Blackbird House- Alice Hoffman
It took a while for my thoughts on this book to settle and even though I find myself feeling differently than I initially did, I’m going to merge my original thoughts with my current ones.
Finding the layout immediately reminiscent of The Red Garden, I think that’s where this book (originally) lost me. The Red Garden is too much of a blazing torch. Blackbird House’s little flame never stood a chance against it really.
This is a collection of short stories revolving a farmhouse in Cape Cod. The land is so seemingly enchanting making the house the perfectly dark place for so many tumultuous events to take place. Each story is entirely their own but are laced together with the house’s permanent resident: a little white blackbird seemingly waiting for his little boy to return.
Blackbird House is filled with open-ended chapters and stories up for interpretation which can either drive a person crazy or allow their imagination to wander. It read to me as a book of lessons and poignant reminders of the need to not take anything or anyone for granted. It’s very real, heartbreaking, and comforting in the sense that we are less alone than we think in our losses. This book will remind you that ultimately everything is temporary, including love, so we ought not to take it for granted when it’s within our grasp. The impermanence of life places nicely against the persistence of the old farmhouse; it’s bones holding up nicely throughout the centuries of trials, triumphs, and tribulations that pass through it.
*Upon a little searching I found that this book was mirroring an important chapter of Hoffman’s life where she is living in a home she bought apparently haunted by a 10-year old boy, like in her story. While writing this she was undergoing chemo. The final tale of this story is about a woman’s struggle in finding who she was “supposed to be” before she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of six.
The knowledge of what Hoffman was experiencing while writing this is a bit of a game changer for me. Suddenly I’m seeing reoccurring symbols in a different light and am finding myself questioning the meaning behind them because surely Hoffman never puts something in her stories she hadn’t meant to serve a larger purpose. That is something I love about her writing. It’s very intentional and in the way Taylor Swift leaves Easter eggs for her fans, I feel Hoffman does the same for her readers.
I look forward to revisiting this book and I will at least once more. The pieces I’m looking deeper into include turnips, over run sweet peas, pear trees, a piece of emerald, applewood floors, a pair of red boots, THE COLORS, and of course, a mischievous white blackbird seemingly waiting for his little boy to return.