Magic Hour: A Novel

“Even Ellie, who’d lived here all of her life, was awed by the sudden change of weather. It was Magic Hour, the moment in time when every leaf and blade of grass seemed separate, when sunlight, burnished by the rain and softened by the coming night, gave the world an impossibly beautiful glow.”

Hannah describes the titular phenomenon of “Magic Hour” as the time of day right before the sun goes down. The transformation of nature here correlates with the transformation of the character’s lives. This imagery foreshadows the interior development of the characters because Alice and Julia will transform each other through their mutual connection.

“Julia wished she could do that, but she’d always needed to be accepted. As a shrink, she knew the hows and whys of her need—how her popular, in-the-spotlight family had somehow made her feel marginalized and unimportant, how her father’s withheld love had made her believe she was unlovable—but knowledge didn’t soften the need. She wasn’t even sure how it had come to matter so much. All she knew was that her profession, her ability to help people, had filled the frightened place inside of her with joy, and now she was scared again.”

Julia’s neglect from her father caused her to pursue a career in psychiatry. However, when Julia loses her career, she realizes that she does not how to regain her self-worth. She acknowledges the irony that as a psychiatrist, she knows how to help others navigate their trauma but is stuck in her own. Julia’s return to Rain Valley helps her regain her confidence apart from outside validation from her father or the media.

“She had seen even as a child when no one else, especially Ellie, ever had: that her father’s selfishness had crushed his wife’s spirit, just as he’d crushed his younger daughter’s. Only Ellie had flourished in the white-hot light of her father’s self-absorption.”

Julia and Ellie are sisters, but their different childhood experiences cause Julia to second-guess herself. However, as Julia returns to Rain Valley, she realizes that her father’s selfishness smothered her. While Ellie rose to the challenge of making her father love her—Hannah characterizes this success as dubious through the descriptor “white hot”—Julia felt crushed by the conditions surrounding her father’s love. Her introspection here characterizes her as insightful, rooting her success as a psychiatrist in her childhood and natural talent.

“Julia was surprised by the lack of fear in those eyes. Perhaps she was looking at the other side of fear. What happened to a child when fear had been the norm forever…did it melt into watchfulness?”

Alice’s fear is so normal in her life that Julia realizes it has turned into watchfulness. Rather than showing terror, Alice learns to watch for the moment when a person will hurt her because she believes that it will always happen eventually. Julia’s hypothetical questions here characterize Alice as different from the children she normally works with.

“Julia couldn’t imagine being the kind of doctor that would use a traumatized child for career advancement, but she knew that sooner or later those kinds of people would come for the girl. If the true story were as bad as she thought it could be, it would make front page news. ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you again,’ Julia vowed to the little girl asleep in the hospital. ‘I promise.’”

Julia understands that The Challenges of Professional Life and Public Perception make doctors use their patients to further their careers. Due to Julia’s experience with the media and the demise of her career, she decides to focus only on Alice’s recovery rather than push to learn or gain something from her.

“The so-called professionals wanted to know and understand—and yes, to ‘save,’—a human being totally unlike all others, one who could be seen as more pure, more untouched than anyone born in a thousand years. A person unsocialized, uncorrupted by man’s teachings. One by one they had failed in their quest. Why? Because they cared too little about their patients. She wouldn’t be like the doctors who’d gone before her, who’d sucked the soul from their patients, furthered their own careers, and then moved on, leaving their silent, broken patients locked behind bars, more confused and alone than they’d been in the woods.”

Julia understands that the pitfall of doctors studying patients like Alice is that they do not want the patients to get better. Julia fears that doctors will want to preserve Alice in her trauma because it teaches them more about how human beings act. Instead, Julia wants to guide Alice toward healing because she does not want her to suffer more than she already has. She defines herself through juxtaposition here, describing herself in contrast to these doctors’ cold demeanor.

“She wrote down: In the absence of people, or society, how do we learn? By trial and error? By mimicry of other species? Perhaps she learned to learn fast and by observation.”

As Julia observes Alice, she wrestles with the complexity of the human psyche, represented by her string of hypothetical questions. Alice’s methods of mimicking Julia cause her to wonder if people learn through mimicry. Julia never answers her question, however, because she learns to parent Alice rather than observe her.

“He paused at the door and turned to her. ‘Mad?’ His voice dropped. ‘I’m hardly mad, Ellie. But how would you know that? The only emotions you really understand are your own.’”

