Hoffman’s spell grows with ‘Rules of Magic’

The practical roots of Owens family

In life and in literature, witches often get a bad rap.

Novelist Alice Hoffman is out to change all that. She has long celebrated supernatural beings in many of her 30-plus novels. Her newest, The Rules of Magic (Simon & Schuster, eeee out of four, 366 pp.) is an enchanting prequel to her beloved best seller Practical Magic, the story of Sally and Gillian Owens, damned by a family curse that any man who falls in love with them will die.

Rules travels back to the 1960s to introduce young Franny and Jet Owens, the relatives who later raised Sally and Gillian after their parents died in a fire. Stubbornly practical Franny, sensitive, raven-haired Jet and their captivating brother Vincent are invited to their Aunt Isabelle’s house in Massachusetts the summer Franny turns 17. Isabelle’s only rule: Be true to yourself. The siblings’ suspicions that they aren’t quite “normal” are confirmed as they see Isabelle concoct love potions and magical soap for the town’s residents from the plants in her garden and greenhouse. Franny discovers they are descendants of Maria Owens, who was tried as a witch in the 1600s by the married judge who fathered her child. “Know that for our family, love is a curse,” Maria warned in her diary.

Franny proceeds to deny her affection for her childhood boyfriend, Haylin. Vincent slinks from bed to bed without making a genuine connection, and Jet falls madly in love with Levi, a boy whose preacher father knows she is a witch.

The magic in these endearing witches is in their everydayness. They cope with high-school mean girls, apply to college, play music and oh yes, can hear each other’s thoughts, move furniture with their minds and are unable to sink in water.

Like every human being, the witches are doomed to lose the ones they love most. This is the kind of book you race through, then pause at the last 40 pages, savoring your final moments with the characters.

Hoffman has conjured up another irresistible novel in The Rules of Magic.