Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

I've wanted to read Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman for awhile (I forget where and when I first heard about it), and I finally got around to it as part of the What's in a Name 2 reading challenge. I thought I had never read anything by Hoffman before, but one section of the book was about a little girl with leukemia and it reminded of a book, At Risk about a young girl with AIDS. I looked in the front of the book and sure enough, Hoffman had written At Risk. My mom had that book, and I read it many times between the ages of 10 and 13 (I had a weird love for books about kids with terminal illnesses). Anyway, it was odd and kind of cool that I recognized Hoffman's voice in one small passage after all these years.

Anyway, I really liked Blackbird House. This book is a collection of interrelated stories that all take place in the title house, located on Cape Cod, Massachusetts from colonial times until the present day. The stories are about each successive occupant(s) of the house and tells how they got the house from the occupants in the previous story. The stories generally focus on the women or girls in the house who tend to be eccentric and to fiercely love their families. The house gets its name from a white blackbird that appears in most, if not all, of the stories.

This book was a very short, easy read. I really enjoyed all of the stories, there wasn't one I disliked. I thought that the characters in all the stories were well developed. The stories themselves were emotionally engaging and I teared up during quite a few of them. I'm really glad I finally read this book and also that I was reminded of At Risk, which I now want to reread. I will definitely be reading more by Hoffman.