White Horses

Alice Hoffman is my favorite author and I love every one of her books...except this one. My least favorite of the bunch. That being said, I still happily read it.

I am working my way through all of Alice Hoffman's books. This story was a little different in that it featured a "disturbing" relationship between a brother and sister. I still love her style of writing, imagery, and imagination in telling a story.

This book is by far Alice Hoffman's work of art-and that might be an understatement. This was a brilliant piece of writing that takes you deep into a girls soul making you laugh, cry and most importantly understand love, family and redemption. I'm amazed that WHITE HORSES has not gotten the same recognition as some of Hoffman's other books.

So many elements of this book rang true for me. Teresa is a young girl who suffers through traumatic losses, and in response develops a destructive love obsession for her brother. She sees him through a veil of illusions about inaccessible men which she learned from her mother, who in turn learned them from her father. Teresa idealizes her brother Silver and denies his cruelty, and tries to fill up the emptiness of her life with her obsession. Alice Hoffman manages to simultaneously evoke the beauty of romantic fantasy worlds and the tragedy of spending years living in them.

It is rare that you hope for a romance to suceed when it is tied to one of the last remaining tabos; incest. I felt for Thersea. She was raised to love the poorest of biological choices; her own brother. I believed along with her that he was the only path to happiness. Hoffman proves that she is as adept with southwestern folklore as she is with the New England variety in this parody of Sleeping Beauty. This book explores many of the same themes as "Here on Earth". Both heroines are fated from their youth to love the wrong man but I feel that the heat of the southwest adds an intensity to this story. In this setting, anything is possible.

I'm glad I read this book even though the life of the main character, Teresa, is so troublesome and painful. Her physical/mental ailment and her family's breakup tear her life apart. She keeps looking for the ideal man (on a white horse), but finds only abusive males, including her own brother. Although some readers may be repulsed, as I was, by the incest in the book, it's a reality many people face. Alice Hoffman is so diverse in her writing. I enjoyed this book more than her Here On Earth. The book does, I think, end on a positive note, and I keep thinking about Teresa's endurance.