When I read this, I was ready for another Alice Hoffman book. She takes the ordinary world, makes it completely awful, and then pulls all of the magic and wonder out of it, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. I have several Alice Hoffman books on my sagging Kindle bookshelves and not sure what made me pick this one next, but it was a perfect read for the moment that I was in.I wonder how much my response to a book has to do with the moment I pick it up in time and start reading it. Like if I gave a book 5 stars when I read it on December 21, 2012 would I have given it 5 stars if I'd read it on March 12, 2009? I don't know. One of life's little mysteries. But--and I am sure all avid readers agree--there's something cosmic about closing your eyes, picking your next read from your heart, and then...ah, yes, those 5 stars.Fortune's Daughter is a humble book. No dystopia end of the world serial killer vampire werewolf zombie apocalypse. Just a simple tale of unresolved grief and mothers who've lost daughters and daughters who've lost mothers and the men who love them in the best ways that they can. I loved the whole tea-reading-fortune-telling thing and Rae and Lila are interesting within their world's that lack--completely--celebrity and fame or anything very sparkly. Just living their lives. And finding their own magic within them.I will leave you with this line ... that upon reading it...made me smile and nod because, after all is said and done, life is a mysterious thing...Into this cake Lila had baked three gifts: a cool hand to test for fevers, a kiss with the power to chase away nightmares, a heart that can tell when it's time to let go.
I have long been an Alice Hoffman fan, but with such a prolific catalog from which to choose, I had always read primarily from her more recent work. I started with Practical Magic, then bounced to Blue Diary, which was the most recent at the time, and just kept reading. Fortune's Daughter, on the other hand, one of Hoffman's earlier works, lacks the pizazz of her more recent novels. The magic of everyday life is lost in the more traditional female characters of the early 80s. You want to shake one of the main characters and tell her to get her life in order, and wonder why a man has dictated so much of her youth. The other protagonist just needs to be dropped into therapy.However, this book is not a total washout. As ever, Hoffman's prose is for the most part, a delight. Her devotion to location, description of climate and flora, as well as simple, everyday fancy does neatly embroider a mostly mediocre novel.For those just beginning to read Hoffman, I'd start with something a bit more polished, such as The Probable Future, The Blackbird House, or, my favorite, Practical Magic.
What do You think about Fortune's Daughter (1999)?
I love Alice Hoffman's writing. I discovered her about a year ago and can't imagine why it took me a year to get back to her. When I started Fortune's Daughter, I wondered whether I would be able to get inside this story and care about the characters. The answer is yes! With Hoffman's writing style, it doesn't matter who the characters are or what the story line is. She treats all comers with dignity, gets inside their heads and describes what's going on in a way that is engaging, instructive and wonderful.
—Kit
Confession: Alice Hoffman is absolutely one of my favourite writers, that said this book drove me a bit crazy. The writing is always beautiful and lyrical, as it is here. However the two main protagonists aggravated me to no end. Rae's passiveness, and submission to her jerk of boyfriend Jessup aggravated me. That Jessup showed one or two moments of caring wasn't enough to redeem him.And then there is the other main character, Lila, who treats her jewel of husband badly, and obsesses over a baby daughter that she long ago adopted out. This is an especially touchy subject for me, as I am an adopted child, and Lila's delusion the adoptees are just biding their time with their adopted parents waiting for their biological parents to show up couldn't be further from the truth. Lila bristles when the adopted mother of her bio-child refers to Lila as her birth mother, and corrects it to 'real' mother. Well, sorry Lila, you are the birth mother and the real mother is the person who changed diapers, wiped noses, and took care of the little one. Are adoptees curious about birth parents, certainly, but they don't regard their adopted parents as temporary stand-ins.
—Cheryl
I don't know how I missed this Alice Hoffmann book, I thought I'd read them all, but I'm grateful to Book Bub for letting me read it for a couple bucks. I would've spent much more. I find Hoffman's books to be a cross between Anne Tylerlike characters, lost but lovable and so human that I can see myself in all of them, and Disneyland which does not hold a candle to the magic realism of an Alice Hoffmann novel. I only wish it had been a few hundred pages longer. Truly I do not understand the negative reviews for this book. People must be overthinking it or looking for a plot driven best seller with cutout characters, villains and heroes. Give me a Hoffmann book any day.
—Lin
