Everything My Mother Taught Me by Alice Hoffman

Published digitally by Amazon on December 19, 2019

Amazon commissioned five stories for a series it calls Inheritance. The stories are unconnected to each other except by the broad theme of family secrets. In a departure from its usual format, Tzer Island will review one story in the Inheritance series each day this week.

“Everything My Mother Taught Me” is told from a child’s point of view. Adeline Ivey is only twelve for most of the story, but in the tradition of fiction told from a child’s perspective, she is wise beyond her years. Perhaps her wisdom benefits from hindsight, although Adeline’s age at the time she tells the story is unclear. The narrative voice is distinctly Alice Hoffman’s and it does not match a twelve-year-old whose education has been minimal. It is therefore fair to assume that Adeline is telling the story at a later stage in her life. Still, Adeline portrays herself as having a deeper understanding of human nature than would be typical of a child raised in relative isolation.

The story is set in 1908, a time when women who felt unconstrained by the bounds of matrimony might have been termed promiscuous, or worse. Adeline tells us that her mother Nora “ruined my father’s life, and mine, and she didn’t seem to notice.” Nora did so by keeping company with men in the local tavern rather than her husband, who dies a quiet death while his wife is enjoying the attention of other men. None of Nora’s boyfriends want the burden of supporting a widow, so Nora is forced to take a job as a lighthouse keeper on a small rocky island near Boston.

For reasons of her own, Adeline stopped speaking after her father died. Her silence does not seem to trouble the island dwellers, some of whom she befriends. Eventually she gives advice and comfort to a married friend named Julie, who for some reason decides to confide in a mute twelve-year-old, perhaps because muteness assures that her secrets will not be revealed. In any event, the heart of the story concerns a conspiracy between Adeline and Julie, largely planned by Adeline, to save Julie from her abusive husband.

Alice Hoffman writes with quiet grace. The story ends in a satisfying way that instills warm feelings toward Adeline without relying on contrivances to manipulate the reader’s emotions — save perhaps for Adeline’s willful muteness, a character trait that is surprisingly unoriginal. In all other respects, however, I admire Hoffman’s restraint. “Everything My Mother Taught Me” does just enough to make its point — even a child can make and implement a life-altering decision, one that the child will intuitively know to be correct — without trying to do too much. I didn’t entirely buy Adeline’s silence or the setup, but I nevertheless enjoyed the story, and that’s what counts.

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