Thursday, November 17, 2011

Practical Magic Written by: Alice Hoffman

For more than two hundred years the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in Town. That seems like a long time to fear a family especially one that helped so many of the towns people. Well, this is rare I read a book which I saw the movie based off of the book first. Usually it is the other way around, I will first read the book then see the movie. I was surprised, I actually enjoyed the book. The book was very different than the movie more a second or third cousin rather than the Practical Magic I saw as a young girl and recently as a young woman. This story was told very uniquely. It was similar in its writing as American Pastoral telling the future as it told the present story, but it did it in a few paragraphs rather than pages. The Owens women were delightful they were beautiful, sassy, mysterious, and all together unique and typical of the female sex. Each women had her own good and bad qualities and had both very selfish personalities, but also very compassionate personalities all in one. Forgive me for being so contradicting, but people are in themselves quite contradicting. It was very interesting how love came into play in this story for the youngest of the Owens women to the oldest, and how it affected them each in turn. The movie showed these women as actual witches with quite impressive powers. The Owens women in this book still have unusual abilities and an odd way about them especially their luck and some very odd garden growth, but they appear more as kitchen witches and women who know very well what to do with herbs and believe in old charms. As its title says "Practical Magic". The book was enjoyable it had its moments where I wished more was said, but a good story none the less, if you love the movie put it out of your mind while reading this book as many things were changed. But, give the book a chance you may like it more.

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