What readers think of Blue Diary, plus links to write your own review.

A beautiful and intelligent book about love and loss

I thought this book was superb, I loves how the natural world was drawn into this book and how nature was used to described people and feelings.

I enjoy anything unpredictable and out of the ordinary and Hoffman delivers this in The Blue Diary. I love the multiple points of view that she reveals chapter by chapter. This allowed me to focus my questions and inferences on the plot rather than on how different characters thought or felt. Her symbolism is beautiful and soft in a book with a rather disturbing subject. Rarely do I read a book about the deconstruction of a character--amazing.

I loved this boo- One of my all-time favorites!

i got the book from my schoo library because once exams were over, i figured i would be bored and have nothing to do. i hadn't read a book that i WANTED to read since last summer and i had read another book by hoffman so i noticed the name. i picked up the book and within the first two chapters, once i figured out that the perspective was changing, i was completely engrossed in the book. i ended up having to return the book before finishing and found myself running to every bookstore in search of it, finally finding a not-so-expensive copy on amazon. i personally think it's a great book, definitely a page turner for me at least.

Alice Hoffman's novels are in a league of their own. Her magical, lyrical prose wraps around the story in a way that leaves the reader wondering how she does it. Blue Diary is a story of hard choices, believable yet imbued with a dreamlike quality. My favorite of her books is Second Nature, but this one is a worthy entry in her body of work.

This was the first book by Alice Hoffman that I have read and I've mixed reactions to it. In essence, it's worth sticking with the book and reading it for the character development despite the stylistic excesses. Hoffman has a bad case of "purple prose". She would, no doubt, describe it as "an ultra-marine tone, similar to the underside of a Navajo hummingbird's wing during a roseate sunset in the desert"; it is, nonetheless, purple.

What Hoffman can do very well however is understand the complex emotions and thoughts of people caught up in circumstances they feel they do not control. Is it politically incorrect to suggest that her sympathy seems to be a type of feminine consciousness, albeit one men would benefit from developing further?

I struggled with this book and would hesitate to recommend it to a friend whilst at the same time admiring the author’s skill. In future I’ll peek into another Hoffman book to get a glimpse of the prose style before taking it to the checkout.

This book is lousy.