“By engaging her readers’ empathy so adroitly, Hoffman draws them into exposing themselves to the kind of pain—the pain of commitment—that haunts her story.”

“Alice Hoffman…has enough power of
empathy to make her characters matter to us. Daringly mixing comedy with
tragedy, and the quotidian with the fabulous, she has created a narrative that
somehow makes myth out of the sticky complexities of contemporary marriage…Ms. Hoffman writes so simply about human
passions that her characters are branded onto one’s memory. At their most
passionate they hurl themselves down staircases, out of windows, in front of
speeding cars. One awakens from the dream of this novel with a memory of trying
to catch them. In the light of the story’s afterglow, one keeps on trying to
catch them.”

“There is a cumulative power to Illumination Night that is wondrous.”

“Hoffman hits bulls-eyes on the incomprehension between the young and the old, of the magic and pain of ordinary life. She is erotic and romantic…funny…clever and humane.”

“Explorations of the tangled strands of parenthood and friendship, self-protection and generosity, dream and disillusionment are made achingly vivid by Hoffman’s ability to ground them in the finely etched details of her characters’ daily lives.”

“With an eye for household details and respect for daily events, Hoffman unleashes the mythic forcefulness of ordinary life in this polished story of love and loneliness set on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.”