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Title: The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Details: Copyright 2017, Simon and Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "FIND YOUR MAGIC
FROM BELOVED AUTHOR ALICE HOFFMAN COMES THE SPELLBINDING PREQUEL TO HER BESTSELLER PRACTICAL MAGIC
For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in the 1600s, when Maria Owens was accused of witchery for loving the wrong man.
Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair; shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts; and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.
From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But her children will never adhere to rules, and all three are desperate to uncover who they really are. when they visit their Aunt Isabelle in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they begin to understand the truth of who they are. The siblings discover there are family secrets to uncover, as well as secrets they have kept from each other. When they move to 44 Greenwich Avenue in New York City, each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.
The Rules of Magic is both a fairy tale and a very practical story of real life, as lyrical as it is matter-of-fact. If you belong to the Owens family, desire is everywhere, but so are the dangers of human entanglements. You cannot escape love even if you try, just as you cannot escape the pains of the human heart. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the revered, and sometimes feared, aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy. Thrilling and exquisite, real and fantastical, here is a story about the power of love. Told in dreamy prose, with unforgettable characters and a world that is rife with enchantment, The Rules of Magic reminds us that the only remedy for being human is to be true to yourself."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've enjoyed many of Alice Hoffman's previous books. She's a vastly prolific writer, but her best known work is 1995's Practical Magic which I greatly enjoyed and still enjoy, and which had an enormously popular 1998 film adaptation that played fast and loose with the book (and thus I avoided).
I'd heard she'd written more books in that universe and was intrigued!
How I Liked It: What's the point of a prequel? Someone asked me that once. A sequel continues the story, but what exactly is a prequel supposed to do? Although I like prequels, I had to think about it. A prequel is another story in the same universe, and it often tells us how things got the way they did in the original story. The best prequels don't just give us another look into a universe we enjoy, they help us enjoy the original story even more and give it added depth. So how does The Rules of Magic stack up to Practical Magic?
Firstly, if you're unfamiliar with Practical Magic, it goes like this. Two young sisters (Sally and Gillian) were orphaned after their parents were killed. They're taken in and raised by their eccentric aunts who are generally ostracized by the whole (small Massachusetts) town, as it's always been with Owens women, dating back to their ancestor in the 1600s, Maria Owens, who was tried for witchcraft. It doesn't help that the two aunts perform magic cures for the town (in secret).
The two sisters don't want anything to do with their witchy family legacy, and in adulthood, go two separate ways. Gillian hops the country, never staying in a place too long, and Sally, who wants a more traditional life, settles in town with a nice young man and has two daughters before he is killed in an accident, which causes Sally to flee the town and her aunts and build a life with her daughters elsewhere. Circumstances bring both sisters and the aunts together, and they have a reckoning before it seems Sally and Gillian learn to both stop running from who they are, but also to better be themselves (rather than who they are in spite of their legacy).
The book was published in 1995 and it's generally assumed that that's when it takes place, although it's not terribly hard on period details and could probably fairly easily take place in the present, maybe. So it was kind of strange that this prequel is apparently on a surface level going so hard on the 1960s, from the description to the cover, which almost has you repeating scores of nostalgia '60s flashbacks from various TV shows and movies that usually all begin with a hook from a certain song. Also, if we're to take the '60s as cannon as when the Practical Magic aunts were young, that doesn't fit the 1995 timeline at all. But hey, I've loved book series with a seemingly purposely screwy timeline. So with that in mind (keeping a suspension of disbelief), I gave it a read.
The story begins in 1959, with three young teenagers and their mother who is doing everything in her power to save them from their witchy heritage. She is horrified when her oldest daughter receives an invite to the Owens family home (that has been in their family since their ancestor Maria) by their aunt Isabelle, who does embrace the witchy legacy and perform magic cures for the town (in secret). So the eldest daughter Franny goes with her two younger siblings as her chaperones for a summer. Under the lax supervision (and witchy encouragement) of their aunt Isabelle, the teens embrace their heritage, and also meet up with a kooky distant cousin who'll later play an important role.
After falling in love with the wrong man, their ancestor Maria has cursed any man that dares love an Owens woman (although presumably it's gender-neutral) and so they have been warned against falling in love. This does not stop them from thinking about potential relationships and when they finally head back to their New York City home, the younger sister (Jet) is in love with the sweet, thoughtful son of a conservative preacher who is utterly horrified to learn about their relationship and does everything he can to stop it.
Tragedy strikes and the three children must reconsider their lives. They fully embrace their witchy heritage and start performing cures for money in New York City. When they hear their elderly aunt is ailing, they go to be with her and the sisters consider the house.
Vietnam breaks out and with it comes conflict, tragedy, and rebirth. The two sisters are left alone to consider their lives and take up in their aunt's house, in the family legacy. People come and go out of their lives until they're left just the two of them.
Just the two of them, that is, right up until the day they receive a phone call that brings their two nieces to live with them, and despite the rather prickly first impression, they realize they'll make a home, and we have everything in place for the events of Practical Magic.
