Practical Magic | 
| Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $3.70
You Save: $10.30 (74%)
New (38) Used (28) Collectible (2) from $3.43
Avg. Customer Rating:  178 reviews
Sales Rank: 88831
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0425190374
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780425190371
ASIN: 0425190374
Publication Date: August 5, 2003
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Amazon.com
For most adults, fairy tales are among the childish things we've put away. Alice Hoffman, however, feels differently. Practical Magic starts out as a tale of Gillian and Sally Owens, two orphaned girls whose aunts are witches--of a mild sort. For the past two centuries, Owens women have been blamed for all that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town, ever since their ancestor arrived, rich, independent, and soon accused of theft: "And then one day, a farmer winged a crow in his cornfield, a creature who'd been stealing from him shamelessly for months. When Maria Owens appeared the very next morning with her arm in a sling and her white hand wound up in a white bandage, people felt certain they knew the reason why." The aunts are daily ostracized by the same upstanding citizens who sneak to their house at night for magical love cures. To the sisters they are for the most part benevolently absent, though their bell, book, and candle routine makes life a torment for Gillian, beautiful and blonde and lazy, and Sally, who's all too responsible. But when one of the aunts' cures works too well, ending as a curse, the dangers of real love become all too clear. In Hoffman's world being bewitched, bothered, and bewildered is no mere metaphor--and neither is desire. The elbows of one enamored man pucker a linoleum counter, another walks around with singed cuffs. It's difficult to catch the author's power in brief quotes. She needs space and increment to build her exquisite variations of vision and reality, her matter-of-fact announcements of the preternatural. Practical Magic again and again makes one recall the thrill of hearing at bedtime, "Now will I a tale unfold..." --Kerry Fried
Product Description
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well; as children, the sisters were outsiders. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, but all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back-almost as if by magic...
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| Customer Reviews: Read 173 more reviews...
 Ummm.... July 18, 2008
When I first bought this item i was so excited to read it but then i realized that it wasn't what i expected, It has nothing to do with the movie (which is all the way better), maybe only the names......... it was boring and i can hardly see the magic on it.
practial magic June 13, 2008
I enjoyed watching the movie that was based on the book. I wanted to see what the differnce between the two.
 Good, but..... June 9, 2008
I liked the movie better. And this is something I never say. The book focuses less on Sally and more on her daughters and her sister,Gillian. The aunts, so colorful in the movie, have little to do until the very end of the book. Gary is not a very well developed character either. In the book, Sally's daughters are teenagers, going through all those things teenagers go through. I guess I just like the emphasis on Sally that the movie presented. There were many scenes in the movie which were not in the book. I really liked the scene where the women of the town overcame their fears and went to the aunts' house to help the Owens women get rid of Jimmy for good. This is not in the book. This is the first Alice Hoffman book I have read. I'm not sure I would invest in another one. I'll probably just borrow one from a friend or the library.
 How Far Would You Go For Love? May 27, 2008
When two young girls, Sally and Gillian, are orphaned it is Sally (who is wise beyond her years) that calls her aunts (white witches) and says that she and her sister are coming to live with them. The girls spend their childhood as targets for taunts and pranks of the other townschildren simply because no one understands them and associates them with the Owens women who have been rumored to be witches. Indeed they are witches, of the benevolent kind. The girls get a view of hypocrasy when every evening the women of the town come to the back door of the aunts' house and beg and plead for a spell to bring them true love. But as Aunt Bridget cautions, "Be careful what you wish for". In an effort to save herself from heartbreak young Sally vows never to fall in love; Gillian, however, "can't wait to fall in love".
As they grow both girls can't wait to be free from the aunts. Gillian runs off with a young man and works her way through three husbands. Sally finds herself deeply in love with a local man. They marry and have two lovely daughters but alas, Sally's husband meets with an untimely death. She moves herself and her daughters back to the aunts house and suffers a year-long bout of depression. She vows yet again to take keep her daughters from harm and herself from love. To that end she moves her small family to Long Island, a place where she feels they can be normal.
One night Gillian arrives at the Long Island house with the body of her dead boyfriend in the car. In an effort to cover up the deed (an overdose of a potent natural drug), Sally helps Gillian bury the body in her yard. That's when strange and potentially evil things start to happen. It takes a visit by the aunts along with some strong magic to dispell the strange happenings and bring true love to both Gillian and Sally.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Tightly woven story, lyrical prose, a bit of humor, lots of magic, and charismatic characters. Like other reviewers I wanted to finish this book in one sitting. It is definitely a page-turner. Hoffman has a definite winner in this book.
Also recommended: The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman
Celebration of life and love May 18, 2008
On the surface this is enjoyable enough-- a great, fun romance story full of all the the right classic ingredients. Then add a smidgen of mystery and a ghost. Finish it off with the all-powerful themes of love, sisterhood, and family, all written with Hoffman's dreamy prose.
Simply, this book is an addiction, gorgeous and well-plotted with fantastic characters and development.
If you're a hopeless romantic looking for a very real story with just a touch of magic, this is it.
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