fast-paced narrative because that is not typical of this author's work. Instead, read her elegant writing and just relax with its beauty.
Reviewed by Denise Wels, August 2003
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