As I write this, I'm in a reading slump. Again. The other books in my "currently reading" list are boring the ever-loving crap out of me.Recently, our village library had their annual book sale and I picked this up in hardback for two bucks. Why? Because, even at her worst, Alice Hoffman is eminently readable.This isn't her worst. Neither is it her best. But it is a lovely story. And I powered through it in just a few days.Robin is a soon-to-be divorced mom and a small business owner. Her marriage is in shambles after she caught her husband, Roy, doing the nasty with one of his many girlfriends in parked car. Her landscaping business is struggling; she thinks, because she has developed a brown thumb.One day, while visiting her brother Stuart, a psychiatrist at at a local hospital, she sees a young man sitting on a bench in a lonely hallway. He is in handcuffs, but something about him touches her heart. Okay. Let's be honest. Most of that something is his looks. Though the narrative doesn't give a detailed description of Stephen, the young man, he's obviously drop dead gorgeous.Anyway, lured in by his beauty, she rescues him and takes him home. Without permission.Stephen, it turns out, is the sole survivor of a plane crash. When, at the tender age of three-and-a-half, he finds himself stranded in the dark woods, he finds salvation in the form of big dog. Which turns out to be a wolf. Adopted by the pack, he runs wild until years later, he gets his foot caught in a bear trap, on an icy winter night. A group of trappers find him and bring him back to civilization, where he ends up in hospital. Uncommunicative and strange, he is dubbed the Wolfman. He is about to be transferred to a mental hospital when Robin finds him.Their "love story" is wrapped around the day-to-day activities of Robin's friends and neighbors on the little island where they live. Because this is an Alice Hoffman story, it's set in a northern clime, where the summers are lovely and short, and the winters brutal and unending. Eventually, people learn who Stephen is, which becomes a problem when pets and eventually a child, start getting dead, their throats slit open. Because if you're going to blame someone, especially if you're an insular islander, who better than the local Wolfman?Like most Hoffman stories, Second Nature is filled with lovely, lyrical ruminations on love, life and death.Its weakness, however, and the reason for the three-star rating, is the sheer implausibility of the main premise. While I'm a fantasy reader and programmed for a high level of suspension of disbelief, there's a limit to my credulity. Especially, when the story really isn't fantasy. Unlike some of Hoffman's other stories, this one's light on magical realism. Or maybe, the magical realism is the wobbly premise.I have a hard time believing that a three-year-old child would survive alone in the woods, even with a wolf pack as surrogate family. The premise gets shakier when Stephen moves into Robin's home and integrates almost effortlessly into modern life.In fact, by making his transition so easy, Hoffman robbed the story of a heaps of potential angst and suspense. This would have been so much stronger if she had written Stephen as more feral, more wolf-like, more dangerous; if the reader was shown his struggle with the divergent sides of his personality. Instead he decides, almost immediately, that he's in love with Robin and settles, ho-hum, into domestic bliss. Consequently, the story is absent any significant tension or emotional oomph.Easy to read; at times lovely; but not Hoffman's best.
This book was okay at best. The summary on the book jacket is really misleading; I expected a love story, akin to a modern version of Beauty and the Beast, in which Robin sees past the Wolfman's intimidating exterior to the humanity inside and is able to connect with him in a way his doctors couldn't. Thus, the novel would focus on their relationship and her ability to rehabilitate him when every doctor had failed. In the end, of course, he would have to choose between falling in love with a woman and returning to the wilderness. This sort of happens...within the first two chapters. Yes, by chapter 3 (less than a month), Stephen- the Wolfman- can already pass as an average human male who wasn't raised in the wilderness by wolves. Even though Hoffman writes these fantastical novels, I have never heard of any case of a child raised in the wild rehabilitating that fully that quickly, if at all, so the fact she claims Stephen could within a month is so unrealistic that it was actually frustrating. I rolled my eyes each of the maybe four times he and Robin worked together on teaching him to read. Stephen lived with wolves from age 3 until at least his twenties (we never learn his actual age), yet somehow maintains his human experiences enough to overrule his learned animalistic habits within one month with a random woman. He's talking, writing, reading, and the only things he doesn't know are basic table manners. It was as if Hoffman had this idea that love can save even the most hopeless cases, but didn't want to do the proper research and take the time and effort to explore the necessary psychological rehabilitation.Aside from that, the story was also thrown in a thousand different directions. One would