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Beautiful,
Slow,
Interesting

2 reviews

Blackbird House
by Alice Hoffman

Published: 2005-07-07
Paperback : 240 pages
3 members reading this now
6 clubs reading this now
5 members have read this book
Recommended to book clubs by 2 of 2 members
From the great May storm in 1778 when John Hadley and his sons slip the British blockade off the coast of Massachusetts only to disappear at sea, the lives of the inhabitants of the wooden farmhouse on the cape, stranded amid fields of sweet peas and wild fruit vines and red pear trees, coil and ...
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Introduction

From the great May storm in 1778 when John Hadley and his sons slip the British blockade off the coast of Massachusetts only to disappear at sea, the lives of the inhabitants of the wooden farmhouse on the cape, stranded amid fields of sweet peas and wild fruit vines and red pear trees, coil and weave around each other, right up to the present. Young Isaac Hadley is more interested in his pet blackbird and the star charts in The Practical Navigator than in helping to build the house; and Violet, a century later, with her stained face and her own ghostly bird, reads the same book, and finds that it's easy enough to trick a learned man, though harder to catch one...Larkin Howard is ready to sell his soul to buy the farm, but meets a woman who hears the whales cry on the beach; while in another century the young Farrell boy sees more than he should on a snowy night...and the pond out back is still dark and unforgiving beneath its deceptively golden lilies. By the 1950s, the farmhouse is part of a community of steady men and wayward boys, and women who make jam but still feel the ghostly breath of Cora Hadley, with her green fingers. As a second century draws to a close and summer visitors from the cities take over the countryside, the house can barely hold all its ghosts, but the tragedies are not over...With a sense of place that is uncanny, and vividly real characters whose lives don't run smooth and whose stories loop together across space and time, this is a remarkable, haunting and accomplished work from a favourite novelist.

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Member Reviews

Overall rating:
 
 
  "The Blackbird House"by frances k. (see profile) 05/27/10

The girls had mixed reviews about the book.
Some did not bother to read it.
It was not the kind of book that you can really get into.
It is a book of short stories about a particular hous


... (read more)

 
  "Great Collection of Stories"by Kathleen C. (see profile) 11/04/09

This book is made up of a collection of stories of the residents of the same house over hundreds of years. It is interesting to see how the seemingly separate stories intertwine and how the past residents... (read more)

 
  "Fast, easy read"by Stephanie R. (see profile) 01/25/08

Unique idea, book is based on all the people who lived in one house. Enjoyable read.

 
  "Was a very sweet book."by Evelyn W. (see profile) 01/24/08

 
  "This book follows a house and all the different generations that live there over the course of 200 years."by Sheri K. (see profile) 01/24/08

I thought the book was a very quick read, it contained nice short chapters that made reading it in shorter blocks of time easier. This house is called blackbird house because there is a blackbird who... (read more)

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