As Cal’s relationship with Ellie develops, he points out how her selfishness affects other people. Even though Cal is going through a divorce, Ellie does not know about it because she refuses to ask about anyone else’s life. Cal’s frustration with Ellie makes him honest but also shows Ellie that she could lose the people she loves if she does not change her behavior. While Julia envies Ellie for figuring out how to win their father’s affection growing up, the omniscient third-person narrator shows that this has come at a cost; as an adult, Ellie struggles to communicate with others.

“She is not afraid. She cannot recall ever feeling like this. Usually her first thought is: hide. She has spent so long trying to make herself as small as possible.”

While Alice is nonverbal for much of the novel, the third-person omniscient narrator gives her a voice. Her perspective reveals how she has lost her sense of identity through her abuse. Her focus for most of her life has been on survival, and learning to live without fear will be a difficult journey for her.

“The instant the words were out of Julia’s mouth, she remembered the last time she’d said them. It had been a cool, steely day in the season that passed for winter in Southern California. She’d been in the two-thousand-dollar leather chair in her office, making notes and listening to another girl’s voice. On the sofa opposite her sat Amber Zuniga, all dressed in black, trying not to cry. Trust is everything, Julia had said. You can tell me what you’re feeling right now.”

Julia telling Alice to trust her makes her have a flashback to when she said the same thing to Amber. This flashback causes Julia to doubt herself, but it makes her face the weight of her guilt and realize that what happened to Amber was not her fault.

“But this case was far from ordinary. The longer Alice remained in her solitary, isolated world, the less likely it was that she would ever emerge. Therefore, they didn’t have the luxury of time. She needed to force a confrontation between the two Alices—the child lost in the woods and the girl who’d been returned to the world. The two halves needed to integrate into a single personality or Alice’s future would be at risk.”

Julia uses the metaphor of Alice’s identity split into two halves to show the process of recovery. Since Alice trusts Julia in the comfort of her room, Julia worries that if she does not integrate Alice into the world, she will always be the girl lost in the woods.

“But It doesn’t. It feels like nothing in her hand, just bits of string and twig. There is no blood on It, no trace of his big, angry hand. She rips it in half, and at the motion, she feels something new grow inside her, a kind of rumble that starts deep in her belly and catches in her throat. It feels so good to break His toy, to ruin it, to reach into the box and grab another one. She rips them all, then destroys the box. As she breaks and snaps, she thinks of Him, of all the ways He hurt her, and all the times she wanted to scream.”

Alice’s therapeutic destruction of the dream catchers heals a part of her. The narration uses nonstandard punctuation here, capitalizing “It,” “Him,” and “His” to symbolize the weight of Alice’s trauma. Although she cannot communicate with Julia yet, she uses the destruction to channel her fury over the abuse that Terrance enacted on her.

“We men of science have sought a child like this for decades. If taught to talk, she can be a gold mine of information. Think of it. Who are we in the absence of one another? What is true human nature? Is language instinctive? And what is the link between language and humanity? Do words allow us to dream—to think—or vice versa? She can answer all these questions. Even you must see that.”

The doctors who visit Julia do not see Alice as a human being but as a specimen to study. Although the questions that the doctor asks reveal a curiosity about the human psyche, they do not leave room for empathy or recovery for Alice. The scientific mind is represented through more hypothetical questions here, but unlike Julia, the doctor doesn’t wonder about Alice as a person.

“You are like all the doctors who have been associated with children like this in the past. You want to use her, treat her like a lab rat so that you can write your papers and find fame. When you’ve sucked her dry, you’ll move on and forget her. She’ll grow up warehoused and behind bars and medicated beyond recognition. I won’t let you do it. She’s my foster child and my patient.”

Julia uses a metaphor to compare the doctor’s lack of empathy to seeing Alice as a lab rat rather than a little girl. She emphasizes the way doctors dehumanize Alice and other patients like her. Julia’s transition to a mother figure is emphasized by her repetition of “my” and the fact that she lists herself as a foster mother before a doctor.

“Alice was offering sympathy. The child had recognized her sadness and wanted to alleviate it. She was connecting, answering in the only way she knew how. Suddenly, none of the rest of it mattered. Julia felt a wave of gratitude to this poor, strange little girl who had just reached out to her, reminded her that she made a difference. No ugly headlines or ambitious doctors or unfeeling child welfare system could steal from her.”

Alice shows sympathy when she sees that Julia feels upset by the doctor’s words, a major milestone in their relationship and Alice’s recovery. Her sympathy reminds Julia of her purpose in the world: to help people. Alice’s action makes Julia steel herself against outside criticism because she knows what is best for Alice’s recovery.

“It is a feeling Girl has never known before, this holding of the wholeness of her. She closes her eyes and lets her face burrow into the softness of Sun Hair’s neck, which smells of the flowers that grow when the sun comes sneaking up through nighttime. ‘Stay,’ she whispers again, smiling now.”

