Illumination Night, Alice Hoffman
Illumination Night, Alice Hoffman
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Illumination Night

Author: Alice Hoffman

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Unabridged: 7 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/01/2014

Synopsis

Beginning on the night of the Grand Illumination, a festival of lanterns held each summer on Martha’s Vineyard, this novel is a modern chronicle of a marriage and a bittersweet exploration of an extraordinary passion. Illumination Night follows the lives of a young blond giant who is as beautiful as he is frightening; an old woman at the end of her life whose last mission is to save her granddaughter’s soul; a family torn apart by a wife’s fears and a husband’s unrealized desires; and the high school girl who comes to Martha’s Vineyard against her will, who steals husbands and cars, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption. Both riveting and reflective, this is a story that brings to light the talent that has made Alice Hoffman an acclaimed bestselling author.

About Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including the Practical Magic series and the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, among others. Eight of her novels have made the New York Times bestsellers list.

About Suzanne Toren

Suzanne Toren, award-winning narrator, has over thirty years of experience in narration. She was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. She has won the American Foundation for the Blind’s Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year, AudioFile magazine named her the 2009 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture, and she is the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards. She performs on and off Broadway and in regional theaters and has appeared on Law & Order and in various soap operas.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Always on January 16, 2020

Vonny and Andre live in Martha's vineyard with their son Simon and live next door to an old women whose granddaughter ends up moving in. The story just follows them around for two years. There was really no story line or plot here and the characters felt one dimensional. I enjoyed the writing and I......more

Goodreads review by Maria on August 03, 2015

Alice Hoffman’s books are not the kind you read and soon forget. Instead, they haunt you for years after you finish them, reminding you to search for light in darkness. They don’t impose their presence, though. They seem to come to us as a memory exactly when we need them to, almost as if they were......more

Goodreads review by Patricia on September 26, 2019

ILLUMINATION NIGHT is so beautifully written it almost feels like a fairy tale. I don't remember a book by Alice Hoffman which I did not love. I highly recommend giving this wonderful book a try!......more

Goodreads review by Stephanie on March 27, 2009

one of my favorite alice hoffman books, aside from "the river king". her old stuff is soooooooo much better than the new. so. much. better. anyhow, it takes place on the vineyard, which was excellent, becuase i could picture everything in my brain. also, her imagery and prose is aMAZing; it's like one......more

Goodreads review by Melodie on April 17, 2017

The lives of the ordinary year round resident's of Martha's Vineyard are the focus of this story. An elderly woman struggling to cope with the true twilight of her life. A rebellious teenage girl unwillingly designated to be her grandmother's helper. And a young couple and their young son, all with......more

Quotes

“By engaging her readers’ empathy so adroitly, Hoffman draws them into exposing themselves to the kind of pain—the pain of commitment—that haunts her story.” People

“Alice Hoffman…has enough power of empathy to make her characters matter to us. Daringly mixing comedy with tragedy, and the quotidian with the fabulous, she has created a narrative that somehow makes myth out of the sticky complexities of contemporary marriage…Ms. Hoffman writes so simply about human passions that her characters are branded onto one’s memory. At their most passionate they hurl themselves down staircases, out of windows, in front of speeding cars. One awakens from the dream of this novel with a memory of trying to catch them. In the light of the story’s afterglow, one keeps on trying to catch them.” New York Times

“There is a cumulative power to Illumination Night that is wondrous.” Chicago Tribune

“Hoffman hits bulls-eyes on the incomprehension between the young and the old, of the magic and pain of ordinary life. She is erotic and romantic…funny…clever and humane.” Times (London)

“Explorations of the tangled strands of parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment are made achingly vivid by Hoffman’s ability to ground them in the finely etched details of her characters’ daily lives.” Newsday (Long Island, NY)

“With an eye for household details and respect for daily events, Hoffman unleashes the mythic forcefulness of ordinary life in this polished story of love and loneliness set on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.” Publishers Weekly

Awards

  • New York Times Notable Book
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