Book Review : A Novel That Is Aglow With Grace, Magic

Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman (Putnam’s: $18.95; 198 pages)

In some ways I know it’s a bad analogy--comparing a “serious” literary novel with a sweet summer movie--but more than anything I can think of, Alice Hoffman’s “Illumination Night” resembles Luis Valdez’s “La Bamba.” No, there’s no rock ‘n’ roll in “Illumination Night,” but there is the sure sense that magic and spirituality infuse our lives, and that this magic is as readily available to the poor as to the rich. (In fact, works like these point out what the Bible must be getting at when it talks about the rich not getting into heaven. Worry too much about your Porsche and you’ll forget the possibility of flying, love, beauty, miracles.)

“Illumination Night” is not sappy or diaphanous or “beautiful,” anymore than is “La Bamba.” It simply takes a look at two families of obscure origins, living across from each other, and follows their fortunes for a few years. The location is the island of Martha’s Vineyard. The families in question are neither artistic nor rich nor even “summer people.” They’re just folks who live there, in two old houses on a country road, not far from the town, not far from the beach.

Two Families

In one house, a young couple: Andre and Vonny, and their young son, Simon. Andre loves motorcycles. He’s the kind of man who is at once a husbandly homebody and--externally--a sinister-looking punk. Vonny is a potter, subject to occasional anxiety attacks; a good, conscientious mother. Simon isn’t growing the way he should; his mom and dad are worried sick about it. In the other house, Elizabeth Renny, a grandmother who lives alone, has attempted to fly out of her second-story window and broken a few bones. Her daughter (who lives on the mainland and is going through the last dregs of a dreary marriage) sends her daughter, Jody, a rebellious 16-year-old, to take care of her ill grandma.

Magic time begins to pass. Again, this is weird material to attempt to convey, even firsthand. To report it secondhand in a review is harder still. But think, if you’ve seen “La Bamba,” of those first shots of migrant workers in tents, surrounded by trees in the background, and, in the foreground, objects that have become sacred from respectful use: The crocheted little mats, statues, snapshots, an olla (a pottery jar for drinking) or two. All of life, if it’s lived intensely, becomes sacred: That’s the only way to put it.

Town Ceremony

Hoffman uses--on her island--the metaphor of Illumination Night, a simple town ceremony where hundreds of Japanese lanterns are lit, and the lights in every house turned on, and bags of sand prop up candles everywhere. In this atmosphere, Vonny, the fearful potter and good mother, “feels as though there’s no such thing as gravity. She can’t help but wonder if Elizabeth Renny actually stumbled out the window” (which was Mrs. Renny’s story--she certainly wasn’t going to tell her neighbors that she attempted to fly).

As seasons turn on the island, several things happen--stuff that manages to be both inevitable and surprising. With a handsome man who roars about on motorcycles and a nubile girl who puts red streaks in her hair occupying the same geographical space, it’s not surprising, really, that a romance, a sort of love, should occur between them. It is surprising, though, that Jody’s grandmother should intuit much of this, and not mind. And, in the peculiar way that life unfolds, the fact that Vonny’s anxiety attacks should blossom into full-time heavy-duty agoraphobia is the kind of thing people see in hindsight. It was there, waiting to happen.

So, here are five people. Andre, who struggles between lust and his idea of himself as a family man. Vonny, who struggles against the invisible force field that clamps her house. Simon, who knows there’s something not right between his parents and tries desperately--as does any child--to heal that rift, and also to grow . Elizabeth, coming to the end of her life, going blind in “real” terms but also “seeing” more every day. And Jody, who develops in these few seasons from a headstrong pain into a beautiful, loyal, ethical woman, an unending well of endurance and love. Together the five make up a family, an extended human soul, ever more capable of seeing the world behind the world the things we see when we’re “enlightened.”

There’s another character here, a secret one, who shouldn’t be told about because he’s a surprise; a person who keeps himself hidden because he’s just too much for the ordinary passer-by to be able to handle. That he, too, is taken into this extended human family is the sweetest part of this story.

It’s not “Paradise” that Hoffman (or Valdez) is talking about. It’s the fact that the whole world is magic and alive. Those humans who can’t see they are wretched, pitiable brutes. Those who can see it, and live it, are transformed, illuminated, full of grace, and give the hope of that grace to everyone else on earth.