'Practical Magic' casts a simple spell

In Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, there is a thin barrier between external events and internal emotions.What affects one woman effects all, even if they are not consciously aware of it. If a broom falls, company is coming. If a couple falls in love, the entire town smells of lemons and the women crave lemonade for days. And if an abusive boyfriend happens to be buried under the old lilac tree, the women in the town are made ill from the scent of lilacs.
In the center of these happenings are the Owens sisters. There is selfish, pleasure seeking Gillian and the pragmatic and down to earth Sally (In the film, these characters were played by Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.) Both women have traveled away from their small Massachusetts town and from each other, with one common goal- to deny their inherited powers of magic and prophecy... that is, until the day that Gillian shows up on Sally's doorstep with a dead ex-boyfriend in her car.
Worried that the police will look at bruised and battered Gillian and see nothing more then a murderer, the sisters bury the man under the lilac tree. As luck would have it, the more Gillian tries to forget about her abusive relationship and the corpse under the tree, the more the tree's flowers flourish and bloom. The sisters cut it down. It regenerates itself. They try to rip it up from the roots. It is back in the morning. The tree and the man buried under it becomes a stylized metaphor for both Gillian's increasing self doubt and for the dark side of love gone wrong. Until she meets Ben Frye, a kind and gentle Biology teacher, she wonders if her abusive situation "had fixed something in her so that she actually needed to be hit now."
Sally faces her own personal trials. For years she has been the stable sister and after the death of her husband, she has done nothing but watch relationships of all kinds pass her by. Will she be able to accept the witchy things inside herself long enough to make herself happy?
Also, watch out for deep and thoughtful characterizations of Sally's two daughters- Antonia and Kylie- who wrestle with their own issues of power and magic. The movie merely presented the girls as tiny miniatures of Kidman and Bullock and as such did a great disservice to these well-wrought characters.
One of the most wonderful things about this simple, charming novel is the community feel to the story line. The main theme of this novel could be "What affects one, affects all." This extends to everything from gossip to abuse to love. However, in some places Hoffman pushes her own credibility, as when a character gets upset and -suddenly!- there is a thunderstorm.
Overall, this was an excellent, simple and moving novel about the power of women and the thin line between magic and reality.