Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

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I should start with the fact that I read The Rules of Magic before I started Practical Magic. In which, The Rules of Magic is a prequal to the ladder. I also think that reading them in that order helped me stay into Practical Magic as the pace of it is a bit slow. I was happy to trade climax and/or big twists for Hoffman's many epigrams and bits of wisdom. Both books are more of slow burners but this review is about the original, Practical Magic.

Sally and Gillian begin as child orphans that are living with their quirky aunts. Their aunts are well known and not well liked in their small Massachusetts town. However, women know to call on the aunts when they're in need of small tinctures to mend a broken heart, help become pregnant or even make someone unobtainable love them. 

Gillian, young and rebellious, leaves home and becomes nomadic across the country and vows to never cross the Mississippi river again. She ventures both men and cities, never in the same place with the same person for long. 

Sally however, falls in love, marries, takes over the aunts attic and has two daughters before her husband suddenly dies. Sally soon moves her family out of the aunts home and into a quiet neighborhood where her daughters can grow up outside of the aunts' shadow and she outside of her husband's.

Gillian shows up at Sally's one full mooned night with her husband's dead body in her car, believing she has killed him by accident. Through burying the body and creating a cover up, the sisters revive their relationship not just with each other but with their aunts as well.

Practical Magic is a book about sisterhood through multiple generations. Having my own sister, I see the ebb and flow of their relationships reflect in my own. We often think we know what's best for each other, forcefully stating so. Eventually letting go and letting things be, and ultimately realizing that we also needed what we were being given, not just what we were giving.

Favorite Quotes:

"A halo around the moon is always a sign of disruption. Either a change in the weather, a fever to come or a streak of bad fortune that wont go away. But when it's a double ring, all tangled and snarled like an agitated rainbow or a love affair gone wrong, anything can happen."

"In her opinion, everything goes wrong if you give it enough time. Close your eyes, count to three and chances are, you'll have some sort of disaster creeping up on you."

"Children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women who are sisters will say words that are so cruel to each other that each syllable will take on the form of a snake. Although such a snake often circles in on itself to eat it's own tail once the words are said aloud."

“There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.”

Genre:

Women's Fiction, Magical Realism, Romance