From the great May storm in 1778 when John Hadley and his sons slip the British blockade off the coast of Massachusetts only to disappear at sea, the lives of the inhabitants of the wooden farmhouse on the cape, stranded amid fields of sweet peas and wild fruit vines and red pear trees, coil and weave around each other, right up to the present. Young Isaac Hadley is more interested in his pet blackbird and the star charts in The Practical Navigator than in helping to build the house; and Violet, a century later, with her stained face and her own ghostly bird, reads the same book, and finds that it's easy enough to trick a learned man, though harder to catch one- Larkin Howard is ready to sell his soul to buy the farm, but meets a woman who hears the whales cry on the beach; while in another century the young Farrell boy sees more than he should on a snowy night- and the pond out back is still dark and unforgiving beneath its deceptively golden lilies. By the 1950s, the farmhouse is part of a community of steady men and wayward boys, and women who make jam but still feel the ghostly breath of Cora Hadley, with her green fingers.
As a second century draws to a close and summer visitors from the cities take over the countryside, the house can barely hold all its ghosts, but the tragedies are not over...
Blackbird House is a collection of twelve short stories, all taking place in or around an old farm house at Cape Cod. The stories are barely connected, except for some recurring characters.
Alice Hoffman has been on my TBR for a while, and I found an extremely cheap copy of Blackbird House at a sale. I'm not sure this is the best book to start with of hers, and whether Blackbird House is representative of her other books. Although Ms Hoffman's imagination is great, the stories themselves left me rather cold.
The red line throughout them is time and the place. The first story takes place about two hundred years ago (if I remember correctly) and the last one present day. There doesn't seem to be a recurring theme except a broad notion of "love".
There were a few stories that I enjoyed, but plenty more that I just didn't understand. The twist or climax just completely went past me, and when the chapter ended I was left leafing back trying to see what I had missed. The stories are much tell, very little show, and just don't seem meaty enough for me. This is a common theme for me with short stories, and the ones in Blackbird House didn't seem to be any different. It was okay and entertaining for the two hours it took me to finish, but I don't think I'll ever open the book again.
