When I picked up this novel, I did not know who Alice Hoffman was. I have since learned that she has written many novels which often involve the use of magic and the supernatural. I suppose if I had known that going in, the twists in The Invisible Hour would have been less startling to me but I’m not sure it would have changed my feeling about this novel, which is pretty “meh.” The Invisible Hour starts with a very interesting premise that drew me right in: Mia Jacob has been raised in an enclosed community or cult in the mountains of Western Massachusetts, and at the age of 15, thanks to the influence of forbidden books she has read, Mia has decided she is leaving. The first part of the novel, setting up The Community and the manner in which Mia’s mother found herself there, is really well done and sets the reader on edge. Then in the second part, things get weird in a magical and supernatural way, and the weirdness involves Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter.
When Mia’s mother Ivy was a teenager in Boston, she lived with her wealthy parents, attended a good school and frequently visited the library. She was also a bit of a wild girl who got into trouble a lot and fell out with her parents often. The last straw was when she became pregnant by a Harvard student who refused to acknowledge his responsibilities or help Ivy in any way. Ivy’s parents were furious with her, ashamed, and ready to ship off Ivy somewhere out West to have her baby and then give it up for adoption. Headstrong independent Ivy grabs what she can and leaves in the night, hooking up with another runaway who has heard about a commune in the western part of the state where they could live. This is The Community in the small rural town called Blackwell. It is a cult run by a man named Joel who forbids outside influences, including books, and requires the submission of the men, women and children who live there. Ivy, given her beauty, becomes Joel’s favorite and the one he chooses to marry. At this point, Ivy realizes she has made a mistake, but she feels there is no going back. Joel will hurt her baby Mia if she resists, and she has no allies amongst the other women of The Community who resent her. As Mia grows older, she and Ivy often attend the Saturday farmers’ market in Blackwell, selling The Community’s produce, and it is there that Mia first learns about the library. It is of course a forbidden place but Ivy encourages Mia to run in when they are there. Mia starts stealing books and wins the attention and sympathy of the librarian Mrs. Mott, who lets Mia know that if she ever needs help, all she has to do is ask her for it. While Mia would like nothing better than to run away, she cannot convince Ivy to leave. Ivy fears Joel and believes he would be able to find them no matter where they went. After Ivy’s untimely death and Joel’s discovery of Mia’s hidden stash of books, Mia is locked in the barn and awaits her punishment: branding with the letter “A” for “acts of wickedness.” Mia takes her fate into her own hands and breaks out, taking a small watercolor picture she found in the office and the one book still in her possession — Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the book that convinced her to stay alive instead of committing suicide. I guess it has been a decade or four since I read that novel, but I really don’t remember being uplifted in any way by the story, but hey, novels are magic and we all like different things, so ok then. I’ll keep going along with Hoffman because the whole “Joel has some kind of power that will help him always find you” was interesting and promised a good part 2.
Then we get to part 2. Mia’s friend Mrs. Sarah Mott has hooked her up with an old school friend Constance Allen. Sarah and Constance become lovers and Mia has two moms in Boston. She becomes a librarian just like them, but she cannot escape her past. Given the trauma of growing up in a cult, that is not at all surprising. Also, Joel has somehow found Mia and is always sort of lurking creepily in the background. What is weirder though is that Mia is obsessed with Nathaniel Hawthorne to the point where she has a crush on him and at a critical point in the story when it looks like Joel is going to get her, Mia is able to disappear from modern Boston and appear at Hawthorne’s home in 1837. The information about Hawthorne and his family is interesting. I liked his sister Elizabeth because she is clearly a smart woman frustrated by the times in which she lives. If she had been a man, her life would have been full of adventure and probably some kind of literary success, and even though she loves her brother, she also kind of resents that he has the world at his fingertips and seems not to appreciate it or make the most of it. Hawthorne ends up falling in love with Mia, they have an affair, things get super weird and eventually Joel does show up in Mia’s life in a way that threatens not only Mia but the real historical timeline.
In addition to just being weird as hell (sorry but a romantic interlude with Nathaniel Hawthorne is just nutty, IMO), I felt like there were aspects of this novel that just didn’t hold together. I have questions about the time travel and its ultimate impact on one character in particular at the end, and Hoffman introduced a character at the beginning of the novel — Helen Connelly, the family maid — who, it seemed, was meant to perhaps play an important role in Mia’s life but then just sort of faded out. I also have questions about Mia’s ultimate fate. I feel like story lines didn’t get resolved in a completely satisfactory manner.
While I love the idea of a book celebrating libraries, librarians and the magic of books, this book went to some strange places. I don’t feel like Mia was as well developed a character as she should have been and the time travel complicated the plot in unwelcome ways. Not my cup of tea but perhaps this novel fits in with her other works. If you are a fan of Alice Hoffman, I’d like to know your thoughts on this novel.
