Books : Fiction : Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards : Authors A-Z : S : Shreve, Anita

Shop Categories

...S

Testimony

Anita Shreve
Body Surfing

Anita Shreve
The Weight of Water

Anita Shreve
Sea Glass

Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve's new novel Sea Glass represents a remarkable advance. She previously caught the attention of many readers with Fortune's Rocks and The Pilot's Wife, beautifully crafted novels with rich and subtly observed characterisation. But however impressive those books were, Sea Glass has the same adroit creation of character, but the prose is even more rich and allusive. This is a story of the human heart, of the demands of the past, and of the necessity for pragmatism in human relationships. It's 1929, and Honora Beecher and her husband Sexton are enjoying their new marriage in a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. Honora is renovating the rundown property and searching for pieces of coloured glass washed up on the beach. Sexton attempts to buy the house they both adore, but with disastrous results: like many other Americans, he is a victim of the stock market crash and is financially wiped out. He is forced to work in a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is having violent results. The couple's struggle to maintain their marriage in the face of dangerous forces that threaten to overwhelm them is vividly and poignantly told.
Shreve has written nine novels and throughout her work she has painstakingly honed her storytelling skills with elegance and intelligence. She is particularly skilful at depicting interlocking lives, as in Sea Glass, and adroitly invests each with its own portion of love and tragedy. If you want to be one of the "early adopters" of Shreve's cherishable novels, now is the time:
In the wet sand by her foot, a bit of colour catches her eye. The glass is green pale and cloudy, the colour of lime juice that has been squeezed into a glass. She brushes the sand off and presses the sea glass into her palm, keeping it for luck.
--Barry Forshaw
The Pilot's Wife

Anita Shreve

With five novels to her credit, including the acclaimed The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve now offers a skilfully crafted exploration of the long reach of tragedy in The Pilot's Wife. News of Jack Lyons's fatal crash sends his wife into shock and emotional numbness:
Kathryn wished she could manage a coma. Instead, it seemed that quite the opposite had happened: She felt herself to be inside of a private weather system, one in which she was continuously tossed and buffeted by bits of news and information, sometimes chilled by thoughts of what lay immediately ahead, thawed by the kindness of others ... frequently drenched by memories that seemed to have no regard for circumstance or place, and then subjected to the nearly intolerable heat of reporters, photographers and curious onlookers. It was a weather system with no logic, she had decided, no pattern, no progression, no form.
The situation becomes even more dire when the plane's black box is recovered, pinning responsibility for the crash on Jack. In an attempt to clear his name, Kathryn searches for any and all clues to the hours before the flight. Yet each discovery forces her to realise that she didn't know her husband of 16 years at all. Shreve's complex and highly convincing treatment of Kathryn's dilemma, coupled with intriguing minor characters and an expertly paced plot, makes The Pilot's Wife really take off. --James Barry
Strange Fits of Passion

Anita Shreve
Light on Snow

Anita Shreve

Best-selling author Anita Shreve has chosen as her latest protagonist a 12-year-old girl, whose life has not just been touched by tragedy, but blown apart by it. Nicky and her father have moved to a remote house on the outskirts of a remote village somewhere in New Hampshire, following a road accident which has wiped out the rest of their family. Nicky¹s father would like to live like a hermit, but recognises, even through his intense grief, that 12-year-olds need many things the world has to offer.
And then, one afternoon, just as the light is beginning to fade, a brief walk in the snow-swept woods surrounding their home and a chance encounter brings father and daughter unexpectedly together. United in their shock at finding a newborn baby wrapped in a bloody sleeping bag, they move heaven and earth to save her life. They manage to get the infant to hospital, yet despite an outpouring of emotion, the pair soon start to fall back into their old ways; tiptoeing carefully around each other, fearing to speak the name of their grief, pretending at normality. Until, that is, a pretty young woman comes knocking on their door and all three are forced to question their motives and look into each other¹s hearts.
Light on Snow is a beautifully sad reflection on life and loss, grief and hope and recognising the time in our lives to forgive others and ourselves and move forward. Anita Shreve has proved once again that she is a gifted exponent of the human psyche and the dual frailty and immense strength of the human spirit.
--Carey Green
Resistance

Anita Shreve
Eden Close

Anita Shreve
The Last Time They Met

Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve, who has long since cornered the market with her finely written romantic thrillers, has proved herself a true mistress of the genre with her latest novel, The Last Time They Met. Since her 1994 debut with novels such as Eden Close and Where or When, Ms Shreve has come a long way, skilfully blending both historical and more up-to-date story-lines into her novels alongside recurrent themes that transcend time and place: love, loss and death. Long-time Shreve fans and newcomers alike will find The Last Time They Met a gripping read but it is also rather unusual as it features, as one of its two main protagonists, a minor character from a previous novel, The Weight of Water, and attempts to explain how and why he becomes the man he is. This is rather fascinating and if you've read the original novel in which Thomas, the alcoholic poet, features, you'll recognise him and feel immediately drawn to him. And if you haven't, by the end of this book, you'll want to read more.
The Last Time They Met is based on a tale of childhood sweethearts and a theme Shreve writes about so passionately and with such conviction one can't help wonder if she spends her nights dreaming of her first love. Ambitiously, she tells her tale of Thomas and his lover (Linda) from the present backwards, travelling from a poet's convention in Toronto via politically repressive Nairobi to Massachusetts and small-town 1960s' schooldays. The grand passions, the loveless marriages, abuse, lost children and, most heart-wrenchingly, the utterly wasted lives unfold majestically and with intense pathos. If the greatest test of a good book is not just that you can't put it down, but that it haunts your memory for far longer than it takes to read, then this is a cracking read with an end that will leave you reeling. --Carey Green
A Wedding in December

