Title: The Probable Future Author: Alice Hoffman
Published: February 24, 2003
Genre(s): Magical Realism
Page Count: 352
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Women of the Sparrow family have unusual gifts. Elinor can detect falsehood. Her daughter, Jenny, can see people's dreams when they sleep. Granddaughter Stella has a mental window on the future—a future that she might not want to see.
In The Probable Future this vivid and intriguing cast of characters confronts a haunting past—and a very current murder—against the evocative backdrop of small-town New England. By turns chilling and enchanting, The Probable Future chronicles the Sparrows’s legacy as young Stella struggles to cope with her disturbing clairvoyance. Her potential to ruin or redeem becomes unbearable when one of her premonitions puts her father in jail, wrongly accused of homicide. Yet this ordeal also leads Stella to the grandmother she was forbidden to meet and to a historic family home full of talismans from her ancestors.
Goodreads recommended that I read The Probable Future based on my interest in Sarah Addison Allen’s books, and I think that (as usual), Goodreads was right on. Hoffman’s novel is a tale of the bonds between women and the uncertainty of the future, colored with a touch of small town magic.
In elegant, exacting prose, Alice Hoffman introduces readers to the Sparrow family. Thirteen generations of Massachusetts-born women who all have some strange gift that emerges on their thirteenth birthday. The Probable Future’s specific focus is the troubled relationships between the three newest generations: Elinor, her daughter Jenny, and her granddaughter Stella. Under a set of unlikely circumstances, all three are together in their ancestral town, and something’s got to give.
I was very impressed with the way the author dealt with the mother-daughter and grandmother-granddaughter relationships in this book. Even though there’s more to the plot, these dynamics between women are at the core of this book. In The Probable Future, Hoffman really grasps the complexities of Elinor and Jenny and Stella’s dealings with one another, and she paints a very real picture of family life.
The protagonists’ relationships are a great anchor for the rest of the fairytale-like goings-on. Stella’s newly-discovered “gift” is to know how people will die, and it gets her into trouble. And while she deals with preteen angst (made worse by her grim reaping ability), her mother and grandmother are hashing out decade’s old arguments and tensions, which partly have to do with their own gifts.
Beyond that, Hoffman goes so far as to add another layer, intermixing the story of the original Sparrow, Rebecca. Rebecca was a foundling child who was eventually tried as a witch in the late 1600s, and she’s become something of a town legend. For Stella, finding more about Rebecca’s life becomes an obsession as she tries to connect with the roots her mother had cut her off from for thirteen years.
And that’s not all The Probable Future has in store for its readers. Beyond the family dramas that I’ve already mentioned, there’s also a murderer on the loose, as well as a love interest for all three Sparrow ladies. Hoffman has added layer upon layer to this story, until it’s become as nuanced and multifaceted as real life (with a bonus taste of magic, of course).
The Probable Future is a compelling story about the supernatural and the relationship between mothers and daughters. Alice Hoffman’s excellently crafted prose and intriguing imagination combine to create a wonderful, fairytale-like small town atmosphere. The end result is a charming book that captivates and inspires.
