Fortune's Daughter

This book is so beautiful that I cried from its emotional impact. The writing is exquisite, so rare and so precious. The novel captures loss and yearning with vividness, tenuousness, a poetic tenderness, and passion. It is a spiritual book, filled with mysticism and written in Alice Hoffman's inimitable style of magical realism. The story is about Lila, a fortune teller, and her meeting Rae Ann while reading her tea leaves. What she sees in the leaves gives rise to the story. Lila is not your typical fortune teller, but a lovely woman who has been given a special gift that she feels a need to carry out. I give this book my highest recommendation.

I have read nearly all of Alice Hoffman's books, so I admit that I'm an adamant fan. She writes in such descriptive prose that it could easily be converted to poetry. At this point, this is my favorite Alice Hoffman work. This is a story about a 25 year old, Rae, and her reluctant 44 year old friend, Lila. Rae has wasted her life with a man who is self-centered and obnoxious. Now she is alone and pregnant. Rae meets Lila at a local restaurant, where she is telling people their fortune as seen in their tea leaves. She sees a terrifying fortune in Rae's cup. But is it really Rae's fortune that she sees? Thus begins the story of these two women. The story is full of tragedy and triumph. It is written so beautifully that it's worthy reading for the prose alone. If you only read one Alice Hoffman book, this should be the one.

This is the fourth of Alice Hoffman's books that I have read in recent months, and I found Fortune's Daughter to be a beautifully written portrayal of two women coping with longing, loss, and letting go. Unlike many novels where romances drive the plotline, in Fortune's Daughter, the central relationships are between mothers and daughters -- real mothers, both through birth and adoption, and surrogates chosen by lonely young women in need of support. Hoffman's judicious use of magical realism heightens the emotions and vividly expresses the inner life of her characters. Highly recommended.

Alice Hoffman is an amazingly talented writer. Each of her books lives and shimmers with some of the most evocative, lovely imagery of any author writing today. You know her characters personally. They live in your neighborhood or are members of your family, and you know them so well that you can't help but ache for each step they take through the course of the book.In "Fortune's Daughter," Hoffman parallels the lives of two very different women. Rae is young, single, and pregnant and on the verge of losing her self-absorbed, shiftless boyfriend. Lila is middle-aged and happily married to Richard, who grows roses and lemon trees in unfriendly soil in their California backyard. As Rae's and Lila'a paths cross and Rae's pregnancy progresses, we are drawn intimately deeper into watching how one woman's life comes out of confusion into clear focus while the other loses her center and slips into madness. It's a delicately and finely drawn dance, and Hoffman executes it perfectly.If anything was unsatisfactory about this book, it was that it ended when it did. After I finished it I sill wanted to go back, to read at least two or three more chapters to know what happens to Rae & Lila, to Jessup & Richard, and to all the others whose lives entwined in this story.

_Fortunes Daughter_ was the fourth novel by Ms. Hoffman that I read, and it is undoubtedly the best. Her books are always subtly infused with magical touches; here, that magic sparkles. The characters are wonderfully complex- there are times when I wanted to slap them and hug them at the same time, and the story, though sorrowful at times, is ultimately full of hope. In other words: Classic Hoffman.