The Rules of Magic

Hoffman’s Practical Magic series intermingles real-life historical events and settings with a world of fantasy. This is particularly the case with The Rules of Magic, which is set both in New York, against the backdrop of social change in the 1960s and ’70s, and in the fictional Massachusetts town where the Magnolia Street house is located. These settings and the mundanity of the characters’ daily lives—going to school and earning a living alongside their magical activities—give Hoffman’s novel elements of the magical-realism genre. Writer and educator Sean Glatch notes that in magical realism, “the focus isn’t on the fantastical elements of the story, so much as on What those elements mean for the characters. Fantasy often acts as an extended metaphor, externalizing some sort of internal conflict or moral quandary in the protagonist’s life” (Glatch, Sean. “What is Magical Realism in Literature? Exploring El Realismo Mágico.” Writers, 2022). This is especially the case for the Owens children, whose magical coming-of-age parallels existential concerns about life and love.

Hoffman uses a variety of techniques, especially the juxtaposition of mundanity with internal conflict, to convey the Owenses’ witch ancestry and their inability to stay away from magic.