Sarah Addison Allen's recipe for capturing a loyal audience is to handle real human problems with a light, sympathetic touch, a writing style that draws in the reader, a sense of humor (and the absurd) and presenting magic as an integral part of everyday life.
Allen Introduced Her Magical Touch in Garden Spells
Allen's first book, Garden Spells, featured (among other magical mysteries) a main character that happened to be a savvy curmudgeon apple tree. Frustrated romance fraught with predictable conflict was saved not only by the less predictable tree but a cast of adorable characters.
Allen left those who discovered her in this first book wishing for more. Would she be able to conjure another delightful read with such originality? Indeed, she could.
Allen's Writing Showed Development and Promise in The Sugar Queen
The Sugar Queen appeared next, intertwining delightful magic with a more serious side of the supernatural. Parallel characters intersect their lives,along the way solving deeply troubling human problems with the aid of each other as much as anything paranormal.
A special sort of magic again lies at the heart of Sarah Addison Allen's third and latest book. In The Girl Who Chased the Moon, Allen's magic wafts and weaves around the lives of the peculiar but beguiling characters who inhabit Mullaby, North Carolina.
The Girl Who Chased the Moon - Coming of Age and Reconciling the Past
Emily Benedict is a girl coming of age, finding romance and her roots all at once in a new town of old secrets, with a grandfather whom she has never met before and is a giant among other oddities.
Emily must cope with bedroom wallpaper that changes color to match her mood and a boyfriend whose father hates her and cannot come out after dark. Then there are the strange lights in the woods and her mother's hidden past no one will discuss.
With all this going on, it is not surprising that Emily cannot shake her anxiety attacks. While Emily finds her way through moonlit nights to the truth about her mother's past, the town, and the boy she is beginning to love, her next door neighbor, Julia Winterson, must come to terms with her own past -- and romance in the present.
Julia is a baker extraordinaire. She too has returned to this quirky southern town, and a secret past. Julia's cakes, like her Hummingbird Cake, are imbued with a certain magic of their own as well. Though Julia and Emily are of different ages, the parallels between their journeys are unmistakable. Both women, youth and mature adult, chase the moon in this sweet, enchanting story, with an interesting supporting cast of characters in Mullaby's residents.
Love, Family, Friends and Everyday Magic – A Recipe as Potent as Julia's Cakes
Allen's genius is her ability to so beautifully and uniquely portray universal human feelings and experiences in a new way. The Girl Who Chased the Moon can certainly be read as a romance with a touch of the supernatural thrown in. Even better, though, it should be read for understanding and hope about self-forgiveness, acceptance, love and redemption. Within these powerful messages, magic is to be expected.
Reviewed: Allen, Sarah Addison, The Girl Who Chased the Moon. New York: Bantam Books, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-553-80721-9 (0-553-80721-8).
Linda Ashar - Linda C. Ashar is a lawyer, educator, horse breeder, freelance writer, and artist. Her 25-year law practice in Avon, Ohio, focuses on ...
