Title: Practical Magic
Author: Alice Hoffman
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: 2003
Format: Audiobook
Length: 9 hours
Read if you like: Sibling rivalry, lost love, coming of age, rotating perspectives, easy to understand fantasy

Rating:

Practical Magic is one of those classics that many people I know reference but that I’d never actually read myself. I listened to this one on audiobook and I have to say, I get the hype. It was a great story of love, life, growing up and growing older, all with an understated aspect of magic weaved throughout. It was heavily focused on characters, rotating perspectives through all major and minor players and giving a deep, introspective look into their motivations, personalities, and flaws. It was easy listening with a good vibe and a lot of feeling. I’m glad I picked it up and finally got it off my TBR!

Fair warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this book.

The Book: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Practical Magic is a story about the Owens, a family who have been intricately connected with magic and the supernatural for as far back as anyone can remember. This connection lives on in the present day through Sally and Jillian, the two main characters, and their aunts, who raised the girls after their parents tragically passed away.

Sally and Jillian grow up desperate for normal lives. The reputation that follows them due to being Owens sisters often means being separated from their peers and ostracized for perceptions they can’t control. In the end, neither can stand to remain in the house their aunts raised them in. They know if they stay, they’ll never escape the issues their town has with them and the weird practices of their aunts, so over time, they both flee.  

For Jillian, it meant leaving with a soon-to-be husband as soon as she’s graduated high school and heading as far west as she can get. She cycles through several husbands and many boyfriends, never settling down and never really landing in a healthy or functional relationship, instead getting deeper and deeper into trouble.

For Sally, she initially settles with the aunts and her own husband, a local man who brings joy and normalcy to their usually chaotic and weird house. Sally has two girls, Antonia and Kylie, with her husband, convinced that she can beat the rumours and reputation that she suffered from as a kid. When her husband passes, all the goodwill their relationship bought the family seems to evaporate immediately. Sally then packs all of their things and takes the girls to New York, where she too seeks to start a more normal life away from the painful history her sister and she both knew with the aunts.

Despite their quests for normalcy, Sally and Jillian are drawn back together by a terrible crime that Jillian has found herself wrapped up in. Sally, ever the big sister, helps Jillian cover it up and Jillian stays with Sally as she attempts to figure out how to get her life back on track. The two women have been separated for decades, but through their joined traumas, pasts, and futures, they’ll have to muddle through the lives they’ve worked so hard to construct for themselves and determine what’s important to them. They’ll also have to face how they’ve been holding themselves back and confront their connections to their magical and supernatural roots, which have never truly left either of them.

The Review

Practical Magic was one of those books that feels light on plot and really heavy on the characters. There is a plot of course, and there are core events that happen over the course of the narrative that move the story forward, but for the most part, it’s really focused on a shifting stream of consciousness between the characters as they grapple with life, love, growing up and getting older.

The title is really apt to me because most of the magic elements in the book feel more natural and understated. At times it’s intrusive, and towards the end, it has a significant moment, but mostly the magic in the book is subtle and sort of in the background compared to the ongoing relationship dynamics. It reinforces how you’re supposed to feel or perceive something instead of being the main focus in and of itself.

It was really entertaining to see the Owens sisters develop and grow over the course of the story. Practical Magic is, in a lot of ways, about just wanting to fit in, to be loved, to be accepted. The sisters go about this in such different ways, with Sally militantly normalizing her own family once she grows up and escapes from the aunts, and Jillian seeking love and acceptance in every man she can find on the west coast. They’re both complete opposites and messy in their own ways, but seeing them grow apart and come back together again and all of the conflict and drama that entails was very fun listening.

I also really liked seeing Antonia and Kylie grow up in the shadow of their mother and aunt, still completely connected to that eerie, occult aspect of the Owens without ever intending it or being in the same environment. How they choose to grow up, and the type of women they become, felt so authentic to what it is to be a teenager and find your place in the world. Their stories were equally compelling to Sally and Jillian’s.

The rotating perspectives between major and minor characters were, at first, a little jarring in audiobook format as there weren’t formal chapters, but I quickly got used to it and ended up really enjoying the way the narrative ebbed and flowed from person to person through time. It was effortless listening that left me introspective at parts and thoroughly entertained at others.

I understand why a lot of people view this as a classic, and personally, I thought the story lent super well to an audiobook format. I really enjoyed this book, I’m definitely glad I finally took it off of my TBR.