The Story Sisters

March 30, 2009
Lyrical but atypically monotonous, bestseller Hoffman's (The Third Angel
) latest follows the dark family saga of Elv, Megan and Claire Story, sisters plagued by uncommon sadness. As a child, Elv spun fairy tales of a magical world for her sisters, but a period of savage sexual abuse—information about which slowly leaks out—sends her spiraling into years of drug addiction and painful self-abuse. Elv's story is unrelentingly grim, and without Hoffman's characteristic magic realism, its simple downward spiral becomes exhausting. Tragedy after tragedy befalls the family—Elv's commitment to a juvenile rehab facility, a deadly accident, a fatal illness and betrayal after betrayal. When the last third of the book turns to focus on Claire, who has been so damaged by the family crises that she refuses to speak, the slight glimmers of hope and goodness are too little, too late. Hoffman's prose is as lovely as ever: the imagined and real worlds of the Story sisters are rich and clear, but Elv's troubles and the Story family's nonstop catastrophes are wearying.

April 15, 2009
An act of child abuse has lasting consequences in Hoffman's painfully moving novel (The Third Angel, 2008, etc.).

The summer Claire Story was 8 and her sister Elv was 11, a man tried to abduct Claire in his car; Elv jumped in, told Claire to jump out, and it was hours before she returned. They never told their mother Annie or middle sister Meg—their father walked out that same summer—and neither girl was ever the same. As the main narrative opens, when Elv is 15, she's becoming an out-of-control adolescent increasingly at odds with careful, rule-following Meg. Racked with guilt over the unknown horrors her sister endured in her place, Claire tries to be loyal, but as Elv's drug use and promiscuity escalate, she backs away. The desperate Annie finally takes Elv to a rehab facility, enlisting the reluctant support of her selfish ex-husband, who insists it's all her fault. At the facility, Elv meets Lorry, a thief and addict who introduces her to heroin, but who also really loves her. The chronology speeds up after Elv comes home and a dreadful accident seals her alienation from her family. Hoffman paints wrenching scenes of tentative efforts at reconciliation that just barely fail, as Elv becomes pregnant and cleans up, but loses Lorry to his"fatal flaw." A kindly detective brings late-life happiness to Annie and metes out delayed justice to Elv's abuser, but the disasters keep coming. Two sisters grow into adulthood, dreadfully damaged by the losses they've endured and their punishing self-blame for the mistakes they made. Hoffman's habitual allusions to mysterious supernatural forces are very jarring in this context, as is the endless interpolation of memories from the terrible abduction; she could have trusted her readers to get the point with out constant prodding. A radiant denouement shows love redeeming the surviving sisters, and there are beautiful moments throughout, but they don't entirely compensate for Hoffman's excesses of plot and tone.

A near-miss from this uneven but always compelling writer.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2009
Once upon a time on Long Island, there were three Story sisters: Elv, Meg, and Claire. Aged 12 to 15, they were all beautiful and well behaved, with long, dark hair and pale eyes. They lived in magical harmony, speaking a private, shared language. Their parents were divorced, and the sisters visited their grandparents in Paris every spring. But their mother, Annie, feels increasingly left out of her daughters' lives. Indeed, darkness is soon to fall. Elv's belief in a secret underworld spins out of control, and she begins using drugs and stealing. Sent away to reform school, she falls in love with a man who is a heroin addict. There are betrayals and accidents, Annie falls ill, and the Story family disintegrates before our eyes. This is one of Hoffman's darkest novels yet, and some of Hoffman's readers may find it "too" dark. But name recognition advises purchase of multiple copies for libraries, and hope for the family's healing keeps readers, heartbroken yet spellbound, turning the pages. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/1/09.]Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2009
A writer as virtuosic as Hoffman doesnt bestow the name Story on a family lightly. So, yes, this is a many-storied novel about storytellers, brimming with magic and despair, atonement and redemption. The Story sisters, Elv, Meg, and Claire, are dark-haired beauties clustered in the attic of their old Long Island house, while their lonely mother broods below. Their all-female household, a sly variation on Little Women, is under a grim fairy-tale spell, and not even sojourns with their fairy-godmother-like grandmother in Paris can protect them. As always in Hoffmans glimmering universe, nature is an awesome presence reflected in the mercurial human heart, and consequently, the Story girls are preternaturally sensitive to storms, ghosts, and plant and animal spirits. Meg is practical, while Elv and Claire share a tragic secret, and Elv channels her anguish into elaborate, demon-haunted tales of an imaginary parallel world until she discovers more effective means of self-punishment. The always dazzling Hoffman has outdone herself in this bewitching weave of psychologically astute fantasy and shattering realism, encompassing rape, drug addiction, disease, and fatal accidents. Her alluring characters are soulful, their suffering mythic, and though the sorrows are many and the body count high, this is an entrancing and romantic drama shot through with radiant beauty and belief in human resilience and transformation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)