TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 9/08/97: Speaking Freely Nat Hentoff Nonfiction 9/05/97: All Over but the Shoutin' Rick Bragg Nonfiction 9/04/97: A Crime in the Neighborhood Suzanne Berne Fiction 9/03/97: Larry's Party Carol Shields Fiction 9/02/97: Burning the Days: Recollection James Salter Nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: J.G. Ballard on William Burroughs Naked Truth By Richard Kadrey and Suzanne Stefanac . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT BOOK FEATURES

here on earth BY ALICE HOFFMAN PUTNAM 304 PAGES FICTION BY COURTNEY WEAVER | what makes Alice Hoffman's fiction so consistently compelling? Is it her story lines, reminiscent of Harlequin romances but with occasionally peppery dashes of cultural savviness? Or is it her characters, Anne Tyler-esque in their oddities, but without the irony? Or perhaps it's that quasi-New Age voice, lulling you into a Marianne Williamson world where one's fate is left to the movements of the sun, the moon, the planets or just some unnamed Higher Being? Hoffman's fans won't be disappointed by the airy-fairy "Here on Earth," her 12th novel, which weaves all of Hoffman's usual themes into a dreamy, intricate family melodrama, complete with alcoholism, wife-beating, obsessional love and whiffs of murder. It's the story of March Murray, who returns to her ancestral home at Fox Hill in New England after spending decades away in "lemon-colored" Palo Alto. In tow is her difficult teenage daughter Gwen, who is described as "pretty ... in spite of all her sabotage." At issue is a death in the family, but we know that March is really back to face her old ghosts, this time in the form of her adopted brother Hollis, whom she has been obsessively thinking about ever since his disappearance 20 years earlier. Confused? Don't be. "Here on Earth," despite its convoluted plot threads and histories, is at heart a romance novel with a bite. As with a good made-for-TV movie, you can pretty much guess what will happen to poor old March, whose naiveté is at best frustrating and at worst unlikable. Nor is it any surprise that Hollis -- with his black, snapping eyes, and whose exits are followed by a blast of cold wind -- reveals himself to be Evil Incarnate: Subtlety is not one of Hoffman's strong points. Still, this novel's comfy, confident voice is enough to lure you into an armchair for the better part of an evening. Hoffman's world is a place where emotions become aromas: Longing is "the scent of grass on her pillow"; anger is a "scorching scent"; mourning is "the scent of roses sweet and ripe and sorrowful." Moons peep out behind trees, fox-colored dogs herald the advent of evil and dreams are to be courted and followed. Hoffman relies on her readers suspending a certain amount of disbelief, which may lull her into thinking she can get away with some occasionally terrible writing. "One look from him is more substantial than the wooden bar she's leaning her elbows upon," Ms. Hoffman breathlessly writes when March spies Hollis for the first time. "It's realer than the bottles of whiskey lined up behind the counter; realer than the pull of fabric as Susie tugs on her jacket." Thankfully, descriptions like that are few and far between. Ms. Hoffman may have more in common with Robert James Waller than Robert Louis Stevenson, but "Here on Earth" is no toothless romance. It's curiously pleasurable, and reading it induces only a minimum of guilt. Sept. 9, 1997 Courtney Weaver writes the Unzipped column for Salon. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html