Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Review: The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

Synopsis: One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter ? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?
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Mia Jacobs - reader, time traveler, muse.

A young girl escaping her cult-like existence, discovers that reading can transport her to another world - quite literally - and in doing so, she discovers a strength her mother never quite found for herself. Is Hawthorn's book based upon her life or is her current life the result of her time travel.

I think this is definitely deserving of more than one reading - after the first, you definitely need to go back and start again to ensure you have taken in all the little hints and clues to this story. There is much to be said of the power of the written word.

My first Hoffman book, and though not really a fan of the time-travel genre, I did enjoy this one.

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