In early 1900s Massachusetts a woman doesn't have many options when her husband dies, so her and her daughter are shipped off to help the lighthouse keepers and their families. From the minute her father dies, Adeline decides to stop speaking, but you can still make great change without a physical voice.

From the minute they land in the remote area where the lighthouses are Adeline watches her mother make havoc on these families and she is determined to stop her mother from causing extreme damage. I loved watching this young girl make expert moves without a word spoken.

With minimal pages, this book still made an impact. The ending was just spot on! Made me want a sequel so bad!

This was a beautifully written, emotional short story. I finished reading it in less than 30 minutes. It left me wanting more. I will certainly be reading more from this author. Thanks for the advanced review copy.

"She would have to do away with herself in order to have a life of her own."

This is a story that packs a lot inside less than 30 pages. Adelaine, a voluntarily mute 12-year-old girl, puts her father's legacy to enact a deserved revenge on her miscreant mother. The story explores a different type of mother/daughter relationship and other relationship dynamics in an isolated locale, where three families run the lighthouses of a rocky island. There is hurt and there is a pain but there is also kindness and the ingeniousness of children who outgrow their temporal age in times of adversity.

The story seemed like the basic outline of a larger plot. It left me wanting for more.

A lovely story about a mother/daughter relationship. I really enjoyed this and only wish ot was longer.

The year was 1908 when Adeline’s father died. She was 12.
She and her mother, Nora Ivie, left their home in Boston -forty miles away, to live on island in Essex County... at the tip of Cape Ann. Thacher Island - a remote and desolate place - was named after Anthony Thacher where there had been many shipwrecks, in 1635.

What happens on this island....doesn’t stay on the island...

This is my very favorite short story - of ‘ALL GREAT’ stories by very talented authors....
part of the Amazon 5 book Inheritance series ...

We’ve had stories about mothers and daughters since the beginning of time...
Yet...after finishing Alice Hoffman’s story.. [GOD I LOVE ALICE HOFFMAN]....
it was as if all other stories about mum & daughter were shades of gray compared to Alice’s gut wrenching tale...,
I cried at the end.

Adeline is my new favorite young heroine of any story I’ve read this year!!!

A very personal heartfelt story to me!!!!!

Overflowing with 5 stars.

I adore Alice Hoffman. And though I love her novels, it's her story collections I find myself pulling off the shelf to reread. Like the stories in Blackbird House and The Red Garden, “Everything My Mother Taught Me” takes place in remote New England. With its twin lighthouses, luminous snowdrifts and acres of rocks, Thacher Island in the early 1900s is just as brutally beautiful as the locations in those two books. I can say the the same for the story, which centers on the relationship between 12-year-old Adeline Cutler and her mother Nora. Because of his early death, Adeline's father is mostly absent from the tale but like her vow of silence he exerts a quiet power over the narrative.

As always, Hoffman's writing is gorgeous and multi-layered and more ambiguous than it seems on the surface. The parallel between the sea – “calm as glass, deep-black glass that liked to take a life or two” -- and the events described is flawless. I'm tempted to say more but will keep this brief in keeping with the tale itself.

“Everything My Mother Taught Me” is part of Inheritance, a story collection forthcoming later this year. Though the remaining four pieces are written by other authors, Anthony Marra's “The Lion's Den” is currently available for request on Netgalley. I'm also going to use this opportunity to say I hope Hoffman will write another interlinked story collection set in New England – or to be more specific, to write one set on Thacher Island.

Much thanks to Amazon and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.


Five stars


Pre-order it on Amazon.

Some stories pack a big punch in a small number of pages, and this is definitely one of them. Everything My Mother Taught Me is sad, hopeful, poignant, and fascinating all in one neat little package. The characters were gorgeously written. I loved the juxtaposition of Adeline’s silence with her role as the narrator. This story hints at so much more. I almost want it to be a full novel, but I love the sense of possibility that I am left with as it is. It is perfectly written to be a slice of these characters lives, without getting bogged down in too much extra. This is a story that will live with me for some time to come.

Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A brilliant and atmospheric short story from Alice Hoffman, about a young girl who is little more than an encumbrance to her mother, Nora Ivie. Adeline, named after a soap, adores her father, once a sailor, but then a cobbler until he becomes seriously ill. After his death, she chooses to not talk, taking delight in thwarting her mother. Her mother becomes a housekeeper on a lighthouse on the Essex County Thacer Island. Despite expecting to hate it, Adeline grows to love it, getting close to the kind Julia. Her mother proves to be a problematic presence until Adeline decides to takes matters into her own hands. This is a well written tale of a mother-daughter relationship that is compulsive reading and so gripping. My only problem was that it was short! Otherwise, highly recommended! Many thanks to Amazon Original Stories for an ARC.

I am not a big fan of short stories, but when the author is Alice Hoffman that is just icing on the cake.

A beautifully written, haunting story about a young girl and her uncaring, caustic mother and how that relationship develops.

You will love this!