I have been, and always will be, most likely, an Alice Hoffman fan, from the moment I read "Practical Magic," and then moved on to "Local Girls," and just kept on going.

I adored this. I was on a very (very) long train ride today and it made the trip a truly rewarding experience. It's Hoffman's wonderfully rich descriptive thematic analogies that keep me going - when Hoffman descripes lillies, they're not lillies, they're pathetic fallacy in motion. The characters were beautiful, with the incredibly interwoven lives that she is known for creating in most of her works. And the use of present tense in her prose always grinds me to a sense of immediacy.

The rare first-person perspective from one character sometimes made me stumble (I tend to think of myself as having been an advanced kid, but this kid was light years ahead of the maturity I've encountered in most adults), the raw emotions of all the people involved was enough to pick me back up again. The only thing I did hiccough on was Ethan Ford himself - at the start one gets the impression that there will be a bit more to his particular story, but he doesn't really develop much - this is a tale about those he has affected, and how they ricochet off each other once his secret is out. I suppose I was lulled that his acts and past were going to be a moral conundrum, but I found I never gained even a bit of respect for him, nor any empathy for his plight. I merely wanted him to suffer.

Turns out I'm not so forgiving a person after all - but I don't think that detracted from the story in and of itself, which is so very much more about the rest of the characters than Ethan himself.