Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

False Empathy

Nostalgia is not my thing. But it’s something Alice Hoffman does very well. Narratives about Dickensesque orphans, lost loves, family dislocation, the past in general appeal to many but I find them saccharine, precious and vaguely morbid.

Nostalgic sentiment abounds in Here on Earth. But it is artificial sentiment. No one could possibly remember the details of conversations thirty years earlier, or the subtle emotions involved. Yet here they are verbatim as if they were being played out in real time. These are conversations and situations written about for their effect, to manipulate the reader not to inform or to provoke an interpretation. The interpretation is already there, pre-packaged and waiting for a vulnerable and uncritical mind.

This is superficiality just above the level of the treacly romances of a Barbara Cartland, but only just. Hoffman is undoubtedly a much more adept writer of prose. But what she writes about is just as trivial. So much feeling thrown around like confetti at a wedding. Little subtlety; no real tragedy in terms of competing virtues; just pure schmaltz with the substance and impact of a made for television chick-flick.

On the other hand, Oprah apparently loved it for the same reasons.

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