From Amazon.com
She doesn't write multivolume fantasy epics--what Nina Kiriki Hoffman
does write are haunting, character-driven short stories and novels. Matt (Matilda) Black, one of the two main characters in
A Red Heart of Memories, appeared in two previous Hoffman novellas:
Unmasking and
Home for Christmas. Matt is a wanderer with the power to speak to inanimate objects and watch other people's thoughts and dreams. She meets a wandering witch, Edmund Reynolds. "Mostly I just wander from one place to the next," said Edmund, "waiting to be needed for something, then trying to figure out what it is." Spirit tells Edmund he can help Matt, even if she doesn't want him hanging around, and Matt finds that she can help Edmund in return.
Hoffman's fantasy is very much in the spirit of Jonathan Carroll's The Marriage of Sticks and Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin. She's written for children and her books are suitable for young adult readers, but don't be fooled. They're sophisticated, well-crafted stories written in a distinctive, uncynical voice and filled with magical reality.
In 1994, Hoffman won the Bram Stoker First Novel Award for The Thread That Binds the Bones, and both The Silent Strength of Stones (1995) and A Red Heart of Memories were nominated for the World Fantasy Award. As of 2001, Hoffman had been nominated for Nebula Awards four times. --Nona Vero
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
It's a pleasure to see a new adult novel from Hoffman, even a lesser work like this one. Her debut novel, The Thread that Binds, won a Stoker for best first novel, but of late she has been writing for R.L. Stine's Ghosts of Fear Street series. This is an innocuous tale of three nomads who become friends and confront the problems in their past. Matt Black is not a witch, but she does have two special powers: "dream-eyes," which allow her to see others' mental landscapes, and the ability to communicate with inanimate objects. After years of wandering alone, Matt is surprised to meet another "special" person: Edmund, a witch who has been "blowing from here to there," using "spirit" to "help things fix themselves." The two quickly become companions and decide to retrace Edmund's life to find out why he is so alone. They visit his childhood friends, including Susan, who becomes part of the group. It turns out that the three all suffer from the effects of traumatic experiences: incest led to self-abusive "zoned" years for Matt; Susan has avoided friendship ever since she fled her controlling father; Edmund's self literally fragmented after he destroyed a man while protecting himself. Hoffman handles the interconnected solutions to the trio's problems with skill, as each solution leads subtly to greater understanding and compassion. At times, however, the characters' long talks skirt perilously close to pop psychology masquerading as wisdom: "He did the only thing he could, because that's what happened. The only place we can change anything is right now." Hoffman's "comfort magic" is even less successfulAEdmund's vague "spirit" and "gold" powers are ill defined, little more than ornaments in a quiet tale of three injured souls helping each other toward happiness. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
