The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman

A special thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Alice Hoffman is one of my absolute favourite authors. How excited was I to get an ARC of this book? I absolutely love art history (being an art history major), and couple this with Hoffman's exquisite writing, I couldn't put the book down. I loved it! 

Hoffman's writing, and descriptions are simply beautiful—the way she described Pissarro's paintings gave them the respect they deserve. Pissarro was after all a founding father of Impressionism, a much loved art period. I don't want to give too much away from the story, but I will say that this historical fictional account of Rachel was incredibly well done. I loved the build of the narrative, and that Hoffman took the time to develop the characters, and the story, all throughout Rachel's life.

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ALICE HOFFMAN has a BA from Adelphi University and an MA in creative writing from Stanford University.

Hoffman's first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published over thirty novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.

Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.

Hoffman has written a number of novels for young adults, including Aquamarine, Green Angel, and the New York Times bestseller The Ice Queen. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year.

Her works have been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Hoffman's novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.

She currently lives in Boston and New York.