Oprah's Book Club
Selection
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Product Details
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Product Description
From Amazon
Oprah Book Club® Selection, March 1998: Here on Earth is set in motion when March Murray and her teenage daughter travel from their California home to New England. Their stay is to be brief. Judith Dale, her childhood housekeeper-cum-foster mother, has died, and March must set things to right and get out of gloomy Jenkintown as quickly as possible. "Five days tops," she reassures her scientist husband. Instead, she is pulled back into the arms of Hollis, her first love--an avaricious, Heathcliff-like individual who radiates sulfur and cruelty. "She left and didn't come back, not even when he called her, and yet here she is, on this dark night; here and no place else." In this deep fable of loss and control, love and fear, Alice Hoffman allows us into her characters' cores and makes us wish their fortunes were happier. Here on Earth is filled with wisdom, what-ifs, and animals who seem, if not to know more than human beings, at least to know how to shy from danger.
From Library Journal
As this novel opens, March Murray Cooper returns to her hometown, ostensibly to bury the woman who raised her but needing to resolve the unfinished business of her youthful love for Hollis, from whom she has been separated for years. Hollis has now grown into a man embittered by loneliness. He has learned neither to forgive nor to forget, and March must discover whether he can ever learn to love. Hoffman (Practical Magic, LJ 12/94) takes great care here to examine the many facets of love and relationships, turning them like a prism to reflect on March and Hollis. Hoffman's evocative language and her lyrical descriptions of place contrast sharply with the emotional scars that her characters must uncover and bear. Her novel is a haunting tale of a woman lost in and to love; it will enthrall the reader from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
-?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
TONIGHT, THE HAY IN THE FIELDS IS already brittle with frost, especially to the west of Fox Hill, where the pastures shine like stars. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
TONIGHT, THE HAY IN THE FIELDS IS already brittle with frost, especially to the west of Fox Hill, where the pastures shine like stars. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
B-o-r-i-n-g!,
By
This review is from: Here on Earth (Paperback)
I came across this book at a garage sale, and because it said it was one of Oprah's Book Club selections, I couldnt wait to read it. Ugh. I struggled through, and thought it was the worst thing I've ever read. The whole concept was boring, the writing was boring, and I'd say...'dont bother'. I am one that has to finish something once started..so this was torture. I kept thinking that its going to get better, and the only halfway decent part was at the very end. I thought this story was most unbelievable. Dont waste your time and money!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman,
By
This review is from: Here on Earth (Paperback)
I found this book to be a great psychological thriller, sad but great. When March and her daughter Gwen take a trip to the mother's childhood home of near Boston, little do they know what's ahead of them. The man she once loved just isn't the same I'd recommend this book to one and all:)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Painful but strangely moving,
By
This review is from: Here on Earth (Paperback)
I picked up this book at a local charity store, having enjoyed Hoffman's style in other of her novels. I read it twice in about a week, and found its description of an abusive relationship painful, but reading Hoffman's prose is like swimming in the river. You step in, and are immediately caught up in its turbulent flow of emotion. I kept thinking, I know this story. I've read this before, haven't I -- but not in this form, not from this perspective. It's odd, all the characters live in this remote area with its dreadful weather, and everyone knows each other, and two characters from one family marry two characters from the other prominent family in the area, and the poor orphan from lowly background gets adopted but never loses his low self-esteem, and people KEEP DYING YOUNG. Seems so Victorian, I mused.It wasn't until I was reading a different book, where the characters were discussing Wuthering Heights, that I recognized it. The characters were commenting that Hareton was going to make it, because he used both his head and his heart -- and the penny dropped. Hareton is Hank. AHA! And Heathcliff is Hollis, of course... Here On Earth is what might have happened if Heathcliff had got his Cathy back, at least for a time. Did no one get this? NO ONE??!? I've read several reviews of this book, and so far I haven't read one that mentions it. It's hard for me to believe that book reviewers are so little versed in their classics that not one of them recognized this updating of the Bronte classic (with, admittedly, some twists). One reviewer calls Hollis "Heathcliff-like", but the whole setup is Wuthering Heights. This book is not a great casual read, but I found it interesting that a good story is still a good story, even disguised. It all depends on the treatment, of course. Shakespeare lifted other people's stories all the time, and made them definitively his. Hoffman's prose is surprisingly lovely, given the subject matter.
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