think that the two main characters would be Stephen and Robin, the Wolfman and the woman who saved him, but every character is given the exact same amount of development as the rest. Even worse, they're ALL one-dimensional; the only qualities each character shows are the ones that pertain to the story (e.g. lascivious ex-husband, angry old man, lovesick teenage boy (who also has a drinking problem for two entire nights- oh, my!), rebellious teenage girl, angelic young sister, etc.). Because each character was given the same attention, they each had their own side story, some of which sort of came together at the end, but a few of which were mentioned, explored briefly, then dropped completely (e.g. whatever happened to Stuart, the Wolfman's doctor, who decided to become a beach hermit, and his ex-wife...?). We learn one moment of history for each character, one that coincidentally fits into the needed plot details for that time, then nothing else.Second Nature was easy to read, interesting enough to complete, but every detail was predictable because each character had zero complexity. Not once did I question how a character would react because it was so obvious and resolved within three lines, anyway, so even the most tense scenes had zero suspense. Even so, I can't say I disliked the novel. There were moments of the imagery I hoped for in Hoffman's writing and the ultimate climax did hit me in the heart somewhat, but otherwise... could Hoffman have made this anymore cliche? I'm really hoping she threw away her checklist for a Successful Fiction Novel and put more effort and imagination into her later novels because I do really like her writing style when it comes to imagery (Green Angel is still one of my favorite books from my childhood!).
What do You think about Second Nature (1998)?
This is one of those finish-in-one-sitting books. The characters are so compellingly alive that even when they say or do the most illogical, improbable things, you're right there with them. The setting is as compelling as the characters--I want to give up everything to go live in a fisherman's shack on the beach like Stuart, I want to sneak out to meet Connor on a cold winter's night, I want to run like Stephen around the circumference of the island, I want to pause, like Robin, with my hand on a doorknob, wondering… Few authors can pull off the simultaneous breathless anticipation and slightly melancholy inevitability of the story. Her later books got a little darker, but this is the Hoffman I adore.
—Melliott
A young man living among wolves is trapped and hospitalized. Traumatized and terrified he does not speak and because of his extremely disheveled look and his instinctual behavior, he is dubbed The Wolf Man. On the day of his transfer to a mental institution,recently divorced Robin on impulse, manages to spirit him away to her home. So begins a twisted tale of love and redemption, and what is possible when traditional beliefs and habits, or second nature,can be suspended.The beauty of Alice Hoffman's work is she writes in such a way that logical belief can be suspended. Magical realism, or whatever you choose to call it is her bread and butter. Second Nature is no different. I enjoyed the many characters, especially Stephen, the so called wolf man. Robin got on my nerves quite a bit, but I could see her reasoning most of the time. First love, that deep powerful all encompassing relationship also is part of the story. I enjoyed that as well. Why just 3 stars? A reader unfamiliar with Hoffman's work might have difficulty suspending belief on this story. And there was an element of events left dangling that rankled me. But hey, this was not my story to tell. I am glad she told it.
—Melodie
The charm of Alice Hoffman's writing is the almost fairy tale like quality of her narrative. She paints beautiful and mysterious landscapes and populates them with flawed, restless, moody people struggling to figure out what the heck they are doing with their lives. Sort of like real-life. What makes these stories so mesmerizing is that she so often creates a situation that makes you say, "come on, that's so unrealistic." But you sort of hope it isn't.In Second Nature there is a woman, Robin, who is trying to divorce her cop husband, Roy, while trying to cope with a hormone-driven teenage son, Connor, and earn a living. Roy's cop buddies are giving her a hard time by giving her tickets every chance they get and Connor is having a secret love affair with the girl-next-door, Lydia. Everything about this scenario is believable and all too real. And then we meet Stephen, the Wolf Man, who was the sole survivor of an airplane crash when he was a child and was raised in the woods by wolves. That could never happen. Except we really want it to. The story unfolds in a dreamy, lush story filled with passion and frustration. Connor is blazing with fire for Lydia but is furious when he discovers that his mother feels the same way about Stephen. Then one night Lydia's younger sister Jenny is found murdered. She is wearing Lydia's coat and suspicions begin to grow.I loved this book. I especially loved the way Hoffman created Stephen's world and his thought process. Just brilliant. It's the sort of story you know can't happen -- but you still wish it would.
—Kathleen Valentine
