58 out of 58 people found this review helpful.
Hellish Heaven!
Date of Review: May 22, 2000
Seventh Heaven is the first Alice Hoffman that I have read. I have ordered in 'Here on Earth' for myself, so I must have enjoyed Heaven. This is the type of story that creeps up on you. The blurb on the cover is slightly misleading. When I bought it, I was annoyed with myself for selecting another 'light' read. The blurb chooses one character, Nora Silk, who moves into a quiet suburb on Long Island. She arrives with her two young sons, and 'the marked absence of a husband'. She immediately arouses the suspicions of the other women...and so on. So, as I settled down to read it, I thought to myself 'ah, Erin Brockovich versus The Stepford Wives!'. However it proved to be more than Nora's story.
'To have peace with your neighbors you needed to adhere to two unspoken rules; mind your own business and keep up your lawn.'
Hoffman's novel begins in 1959, in the very quiet and conservative Hemlock Street. The regimental routine of husband, house-wife and 2.5 children reminded me of the first half of 'The Woman's Room'. Nora is the first real live divorced person that the neighbors have come across, and naturally they keep her and her off-spring at a distance. She is too thin, too pretty and too cheerful... a dangerous woman by all accounts.
Initially we, also, are kept at a distance from these neighbors, who seem to be living lives of perfection. But then Hoffman slowly peels back the layers to reveal the frailties underlying this suburbia. Fathers use their jobs to hide from their families; wives use housework as a substitute for sex with their husbands; kids are growing up angry and confused about the rules.
Hoffman lets the reader creep into their world, and you can almost touch the yearnings that are pushing their way out of the stagnant beings. Of course, change and upheavals are inevitable. The troubled teenager, Ace McCarthey, finds himself in Nora's bed, the dowdy overweight Donna flees her husband and kids for a new beginning, the staid Mrs Hennessy takes the plunge and applies for a job. Meanwhile, the local hoodlum, Jackie McCarthy does a round about turn and becomes a carbon copy of his father, 'the saint'. These changes are gradual and definite.
Hoffman writes sensually using the natural world to enhance a restless atmosphere that's charged with electricity. I couldn't shake of the pervading sense of doom until the last page.
People began to long for color, for a line of crimson over the parkway at sunset, or a blue sky' but day after day there was nothing but snow and fog, and in the stillness you could find yourself overcome with desire, a desire that made everything ache, fingers and elbows and toes.'
As Nora gradually eases her way into the neighborhood, we are given more insight into the lives around her. She is no longer the focus point of the story, if indeed she really was.
I enjoyed Hoffman's writing, but to be honest I found this a depressing read for most of the novel. On the last couple of pages, I regained my footing - and the novel ended as lightly as it had began.
