Skylight Confessions

Skylight Confessions, by Alice Hoffman

I almost quit reading this book about a third of the way through. It's quirky, the main character is kind of flakey, and it's a fantasy-wrapped-up-in-reality type novel. I am not a fan of fantasy generally. However, as the book went on, the sadness, yet hopefulness, of the story itself grabbed me. Arlyn was such a dreamer and so into fate (or something) guiding her that I was having a hard time getting into it. But Meredith, although she believes in ghosts, was more grounded and she saved the novel for me. I don't personally believe in ghosts, but I did like the symbolism that Hoffman used to announce the presence of a ghost (broken dishes and soot). What had been burned was anybody's guess, but it seemed to me it was Arlyn's dreams, since she had her head in the clouds all the time, but didn't live long enough to see any of them come to fruition. I really disliked John - he was totally checked out of his family's lives and I just can't respect that.
They lived in a glass house (literally) and at first I thought that was totally hokey. But, I came to really appreciate what Hoffman was trying to say - a house can be made of glass, but the people living there, although obvious to neighbors, etc, can have no idea who each other is.
Hoffman has an unusual, but excellent, grasp of language and of sentence structure. Her writing style is unique, as is her voice. Subtle changes in both occurred as she focused on one character more than another, almost as if the narrator changed with a deeper look into one particular person or another.
If you read this, pay particular attention to Arlyn's hair color and her (then Blanca's) pearls. My heart broke for Arlyn's lost love - missed by hair, but then by her choice. That's another theme running through the novel - getting lost. It led to Arlyn and John finding each other, but their love was lost. Sam was lost from his mother's death forward. Blanca was lost her whole life, trying to fit in somewhere and never really knowing where that was. John - lost in his work and in himself and in so being lost, he lost his (first) family. Blanca may have found herself in Will, but the ending left us on a hopeful note, unsure of how the meeting of Blanca and Will might have gone. I usually like loose ends tied up in novels, but I actually liked how that meeting was left open. It provided hope that was (dare I say) lost throughout the rest of the novel.
Check out her website. www.alicehoffman.com. I haven't read anything else of hers, so I can't speak to them. Look at the "other writings" tab. I liked her essays and although I HATED Wuthering Heights when I read it in high school, she's almost convinced me to give it another go. I might actually fall in love with Heathcliff. The only other Heathcliff I've ever run across was Dr. Huxtable and I really liked him.
STARS: 3.5 out of 5
RATING: PG (affair alluded to, a few uses of the F-word [appropriate, in my opinion; that's how a ticked off teen would talk], drug use)