The Red Garden is the latest novel from Alice Hoffman. I think Hoffman is a wonderful writer. She imbues everything she writes with a bit of magic realism. However, I was less taken in by this book than I have been by her others.

We follow the settlers of Blackwell, a small town in the Berkshires from it’s founding in the late 18th century, to present day. The novel is written in vignettes, each leading into the next. The problem with this, is that there are so many characters to remember and trying to keep their connections in mind becomes tiresome. Also, once I would get really interested in a character, it was time to move on to the next story.

The Red Garden of the title didn’t seem as central to the story as I thought it would be. I would have like to have seen this aspect of the novel much more developed. It seemed to me that the bears were actually central to the story.

As always, Hoffman’s writing is wonderful, and as a concept, this was a very interesting way to present a novel. For me though, it just didn’t really work.