Illumination Night - Couverture rigide

Beginning on the night of the Grand Illumination, a festival of lanterns held each summer on Martha’s Vineyard, this novel is a modern chronicle of a marriage and a bittersweet exploration of an extraordinary passion. Illumination Night follows the lives of a young blond giant who is as beautiful as he is frightening; an old woman at the end of her life whose last mission is to save her granddaughter’s soul; a family torn apart by a wife’s fears and a husband’s unrealized desires —and the high school girl who comes to Martha’s Vineyard against her will, who steals husbands and cars, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption. Both riveting and reflective, this is a story of “parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment” ( Newsday) that brings to light the talent that has made Alice Hoffman an acclaimed bestselling author.

Vonny lives on the island of Martha's Vineyard with her husband Andre and son Simon. Their neighbour Elizabeth, a woman in her seventies, falls from an upstairs window and her granddaughter Jody is summoned to nurse her through her convalescence.

The scene is set for a magical story of love and loneliness, of terror and human frailty, of the mystery and grace of ordinary experience. Alice Hoffman's ability to fuse the domestic and the mythic in a narrative of such gentle yet magnetic force confirms her stature as one of the most gifted of American novelists.