Skylight Confessions: A Novel

Product Description

Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love.

Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their difficult marriage leads them and their children to a house made of glass in the Connecticutcountryside, to the avenues ofManhattan, and to the blue waters of Long Island Sound. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. Ultimately, it falls to their grandson, Will, to solve the emotional puzzle of his family and of his own identity.

From Publishers Weekly

Winningham's narration is just right. Her pronunciation is clear but not exaggerated, and nicely combined with the rhythmic, conversational speed of a good storyteller. She has a rich voice with a good vocal range. This book is another of the wildly popular "ghost" romances that come under the rubric "woman's fiction," and another of Hoffman's dark fairy tales. Orphaned at 17, Arlie determines to love and marry the first man who comes down the street. This is John Moody, a "distant, quiet man" who ignores her and her children throughout their marriage, but is plagued by her ghost after her early death. Arlie's ghost is visible only to Moody and to the narrator, Meredith, who follows the ghost home to the glass house where Arlie lived out her miserable marriage and died. The book is loaded with telltale names and laborious symbols—ashes, dishes, stones, bones, birds, glass and all things red or white—but the characters are as human as fairy tale permits, and Hoffman's prose is lively and absorbing. This book will be a favorite of women's fiction and Hoffman fans.

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About the Author

Alice Hoffman is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 15 acclaimed novels beloved by teens and adults, from The Foretelling, Green Angel, and Aquamarine to The Ice Queen, Here on Earth (an Oprah Book Club selection), and Practical Magic, which was made into a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

From AudioFile

Mare Winningham's reading is level, her delivery almost factual, providing strong roots that ground us when Hoffman leaps into moments of magical realism in telling the story of Arlyn Singer. On the day of her father's funeral, 17-year-old Arlyn waits for her true love to show up. Enter the distant John Moody, an unlikely candidate. Winningham's even tones seem to record the characters' resignation--their adjustment to a bad marriage, Arlyn's conclusion of a love affair, and her acceptance of her own death. In later parts of the audio, Winningham's steady narration records the descent of Arlyn's lost son into drugs and despair, the pain of her daughter, and the sadness of Arlyn herself, who haunts John's life and home, looking for resolution. S.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine