Beautiful treatment of some familiar themes: "coming home" and "abusive relationships". March Murray returns to her childhood home when the woman who was her caretaker - nanny, housekeeper, cook - dies. Judith Dale took over when March's mother died when March was very young, and stayed in the family house after the Murray family had all left it, by permission. March is here in Jenkintown, on the east coast, with her teenage daughter Gwen, to attend the funeral and to attend to Judith's remaining possessions.March's husband Richard did not come along. He has many classes and field trips to manage. He did, however, grow up here too, and has reason to be concerned about Marsh's trip.When March was small, her father arrived one day with a boy a few years older than she, Hollis, who had apparently been scraping out a living on his own. He was in pretty bad shape and had little experience with a normal life. March's father simply announced that Hollis was one of the family now. Unfortunately, not everyone in the family was happy to include him. March's older brother Alan feels a great deal of resentment at this intruder and never fails to find ways to remind Hollis that he is not really a member of the family. March, on the other hand, becomes quite fond of Hollis.As she grows older, she becomes more than fond. There is a quality about Hollis that draws her irresistibly, and he is similarly drawn to her. Their relationship becomes so intense that March manages to miss a lot of the rest of her life. She spends her time either with Hollis or thinking about him. But it isn't all happy sailing. There comes a time when Hollis demands March's attention in a way that irritates her and she tells him to go away. He does. And he does not come back. Eventually March goes on with her life but she secretly carries around her love for Hollis and knows she can never love anyone else the same way.Now it is nineteen years since she has set foot in this town and she knows Hollis is here, living here, still. She tells herself she will not see him but others know better. Hollis himself waits, knowing she will come to him.By this time Hollis has become a rich man and owns half the town. He has been married once, but that wife died. He lives with Alan's son, whom he has "adopted" after Alan took to drink and failed to care for the boy. Hollis may be able to buy out anyone else in the town but he's not well liked, except by the women he lets in from time to time.What happens when March and Hollis finally meet? Where does it lead? The romance of the century turns out to be different "here on earth" than it was in fantasy.
A love story, but not of the kind of love you see on Hallmark cards or in romantic comedies. This is about love as obsession, bitter accommodation, incest, immolating abuse, love that's dark, cold, soul destroying. There is a sunny love story here, but it's between girl and horse, perhaps, in the end, the only kind that can last. There's a lot wrong with Alice Hoffman's book, partially redeemed by a suspenseful final third that delves with psychological perception into the deeply twisted motivation of the controlling, abusive personality. Among the plot devices that don't work are the setup, which is incomprehensible and never explained, and the ill-advised first cousin romance between two importnat characters, which quite makes sense. Nor, for that matter, does the self-immolating affair of the two principles, the unlikable Hollis and the even more unikable, because so blindly passive and masochistic, March. There's not a shred of redeemable humanity in either of these two, so reading about them before the suspense kicks in is close to torture; you simply want both of them to go away, because there's nothing about them you could conceivably care about. Minor characters, on the other hand, have some saving humanity, and March's daughter Gwen, who starts as the most stereotypical of teen punks, ends up as the wise, mature, savvy hero. That's kind of the way all of Here on Earth is: most of the characters are either heroes or shits, some both, changing without warning. Things happen with disconcerting abruptness, especially the novel's pivotal event with is of a good, caring father who, for no apparent reason, brings home without warning a Boston street urchin who will forever ruin a family that may be already on the skids. There's a lot of New England fall in this book (it's always fall in northwestern Massachusetts, apparently) with many different colored sunsets, snowscapes, and boggy marshes. Townsfolk appear to have come out of central casting in the era of Frank Capra. Up until midway, I hovered over whether go give this book a 1 or a 2, but the story kicks in when March starts living with, and being gradually destroyed by, Hollis, and the suspense of whether she and, more important, Gwen are going to get away gives the last third a real "can't put it down" kick. So despite either bad writing or overwriting, determinedly one-dimensional characters, and plot hooks that don't sound real, this retelling of Wuthering Heights pulls out a 3.
What do You think about Here On Earth (1999)?
Okay... can I just say... "Wow. Wow. Wow."Alice Hoffman really makes me happy. She's full of fanciful quirk -- not the harsh, dry quirk of carefully selected oddness, but a more delightful whimsy that seems to spring straight from the emotional side of nature.This book really won my heart, even though the ending was contrived and lacking in climax, which honestly, I'd half-expected since this book falls somewhere under the mainstream/literary spectrum. Okay, okay -- I saw her setting the climax up a mile away... but this kind of slap-bang happy ending really needs more set up than other, more logically likely endings. And besides the less-than-immaculate setup, she SKIPPED THE ACTUAL CLIMAX. For shame!So we all know that endings are the hardest part, and for a book this wonderful, okay, I can't help loving the book anyway, but GOSH DARN IT, you just don't skip such a critical juncture in the book, especially when you've been hopping in and out of that character's POV for the entirety of the novel. There's just no excuse for that. And even if she wanted to do it from another POV, at least show us the other character there *as it happens* instead of summarizing the event later! Arg.Oh, speaking of POV, I really loved the way that the narrative effortlessly hops in and out of the entire town's POVs, without losing the reader's comprehension or interest. Flawlessly done, and most engaging and enjoyable!Even with its faults, this was *such* a fun magical realism adventure. I think I'll buy it for my collection.
—Ellen
I'm a big fan of Alice Hoffman, especially when her books veer into the magical or the mythic, in books like Practical Magic or the Ice Queen. But even when her characters aren't blatantly magical, her stories have a mythic, and even allegorical quality, that I love. This is true of Here On Earth, which is the Bluebeardian story of a woman who comes back home and revisits the desperate love affair of her childhood.This book gives the first impression of being a romance, but it doesn't take long before the dark, haunted aspects of the characters and the story warn the reader that something isn't quite right. What started out as a tale of two lovers against the world begins to look more like a consuming and violent power struggle, or perhaps a dark fairy tale where the heroine falls asleep in the den of a monster and we're desperately hoping she'll wake up in time.Hoffman adds further drama and interest by dragging the main character's teenage daughter along for the ride. Her daughter's transformation from sulky teen to awakened young woman, and her ability to save herself from the destruction her mother seems to be heading toward, is one of the blessings of this book.
—Alex Wells
I hated this book when I started it, but it became hard for me to put down. It's a dark novel and I wasn't sympathetic to many of the characters. I'm glad I stuck with it, though. Even after finishing the book, I'm still thinking about the story and the characters. I didn't like the main character, March, (which always makes a book difficult to get through) but the story had a bunch of questions and I kept reading to get the answers. Some questions (for me at least) never were answered which is probably why I'm still thinking about the book...curiosity about what will become of the characters next and wondering about what happened in the past that made the characters the way they are today. I would have liked more background info, but having less specifics has been more thought provoking. I tend to read a lot of murder mysteries where everything is spelled out in the end and half the time I have the ending all figured out beforehand. This book was a refreshing change in that aspect. I never was quite sure how the author would end things.
—Nranger7
