in every fairy tale girl who is saved is the one who rescues herself.
people in love were such fools, they made up excuses, they wound up doing as they pleased no matter how much good advice they been given.
The Invisible Hour is a twice-told tale of a mother and a daughter.
Ivy Jacobs’ Beacon Hill family did not exactly treat it as a crimson-letter day when the sixteen-year-old informed her parents that she was pregnant by a feckless Harvard sophomore. Despite her tender years, Ivy wanted to see the pregnancy through and keep the baby. Decisions and plans were made, none of them involving input from Ivy. The newborn would be put up for adoption. Ivy bails, getting as far away as she can, which turns out to be a sort-of commune in western Massachusetts.
Alice Hoffman – image from Penguin Random House – shot by Alyssa Peek
Mia Jacob is the daughter Ivy bore. We meet her at 15. Living in the place to which her mother had fled, The Community. More of a cult really, an authoritarian farm where the leader’s will is law. Joel Davis took Ivy in, married her soon after she’d arrived, so is Mia’s step-father. But child-rearing is communal here, so parenting is not what you or I would recognize. You will recognize the cult-leader, control-freak personality Joel wears like the headgear sported by the QAnon Shaman. Vanity is supposedly being punished, but it is accomplishment, growth, intelligence and independence that are the targets. He likes his followers unquestioning and compliant.
Ivy has stolen parenting moments over the years, so has had a hand in helping Mia find her true self, a young woman who is curious about the world, eager to learn, to investigate, to explore, to read. Discovery of her criminal reading marks her for punishment. When we meet Mia she is, as her mother was, a teen about to flee her oppressive environment.
Although we learn about and spend time with both women, it is Mia who is our primary focus. In a dark time, she considers suicide, but, fortuitously, reads a book that saves her, changing her life, giving her hope, The Scarlet Letter.
We follow her coming of age, assisted by her mother and an understanding librarian in the town where The Community sells their produce.
Her passion for Hawthorne is such that she finds in it a magical power. Alice Hoffman loves her some fairy tales, so it will come as no great shock that one fine day Mia finds herself transported back to the 19th century, and into the presence of her literary love object. Complications ensue. In those, however, we get a sense of Hawthorne, his personality, his material conditions, his family and friends, and his writing challenges. Nice looking fellah, too, to go with that oversized talent.
There is some wonderful imagery woven into the novel. The notion of invisibility is large among these. There are times in which it might be useful to go unseen, as in when one is doing something for which one might be punished, or which are simply secret. On the other hand, it is not so wonderful to be unseen in normal human interactions. Like “Yo, dude, human here. Whaddaya? Blind?” There is some literal invisibility as well.
Apples are a core element as well. There is a particular breed of apple grown in the area, which is no Eden. They seem less associated with The Fall than with a push. Joel uses leaves of that apple tree as a threat. One could certainly see his actions as serpentine. Mia even decides never to eat apples, given the associations she has for them with The Community. Howdaya like dem apples? Johnny Appleseed comes in for some attention, with plantings of his effort bearing local fruit.
The woods as a magical place gets a visit or two. Indeed, magical things go on there. Strange people and buildings appear. There is even one “Once upon a time” in the book. The Woods is where Mia goes to escape.
Much of the tension in the book centers around women taking control of their own lives. This happens in various ways. There is the usual disobedience one would expect, with the most daring taking the greatest risks. Reading figures large in this, as subservience is sustained under the lash of forced-ignorance. Reading is the gateway drug to independent thinking, and dreaming of better. Some women even learn herbal medicine, to see to their needs. The comparisons of the modern day with the repressive Puritan world depicted in The Scarlet Letter are clearly drawn. Plus ça change…
I think it’s a bad idea to write for the moment because the moment passes so quickly. The other thing about time is that what’s right and what’s good and what’s accepted suddenly becomes not. I thought about that with the way women were treated in “The Scarlet Letter,” the way that the Puritans blamed women, and they believed in original sin and that women were responsible for that because of Eve. It all changed, but then it changes back. And then it changes again. A lot of the things that women are coping with right now are not that different, really. The judgment against women. – from the Salon interview
There is a garden in town where all the plants are red. It may feel familiar to frequent readers of Hoffman.
This new book [The Invisible Hour] actually takes place in a town where I wrote a book of connecting stories about called The Red Garden, so it’s the same place. It’s just a novel that takes place in that town. – from the Salon interview
I consider myself an Alice Hoffman fan. While I have not read all her books, I have certainly read more than a couple. Any reader of her books knows that there are certain things one can expect. Among other things, there will be an engaging lead, facing difficult choices, and there will usually be bits, at least, of magic, often of a fairy tale sort. So, one cannot really gripe about a time-travel element pushing things too far, particularly when done in the service of giving us a closer look at a literary icon. My sole gripe is that I felt that the baddie was given too much magical license to pursue his dark ends.
Otherwise, despite it’s title, The Invisible Hours very much deserves to be seen. It offers not only an uplifting, engaging tale of empowerment, but an homage to one of the greats of American literature, and long-form praise of the power, the importance, the necessity of reading. I am sure we can all see the value in that.
“Q: Did you set out to write a novel so deeply rooted in women’s empowerment? How did it evolve to include time travel?”
“A: I started to think about The Scarlet Letter and how modern-day issues for women are not that foreign from issues in that time period. I’m not certain I realized when I first read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great novel what the deeper meaning of his heroine’s situation is—she has no say over her body or her choices and yet, she does make her own choices. It’s a very brave book.
I’ve always wanted to time travel and been drawn to books about time travel. I think during the time of Covid, when I was writing this, more than ever I want it to be in another time period.” – from A Conversation with Alice Hoffman, an appendix in the book
Review posted – 12/22/23
Publication date – 8/15/23
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=======================================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Instagram and FB pages
Profile
Other Hoffman books I have reviewed:
—–1999 – Local Girls
—–2003 – Green Angel
—–2004 – Blackbird House
—–2005 – The Ice Queen
—–2011 – The Red Garden
—–2011 – The Dovekeepers
—–2017 – Faithful
—–2017 – The Rules of Magic
—–2019 – The World That We Knew
Interviews
—–Salon – “I want to believe”: Alice Hoffman is always seeking magic, practical and otherwise by Alison Stine
—–Shondaland – Alice Hoffman Talks Her Latest Novel, ‘The Invisible Hour’ by Sandra Ebejer
—–Harvard Review – An Interview with Alice Hoffman by Christina Thompson
Song
—–Agnes Obel – Brother Sparrow – relevance to the chapter title
Item of Interest from the author
—–Salon – Alice Hoffman: Five amazing tips to help you write your novel
Items of Interest
—–Wiki on Nathaniel Hawthorne
—–Wiki on Johnny Appleseed, mentioned multiple times
—–Gutenberg – full text of The Scarlet Letter
—–Good Will Hunting – Howdaya like dem apples?
—–Wiki on the QAnon Shaman
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