Anita Shreve
Fortune's Rocks

Anita Shreve

Hester Prynne never had it so good! The year is 1899, and Olympia Biddeford, the headstrong daughter of a Boston Brahmin family, has decided to test the limits of her cloistered world. Spending the summer at her father's New Hampshire estate, the teenage heroine of Fortune's Rocks is entranced with the visiting salon of artists, writers and lawyers. She's especially captivated, however, by John Haskell, a charismatic physician who ministers to the blue-collar community in the nearby mill towns. This middle-aged Good Samaritan hires Olympia to assist him as a nurse and their collaboration soon evolves into a fiery love affair. Alas, it's only a matter of weeks before this passionate exercise in managed care is exposed--with disastrous consequences for the young, impregnated heroine. Even her adoring father now considers her "an over-plump, 16-year-old girl whose judgement can no longer be trusted" and insists that she break off her relationship:
"There is nothing more to be said on this subject", he says. She bites her lip to keep from crying out further. She holds the arms of her chair so tightly she later will have cramps in her fingers. She will refuse to obey him, she thinks. She will accept his implied challenge and set off on her own. But in the next moment, she asks herself: How will she be able to do that?
Without her father's support, she cannot hope to survive. And if she herself does not survive, then a child cannot live."
In the end, Anita Shreve's seventh novel is a polished, supremely entertaining variation on Wuthering Heights, with Olympia and Haskell sitting in for Catherine and Heathcliff. The author did some meticulous research for her New England background, which gives this study of one particular wayward woman some extra historical heft. Some readers may find the plot twists a bit pat. And despite Olympia's efforts to be an independent woman, she overcomes her trials largely as a result of her family's wealth and station, which takes the edge off Shreve's feminist message. Still, Fortune's Rocks is a romance in the classic sense of the word and should be enjoyed as such, unless the reader is absolutely allergic to happy endings. --Ted Leventhal
Where or When?

Anita Shreve
Testimony

Anita Shreve
Testimony

Anita Shreve
Olympia.

Anita Shreve
All He Ever Wanted

Anita Shreve

Anita Shrieve's bitter novel All He Ever Wanted is a fascinating demonstration of the theory that old stories give new stories the bones from which they derive their power. There is a sense in which this is a reverse Bluebeard narrative--the quietly monstrous narrator Van Tassel is obsessed with taking possession of all the secret rooms in the heart of the woman he loves and cannot understand why secrets might be a good thing. Van Tassel is one of the best characters Shrieve has created--a fussy, pedantic man with a real capacity for passion and some genuine grievances with life, but lacking in some crucial ingredients of his moral compass. His love for his wife, Etna, and with the petty politics of the college where he is teaching, turn him steadily rancid, and it is only within the framing narrative that an older Van Tassel seems to be approaching a capacity for redemption. Part of the strength of the book is that Shrieve has understood the beginnings of the 20th century, not merely in terms of the surface details, but in the permissions the ideas of the time give those with small amounts of domestic power to behave badly. In the end, though, Van Tassel loses almost everything--if there is a weakness here, it is that Shrieve is so optimistic that, out of his reach and knowledge, Etna finds a contentment that Van Tassel's narrative cannot show us. --Roz Kaveney
Body Surfing

Anita Shreve
Eden Close (Tape)

Anita Shreve
Sea Glass

Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve's new novel Sea Glass represents a remarkable advance. She previously caught the attention of many readers with Fortune's Rocks and The Pilot's Wife, beautifully crafted novels with rich and subtly observed characterisation. But however impressive those books were, Sea Glass has the same adroit creation of character, but the prose is even more rich and allusive. This is a story of the human heart, of the demands of the past, and of the necessity for pragmatism in human relationships. It's 1929, and Honora Beecher and her husband Sexton are enjoying their new marriage in a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. Honora is renovating the rundown property and searching for pieces of coloured glass washed up on the beach. Sexton attempts to buy the house they both adore, but with disastrous results: like many other Americans, he is a victim of the stock market crash and is financially wiped out. He is forced to work in a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is having violent results. The couple's struggle to maintain their marriage in the face of dangerous forces that threaten to overwhelm them is vividly and poignantly told.
Shreve has written nine novels and throughout her work she has painstakingly honed her storytelling skills with elegance and intelligence. She is particularly skilful at depicting interlocking lives, as in Sea Glass, and adroitly invests each with its own portion of love and tragedy. If you want to be one of the "early adopters" of Shreve's cherishable novels, now is the time:
In the wet sand by her foot, a bit of colour catches her eye. The glass is green pale and cloudy, the colour of lime juice that has been squeezed into a glass. She brushes the sand off and presses the sea glass into her palm, keeping it for luck.
--Barry Forshaw