For a book that has gone to great lengths to incorporate the 1960s on a surface level... this actually doesn't have much to do with the 1960s? The references seem almost forced and an afterthought. A mention of Kennedy, a character is minorly effected by the Stonewall Uprising (he was literally just passing by), and Vietnam plays a plot point. But the promised zeitgeist of the 1960s ("everything changes") is relatively non-existent. Given that Practical Magic was not heavy on era, it's somewhat strange, particularly when, again, you figure that the events of Practical Magic would not take place in 1995, nor even in this book's present (2017). Given Gillian and Sally's ages in Practical Magic (when the book reaches its most critical action and ends, they are 36 and 37) for this to be cannon, Practical Magic technically hasn't occurred yet. But again! I'm fine with a slightly screwy timeline, it's just strange that this book goes hard on an era (and then not really do a whole lot with the 1960s) when its source material did not.
Another difference is a matter of time. In the years since Practical Magic was published, actual Witches (note capital W) and Pagans have come a long, long way in the public consciousness due to the hard work of activists and educators and the rise of the Internet. Witches have less to fear that they might lose custody of their children or get fired from a job, most cities have Pagan Pride days, and our sacred symbols are better known, (we can now put one of our sacred symbols on our military dead) and the first headstone to be given the pentacle was attended by a President (George W Bush) who in the past had made disparaging remarks about Paganism and Witchcraft.
So what does all that mean for fictional, fantasy witches and witchcraft (note lowercase w) like the type practiced in Practical Magic? I've seen authors go a number of ways in recent decades about this, but generally they've done what Hoffman does here and make the fantasy stuff look more like the real thing. After all, most people have known at least one person in their lifetime, at some point in their lifetime, "into that sort of thing", even if it's unlikely they know anything really about it.
So Hoffman name-drops several of our festivals and even mentions the Rule of Three, even though most of her magic and mythology is fictional and largely of her own creation.
Which is fine! I don't necessarily need them to be real Witches. The mythological figure of the witch has a rich literary history. Frankly, I'd prefer people to keep the fantasy stuff separate from the reality. But it's interesting given that in the 1960s and the Age of Aquarius concept as a whole, there was an increased awareness of the occult, including Witches and it would've been interesting from that angle. On what could work with either witches (fantasy) or Witches (actual) would've been an exploration of their otherness and how the Zeitgeist proclaimed to bring power to the oppressed and what that would've meant for the Owens family, historically shunned as they were.
While one character does, in a very, very surface way touch upon the Queer rights struggles of the era, he could easily be fit into any era (for a time in the 1990s, Queer rights groups went hard on BEFORE Stonewall, since too many had started to believe that Queer resistance somehow hadn't existed before it, despite the many living activists). While Vietnam as I said is a plotpoint, with a couple tweaks, Korea or even World War II could've been substituted.
We're in a bit of a bind also given that for two of these characters, we know how they ultimately end up. They end up as single, eccentric aunts living together in their family home and performing cures for the town (in secret), who look after their young nieces. Of course, we want to know their stories before they got that way, but it seems there's quite a bit of hurrying, particularly towards the end, to set up everything in place for Practical Magic, including some dangling loose ends.
It's not that this isn't a compelling story and there isn't plenty of genuine heart. The Owens curse is both a frustrating and fascinating restriction, since of course there's going to be ways around it and it's just a matter of what. There's also honest character growth and even several quite heartfelt redemption arcs.
While it takes some time to find its footing and it's a bit rushed at the end, it's also full of mostly complex characters, even the "villains" and part of why you notice some loose ends is because you wanted a more satisfactory resolution for even the more minor characters, since you care about them. The book is also overflowing with some not-so-often talked about bits of New York City history that flow with and enrich the story and make the New York City in the book feel far more like New York City rather than the Epcot Center caricature it can so often become in fiction.
What's the point of a prequel and did this do the job? I don't think this changes much (for me, anyway) about Practical Magic and the timeline thing (even accepting a screwy timeline) is just too distracting for it to work for me with the original story. Some stories about the aunts alluded to in Practical Magic in some ways are better left as illusions and didn't really need to be fleshed out stories. The most crucial and critical action of the aunts' lives pre-child-raising isn't mentioned in Practical Magic. The biggest strengths of this book and where I think it finds its strongest footing is ironically when it's not trying to tie into the source storyline. I get why prequels and sequels happen when perhaps the author would rather write a stand-alone story. They're good business since you have a built-in audience. But this book feels like it would've benefited if freed more from the confines of the original story. Still, it's a compelling, worthwhile read and that's more than you can ask of a lot of long-awaited follow-ups.
Notable:
"Hey, Levi. Slow down."
Levi threw him a puzzled look. "I don't know you."
"Yeah, well I know you. Slow the fuck down."
"I have to get to work." Levi had slowed his pace. (pg 100)
Here's one of the problems with going so hard on setting a story in an era still in living memory and of which we have so much documentation (TV shows, movies, books, magazines, written accounts of the period): we know (fairly well) how people spoke then and have some idea of what was and what wasn't acceptable socially.
When you're setting this in the early 1960s (when this exchanges takes place), it kind of takes you out of the story when a sheltered teenage boy from a small town with a deeply religious reverend for a father hears the word "fuck" on the street from a stranger and isn't shocked at all.
"Good luck fighting the power," he'd say to the girls as he took off.
"Mother is not the power," Franny would say. (pg 95)
Same goes for hearing "fight the power" in the early 1960s from a non-activist, tossed off like a catch phrase, when it wouldn't even reach mass awareness until possibly the late 1960s at the earliest.
I don't have a problem with anachronistic speech, but when you're selling an era, especially an era still in living memory, take time to double-check your dialog, lest you toss the reader out of the spell you're casting (sorry, couldn't resist).
Final Grade: B
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