Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman

Talk about eclectic. I just finished reading Alice Hoffman's gorgeous Skylight Confessions, and now I'm reading You're Lucky You're Funny, a memoir by Phil Rosenthal, the writer/creator of Everybody Loves Raymond. But more on that another day. Today I want to talk about the novel.

This is classic Alice Hoffman. By that I mean that she manages to create an otherworldly reality that feels completely grounded. As always, her characters got right under my skin and stayed there. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone, but I'll say that this book has an unusual structure in that the protagonist changes somewhere in the middle, and it works. It is, more anything, a story that explores the idea of destiny, and asks questions about love along the way. Of course, Hoffman pulls all of this off with language so precise and beautiful my heart melted in my chest.