Rating: 
Summary: huh?
Review: This book would have been a five in my eyes if it wasn't for the last paragraph. I am very confused by the ending, because I can seem to find any hints to it earlier in the novel - it's as though she just couldn't think of an ending. I wish it had ended another way instead of what seems to be a copy of a some-what recent movie where the ending produced much better results
Rating: 
Summary: For those who have been in love...
Review: As soon as I began reading this book I knew it was for me. I am 18, near the age of the two lovers at the end (start) of the story, and I am still getting over someone whom I knew was the one. Once I learned that Linda and Thomas had been lovers entangled forever, I immideiately could relate. I am a whiny poet type, and thus I also could relate to Thomas and Linda. Those are the main reasons I fell in love with this novel. I also love the stucture of the book, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning, the style of Shreve's writing, a thick prose that seems poetic at points, and the cover. (I mean HELLO) it is the most beautiful book cover I have ever seen. well, I shouldn't judge this book by its cover, but what is on the inside of this book was almost as good. I reccommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who has lost a lover whether it be their death, a breakup, etc. I really enjoyed this book and I hope you do too.
Rating: 
Summary: Borrrrrring!
Review: I found this to be a totally insipid novel about two whiners. I had to force myself to finish it. The last page was the most interesting. I read The Weight of Water and liked it better than this story - even though I found Thomas to be self-centered. I won't be reading another Shreeve novel. The characters are egocentric and uninteresting. What a waste of time and money.
Rating:
Summary: Glad I'm not the only one confused by the ending.
Review: After reading these reviews, I'm no closer to completely understanding the ending to a book that I otherwise enjoyed. I was hoping to get more clues from the reviews, guess I'll read it again to see what I missed.
Rating:
Summary: Speechless
Review: I am still in such shock from the end of this book that I can hardly think of words to describe it.
I could not put this book down. While I found the first hundred pages difficult to understand, I was enthralled with Linda and Thomas as the book took you back through their lives together. I fell in love with them both.
However, as I started nearing the end, and the pages were dwindling, I started to fear that there was no way the book could come to any kind of closure within the very few remaining pages - I was right - sadly!
I feel totally floored by the ending, and I am unbelievably disappointed. While I don't think the ending was a copout, I feel unfulfilled by a book that up until the end was very fulfilling!
Poor Thomas, living with demons. But, more so, poor reader who will be manipulated into loving these characters only to realize that they were lost before they began.
I saw the movie the Sixth Sense and I left there feeling satisfied - I have finished this book - and while the ending was essentially the same, I feel betrayed.
The characters are stolen from you - and they are endearing characters. I can only liken it to realizing, while reading Bridges of Madison Country, that the love affair was merely in Francesca's mind, and that Robert didn't really exist.
I can't recommend this book - at least not until I get over the great loss I feel at this forsaken ending.
Rating:
Summary: A compulsive read, couldn't put it down!
Review: As a fast reader, I like to have a wide variety of novels to hand but on this occasion decided to try an author new to me. I usually stear clear of romances or any story that might be labelled as such yet once I started reading 'The Last Time They Met', I couldn't put it down.Having no previous experience of Anita Shreve's work, I was not comparing it as other reviewers seem to have down and found it compulsive...perhaps because it echoed my own past? This is a marvellous novel containing all the elements and frustrations of lost love seen through the lives of Linda and Thomas with which so many of us can sympathise but without over-sentimentality. The tri-part structure, which does not follow the usual chronological or flash-back pattern, concentrates the mind and the simple human touches keep the reader enthralled.The ending is,as with all successfuI novels,a shock!I even re-read the last pages to make sure that I had not made a mistake.This is one of the few books that I have read more than twice, need I say more!
Rating: 
Summary: Two and1/2 stars
Review: I have red the readers' revews first and tried to pay attention to all the details from the beginning, and yet there was no surprise at the end of this book for me. Besides, in The Weight of Water, I really disliked Thomas' charecter, and now I dislike him even more even though he is supposed to be a positive character in this book. I really do like the way the book was written, but I wish the story itself was more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: A Great "Shocker" of a Novel...
Review: This was a book I took on a recent trip to Hawaii. I was so shocked by the end, I wanted to start over and read it all again! A definite keeper, regardless of what else you may read here. Grant it, I do work in the mental health profession, so I am always intrigued by characters who suffer from disorders of thought or mood. Such a good book by a great author....especially while spending time on the beach!
Rating:
Summary: Ghastly
Review: I usually (but not always) scrupuously avoid "pop" fiction and this book is one of the prime examples of why.Outwardly, the plot of this book is nothing special but nothing really terrible, either. Two middle-aged poets, Thomas Janes, a major poet, and Linda Fallon, a rather minor one, meet after many years at a Canadian writers' conference. Janes and Fallon, we learn, were once lovers, but apparently their lives took very different paths and each married and made a home with another. Now, however, both Janes and Fallon are free of romantic entanglements and free to be together. But will they take advantage of their freedom? Can they? These questions are pivotal because nothing in this book is what it seems to be. "The Last Time They Met" is divided into three sections: "Fifty-Two," "Twenty-Six," and "Seventeen," representing the ages at which Janes and Fallon meet. The narrative, in terms of linear time, runs backwards...for a very good reason. I found much of the prose in this book to be melodramic, cliched or simply bad. In any event, there's nothing about it to lift
it above the very, very ordinary. Combined with the ho-hum storyline and cliched characters this doesn't leave us with much of anything. As a frequent visitor to Africa, I found the African section to be very poorly written. And the letters; they all sound as though they were written by the very same person...Shreve. A lot of reviewers have complained about the ending of this book and, in my opinion, their complaints are more than justified. Like some of the other readers, I could see the ending coming as soon as I began the book...the italicization, the backward timeline and the peculiar phrasing of some of the dialogue were all huge giveaways. Those readers who didn't see the end coming, however, have every right to feel cheated and used. Literary "gimmicks" rarely work (and they certainly aren't a substitute for good writing) and the one used in this book was a particularly cheap one. Anita Shreve certainly didn't make a fan out of me with this book and I won't be giving her another chance. In fact, she may have scared me away from "pop" literature (even the good stuff) for good.
Rating:
Summary: You won't "love" it, until it's over...
Review: I'm generally one of those annoying types who guesses everything, but this book was so spectacular that I am still marveling over the ending. It's one of those endings you read and then re-read.... Shreve definitely delivers the final blow in this one. I can agree that it was slow at times, but this is the one book you don't want to half-read and not finish!
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