“Faceless: Lack of Character Development in Blackbird House
By Alissa Nielsen
Blackbird House
Alice Hoffman
Random House, 2004
Blackbird House is a series of stories about the various characters who have lived in the same house on the outer reaches of Cape Cod from late 18th century to modern day. Written from different character’s points of view, each chapter reads more like a short story then a longer-length narrative. Although I enjoyed the creepy tone of the stories and the structure, I really struggled with this book because of the lack of character development as well as the overly-obvious imagery/symbolism.
The first chapter is written from an omniscient point of view and the distance made it feel more like a summery than a story. The description in the first chapter, and throughout the book, felt sparse and tacked-on, barely giving the reader enough of an idea of place and character. Consistently, Hoffman tells the reader what to think of the characters: “John Hadley felt a deep love for his wife, Coral, more so than anyone might guess” (3), “George felt closer to Lion than he did to any of his natural children” (103), “Violet West was not one to keep her opinions to herself, especially when it came to her grandson” (115). Instead of taking time to develop these characters for the reader to see, Hoffman prefers just to tell the reader.
I was very unimpressed by Hoffman’s character description: “Corel was a good woman, and John was a handsome man, tall with dark hair and darker eyes...(6)”, “My Father had a beautiful face, with strong features” (153), “Dean was an odd kid, and as he got older, he grew odder still” (174). I felt a very distant, surficial understanding of each character by the end of a chapter and, though many times the story itself was compelling, it all fell flat because the characters and their motivations were underdeveloped.
The setting seemed underdeveloped as well, especially for stories all centered around place. Occasionally there was mention of radishes, pears, salty-air and waves, but the landscape lacked personality and there was surprisingly little description about the house itself...the physical linking element to all the characters.
Maybe it was because many of these stories lacked personality that the use of symbolism stuck out as far too obvious and convenient. The one reoccurring image of the white blackbird, which appears in all of the stories at the “pay attention reader!” times really underestimated the readers intelligence. Birds as symbolic of creation and death is already overused, but Hoffman has to go so far as tell us what the symbol means, “Everyone knows a white blackbird is nothing more than a ghost, a shadow of what it ought to be” (154). Other overused metaphors such as the color red and fish are done at exhausting length in this book.
This book was recommended to me because it is a creepy fairy-tale like story that takes place near the ocean. It is possible that Hoffman is going for the vagueness used in many fairytales and ghost stories as a means of creating more universal story, or possibly as a way of building suspense and tension. For this reader, it didn’t work however. I don’t want to read a universal story, I want to read about individuals. In Blackbird House the characters really lacked the visceral and sensual qualities of being human and, to me, if the characters feel false, then the entire story feels false. ”
