Book Review by Robert McCool

I'm back with a classic. It’s been quite a few weeks since I've submitted a book review for the Icon. It's been quite a few weeks since I have had the motivation to read a new pop-fiction release.

So here I am again, but with a new distraction to take up my reading time. I have a shelter dog now, Duke. He is two years old and a delight to be around except for walking on a leash or seeing other people who are also out walking their dogs. Then he goes nuts, pulling hard on the leash and almost tripping me. Now he is in weekly obedience classes. He will get better I trust.

When I read for pure pleasure I read Alice Hoffman. And nothing brings me more joy than her “Magic” books.

Beginning with “Practical Magic” from 1995, then enhanced by “The Rules of Magic” in 2017, also “Magic Lessons” in 2020, and now finishing with “The Book of Magic” (Simon and Schuster, ISBN: 978-9821-5148-5) are masterworks of extraordinarily vivid magic-realism. These books are about books, family and love, in enchanting prose that opens your heart and mind to the possibilities that life has to offer.

This last book is as big a gift of life as the world has to show us. As much a graceful gift as the magic that life surrounds us. And therein is the thing that I believe in, the magic of love, the magic of nature.

This novel continues the saga of the Owens family women that began back in 1680 with a curse upon love that Maria Owens cast upon her descendants, which brings us to today when the Owens women attempt to cancel the ancient directive. The whole Owens cast is present in the beginning of the novel; Jet and Franny, who are the aunts, Gillian and Sally the two Owens girls that Jet and Franny took in as children, Kyle and Antonia who are Sally’s children, and Vincent Owens, Jet’s and Sally’s brother who has been lost to the family for decades.

The unwanted Owens curse is that whoever falls in love with an Owens comes to an unpleasant end and leaves the unfortunate Owens family member broken and bitter towards love.

Kyle has fallen in love at a tender age, and her love has been sent into a coma because of it. She takes it upon herself to track down the curse somewhere in the books (Grimores) that her family has left throughout a long history of witchcraft. Her chase takes her from Essex county, Massachusetts to England and the Essex county where Maria first cast her curse. She travels all alone, without her family’s knowing where she has gone, only to be “found” when  Sally and Gillian, Franny and her brother go to France and then to England using the Unnamed Art to track Kyle. In an effort to find and rid themselves of the curse they find a price has to be paid. A life for a life. Meanwhile Kyle’s love lingers in a hospital, unable to communicate and sightless to the world around him. But all his coma dreams contains images of Kyle.

Sally falls in love with an Englishman and after the curse is lifted she is able to truly feel love again. Life springs forth again after the long lonely winter of isolation.  Her daughter, Antonia, who was left behind in Massachusetts because of an impending birth, falls in love with a female lawyer who accepts the baby that Antonia is about to have. Kyle’s boyfriend recovers. Happiness abounds.

Alice Hoffman dedicates this book to “all the librarians who changed my life”. She knows how love of books can lead to a life full of magic. And this novel is full of books; it’s a love letter to the literary legacy of a time ancient and present, with an eye to the future. The story begins and ends in two libraries, one of them the same jailhouse that was built and contained Maria some 300 plus years ago. It’s now a space where you can stretch your mind out in order to understand what may wait for you in nature’s splendor. 

You may read the “Magic” books in any order, but please save this one for last as it contains all of the history of the Owens family. The good right-hand magic and the evil left-hand sorcery are in this tome.

Also read the ancient works still in print of Amelia Bassano to understand how magic worked throughout history.

I wish you all the love you can have in this life. And please let in all the magic that exists within the environment.