Book Review: The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Take Diana Gabaldon's Outlander , swap out a hot-to-trot Scot for Nathaniel Hawthorne (yes, that Nathaniel Hawthorne), add an unwed teenage mother, and throw in a cult for good measure, and - voila! - you have Alice Hoffman's The Invisible Hour. A kindred spirit with Hoffman's Practical Magic quartet, The Invisible Hour follows the life trajectory of Mia Jacob, a young girl raised in a controlling cult, who magically makes her way back to Massachusetts in the 1800s. Like the four other Hoffman novels that I've read, this book is simultaneously beautiful, touching, and maddeningly imperfect. At its five-star best, The Invisible Hour is a tearjerking, laudable love letter to libraries and literature; at its three-star worst, it's a half-baked tale about time travel and an indulgence in the author's literary crush on the author of The Scarlet Letter.

As a librarian, English teacher, and author, I treasure Hoffman's passion for reading and writing. While she and I might be part of a dying breed of bookish nerds, we still find enchantment in a unique plotline or a clever turn of phrase. A few of my favorite lines from The Invisible Hour are as follows:
*"He believed it was possible to see inside a person’s soul once you knew which books mattered to them."
*"Some people are who you think they are. Some people hide the wolf inside of them, but you can hear them howl."
*"In a place where books were banned there could be no personal freedom, no hope, and no dreams for the future."
*"Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then sewn with your own hand, when in the morning, as you wake and see the mountain in the distance, you will understand that whether or not you’ve made a mistake, whether or not you will lose all that you have, this is what it means to be human."

These excerpts are Hoffman at her finest: beautiful "golden lines" that resonate beyond the confines of the printed page and into an insightful examination of the broader human experience. After crossing paths with these bold statements about "what it means to be human," I instantly want to award Hoffman five stars for her artistry. However, some of the plot holes are maddening: how does Mia's time-traveling work and what happens to the villain at the end of the novel? These flaws ultimately work against an otherwise-meticulously crafted story.

Like Mia, I feel torn in two different directions; unlike her time-traveling escapades, however, I vacillate between feelings of love and frustration with this novel. In the end, I'll have to settle with 4.5 stars, splitting the difference between Hoffman's finest moments and her literary imperfections. Yet, despite these weaknesses, The Invisible Hour achieves its ultimate goal: it celebrates the unyielding beauty of life and the magical power of literature.

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