Title: The Invisible Hour
Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Atria
Publication date: August 15, 2023
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Contemporary/historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:
From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and the Practical Magic series comes an enchanting novel about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the enduring magic of books.
One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?
Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.
As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter ? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?
Nathaniel Hawthorne “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
This is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.
When teenaged Ivy becomes pregnant, her wealthy Boston family treats her with scorn and decides — without her consent — that she’ll give birth and then give the baby away. In desperation, Ivy runs away, and a chance encounter with a stranger leads her to the Community, a farm outside the western Massachusetts town of Blackwell, led by a charismatic man named Joel Davis. At first, the Community seems like a haven. Ivy is welcomed, given a home, and captures the attention of Joel, who eventually marries her.
But the Community is not merely a peaceful communal farm — it’s a structure, highly regulated, isolated world completely controlled by Joel and his dictates. Women must dress simply, vanity is not allowed, children belong to the Community at large and not to their biological parents, and books of any kind are forbidden. Punishments are harsh — from lettered signs hung around necks for initial or minor offenses to having letters branded on the offenders’ arms for more serious infractions. But by the time Ivy realizes the truth of the Community, she’s stuck — she’s given birth to her daughter Mia, and Joel has made it clear that if she ever leaves, she’ll never see Mia again.
As Mia grows, Ivy and Mia maintain a secret bond despite its forbidden nature, and Ivy shares the stories and fairy tales she remembers from her own youth during their secret meetings in the woods. As Mia grows up, Ivy encourages her to sneak away to the Blackwell public library while working at the Community’s farmstand in town, and soon Mia’s life revolves around the books she hides in the barn.
Mia now understood that Joel was well aware that once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again.
After tragic events, Mia is more trapped than ever. In despair, Mia takes a random book from the library shelves and then heads to the river, where she intends to load her pockets with stones and drown herself, the only escape she can envision. But when she opens the books and begins to read, she’s awed to find that this particular book speaks directly to her, and offers her a new way to think about her life and her future.
The book is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it literally changes Mia’s life. Without going too much further into the plot points, I’ll just say that Mia finds a way to escape and start over, thanks to the help of a kind librarian (librarians rock!), and her love for Nathaniel Hawthorne eventually leads to a timeslip element that takes her into his world.
It’s hard to summarize my feelings about The Invisible Hour. As with all of Alice Hoffman’s books, the writing here is beautiful, with some passages and ideas that just take my breath away. And while some of the author’s books are among my very favorites, there are also many where I love the writing and feel disconnected from or let down by the plot. Sadly, The Invisible Hour mostly fits into the second category.
I was deeply engrossed in the first half of the book, where Mia’s childhood and youth at the Community are the focus, as well as her escape and her discovery of a future filled with books, autonomy, loving found family, and the ability to set her own path. When the timeslip elements come into play in the second half of the book, that’s where it loses me to a great extent.
It’s not that I have a problem with time travel or timeslip novels, not by a long shot! Somehow, the introduction of the time element in The Invisible Hour felt jarring and not at all believable to me. Perhaps it was the introduction of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a character that broke the spell for me. In any case, despite the seeming intention to show this as a magical element brought about by a special book, I just couldn’t buy it, and felt dissatisfied for much of the rest of the book.
On the other hand, I do love how beautifully the power of books and reading is shown throughout The Invisible Hour. Books literally save and then change Mia’s life
… he believed it was possible to see inside a person’s soul once you knew which books mattered to them.
I wish I had loved The Invisible Hour. As I’ve already said, the writing is gorgeous and evocative, and makes this book well worth reading. I just wish I’d felt as strongly about the plot itself as I do about the way it’s written. Mia’s story is sad yet ultimately lovely and full of hope, but the timeslip elements fell flat for me and detracted from the impact of the whole.
Side note: I don’t have particularly good memories of reading The Scarlet Letter way back in high school, but after reading The Invisible Hour, I’m very tempted to give it another try.
Bookshelf Fantasies 