Practical Magic to snare an Ideal Husband

I love Alice Hoffman. I really, really do. I think The Blue Diary is this hot, sweaty, sticky book -- the sort of lustful, crazy-intense, rollercoaster ride of a book that absolutely captures what a humid Massachusetts summer is like. The colors of the air, the way it can drive you mad. And the story just unfolds so languidly and yet, it doesn't occur to you that it's moving slowly because it feels exactly like that summer; the days are long and the months are short.

Anyway, my first Hoffman was Practical Magic and I'm pretty sure I read it very early in my high school experience. She has such an ethereal voice, such a way of making the ordinary seem magical, and this book is a really excellent example of that.

Anyway, in the book, one of the characters decides she never wants to fall in love again and so she vows never to fall in love again unless she meets this very specific man that she is certain is absolutely impossible. There's no way he can exist.

The first time Sally falls in love, it happens like this:

"The man Sally fell in love with was named Michael. He was so thoughtful and good-natured hat he kissed the aunts the first time he met them and immediately asked if they needed their trash taken out to the curb, which won them over then and there, no questions asked. Sally married him quickly, and then moved into the attic, which suddenly seemed the only place in the world where Sally wished to be.

"Let Gillian travel from California to Memphis. Let her marry and divorce three times in a row. Let her kiss every man who crossed her path and break every promise she ever made about coming home for the holidays. Let her pity her sister, cooped up in that old house. Sally did not mind a bit. In Sally's opinion, it was impossible to exist in the world and not be in love with Michael. . . His kisses were slow and deep and he liked to take off Sally's clothes with the bedside table light turned on and he always made certain to lose when he played gin rummy with one of the aunts.

"When Michael moved in, the house itself began to change, and even the bats in the attic knew it and took to nesting out by the garden shed. By the following June, roses had begun to grow up along the porch railing, choking out ragweed, instead of the other way around. In January, the draft in the parlor disappeared and ice would not form on the bluestone path. The house stayed cheery and warm . . . Throughout the night, it sounded as if a river were flowing right through the house; the noise was so beautiful and so real that the mice came out of the walls to make certain the house was still standing and meadow hadn't taken its place."

Anyone else think SMeyer ought to hand over the Twilight Saga to be rewritten by someone who knows about the magic of first love? Not some submissive wretch of a woman who thinks that love is about giving up who you are -- or about lacking a personality to begin with? Those passages are phenomenal. If I could write like that, I wouldn't be writing blogs. The best description of a girl who breaks hearts?

"Gillian broke hearts the way other people broke kindling for firewood. By the time she was a senior in high school, she was so fast and expert at it that some boys didn't even know what was happening until they were left in one big emotional heap."

Ugh. My jealousy cannot be contained.

Anyway, Sally's list. I'm going to try to find it. [Musical interlude while I scour book for specific passage.]

[Except I just found this and it breaks my heart.]

"What had she thought, that love was a toy, something easy and sweet, just to play with? Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn't let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for its sake."

Seriously, who writes like that?

In describing how Sally felt when faced with the prospect of losing Michael, who she loved so very much, Alice Hoffman writes,

"Now whenever he kissed her, she cried and wished she had never fallen in love in the first place. It had made her too helpless, because that's what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything."

So good, so true. Love makes you helpless. And it's the best reason I've ever heard for not falling in love. Except, there are even more compelling reasons for why one SHOULD fall in love. The roses and the river and the meadows, and all that.

I can't find the passage in the book, but the quote from the movie is this...

"He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards. . . He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue. . . That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist, I'll never die of a broken heart. "

But he does exist. And he looks like this.

Man, I love Aidan Quinn. My point is, I'm making a Practical Magic list. One with one hundred items. So that he is impossible and I will never find him and never die of a broken heart.