Although Alice still has a way to go in her recovery, Julia’s tenderness toward her is something that she has never experienced before. For this reason, Alice uses her newfound voice to tell Julia to stay with her because she no longer wants to return to the isolation of the woods. Her affection for Julia is clear in the name she has given her—“Sun Hair,” and her own incomplete healing is represented in the way that she thinks about herself: “Girl” rather than “Alice,” or even “me.”

“She’s lived in a world that’s different than ours, with different fundamental rules. When I was doing research on the documented cases of wild children, it was clear that in most previous centuries, these children were romanticized, seen as examples of true nature. Uncorrupted and uncivilized, they came to represent a purity of man that couldn’t exist in a society that set down rules of behavior.”

Julia explains to Ellie how the medical community has viewed wild children like Alice, adding a layer of historical context to the novel. The romantic idea that someone like Alice has the key to understanding humanity’s purpose shows that the medical community does not understand the extent of Alice’s abuse. Julia knows that Alice resorted to living in the woods and acting like a wolf because it was necessary to survive.

“Maybe that was the lesson she’d needed to learn from the tragedy with Amber, the missing signs she’d been so desperate to find. In her business, there would be failures. Heartbreaking losses. But to be the best, she had to stay strong in her belief that she made a difference. She was strong again. No phone calls from scientists or so-called colleagues or questions from the media would ruin her again. No one would take Alice from her.”

Through Julia’s experience with Alice, she realizes that Amber’s choices were not her fault. Julia never experienced heartbreak in her career until Amber; now, she understands that this will be part of her career. Julia realizes that she needs to learn this lesson to be a strong mother for Alice because no matter what, she will fight for Alice. Her renewed resolve is represented through the repetition of “No” here—nothing will stand in her way.

“Love rips the shit out of you and puts you back together like a broken toy, with all kinds of cracks and jagged edges. It’s not about the falling in love. It’s about the landing, the staying where you said you’d be and working to keep the love strong. You never did get that.”

Cal gives Ellie some tough love, their intimacy represented by his casual diction and use of swear words. He uses the metaphor of a broken toy to describe how Ellie refuses to take risks; similar to how she maintained her father’s love by bending to his expectations, she doesn’t let her true self shine through in relationships and risk being “broken.” Although Cal’s words are difficult for her to hear, she realizes that he knows her better than she knows herself because she has never wanted to do the hard work to keep a relationship alive.

“She met his gaze and saw fear in his blue eyes. He was afraid of her, of them. It was a fear she understood; it had shaped much of her life. Passion was a dangerous thing and love even more so. More often than not, it was love that had devastated her patients—either its excess or its lack. But Alice had taught her a thing or two about love…and courage.”

Julia understands Max’s fear of experiencing love again since experiencing his trauma. However, Alice’s hard work toward recovery has taught Julia about life. By working with Alice, Julia knows that only good things lie behind trusting people, even though one can get their heart broken. This excerpt exemplifies how Julia has grown as a character because of her relationship with Alice.

“In her dreams she is two girls—big girl Alice who knows how to count with her fingers and use her words to make herself understood. On the other side of the river is baby Brittany, wearing the pants called diapers and playing with her red ball. The old mommy is there with her, waving good-bye.”

Alice uses a metaphor to describe how she feels like two different people—Brittany, who was named by her mother and is caught in that loving past, and Alice, who was named by Julia and has the chance to grow. She realizes that to heal, she must release her grief over the child she was before her abduction. Zoë waving goodbye in her dream signifies Alice’s closure because she knows that she must part with her mother forever.

“She knows about Leaving. Mommies who are soon to be DEAD have pale cheeks and shaking voices and leaking eyes. They try to tell you things you don’t understand, hug you so tightly you can’t breathe. And then one day they’re gone and you’re alone and you wish your eyes would leak and someone would hold you again, but you’re alone now and you don’t know what you did wrong.”

Alice’s flashback to Zoë’s death reveals that she does not understand that her mother’s death was not her fault. Instead, Alice believes that she must have done something wrong to make her mother die. This reveals Alice’s fear of abandonment and why she thinks that she caused her separation from Julia rather than their separation being something outside of her control.

“At that, Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. ‘Real hurts.’”

Alice cries when George takes her away from Julia rather than howling like she normally does. This shows Alice’s development toward expressing her emotions rather than resorting to past behaviors. Alice connects her emotions to The Velveteen Rabbit because she understands that to love someone else is to experience loss, which she protected herself from when she lived alone in the woods.