The Last Time They Met

Rating:
Summary: Luminous, haunting, and provocative questions about love
Review: The Last Time They Met blew me away when I listened to the audioversion. Shreve evokes a whole time and place around the idea of a sacred first love. Thomas and Linda, are like twin souls, separated and in a compulsive drive to merge together. Shreve's tone, timing, tempo, and narrative style sinks the reader into a world of a special and provocative enduring intimacy. In fact, reading this book made me visit Boston because the air of the city streets seemed to seep out of the book. Shreve is a master of economy, choice, and description. The characters are 3-dimensional and her writing prompts rich visual scenes while reading or listening to the story.

Thomas and Linda live eras of their lives in stolen moments. In section one, both are 52 and in Toronto where they are full of nostalgia and recollection. A touching scene is written while they talk on a Ferry to Toronto Island from the downtown Harborfront. This interaction ends in a promising possibility between two weary souls circa 2001 who have hurt so much without each other. Section Two finds Thomas and Linda at 26 in Kenya. This time they are in the realm of the forbidden keeping second choice spouses at bay. Heartache ends this sequence of their lives in the 70's era where Carter is about to fall defeated against Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Section Three is their love at its most joyful and inspiring. Thomas and Linda are blossoming 17-year-old poets in Boston who meet at the edge of a pier. Orphaned Linda has just come home to Massachussetts after being sentenced to a home for wayward girls. Blue blood Thomas is the handsome, pedigreed, cocky, hockey-playing son of a Boston brahmin family on Allerton Hill. Somehow these two connect and their ensuing romance plays out like a Greek tragedy meets Boston Public.

Shreve write a multi-layered kind of romance. I loved it because (A) I am a romantic at heart; (B) It reminded me of my own Thomas; and (C) I do believe that our first loves leave a mark on our souls that no other love can erase. Romantic regret if a tricky topic to write about. Shreve achieves to unfold fiction on this exact theme while holding true to her literary prose. This is not a book of overt nostalgia, melancholy sentimentality, or obsessive yearnings. The Last Time They Met is a testament to the potent power of a true love, first love, and life-long love. We are awakened by the fire of a first love but as years go by we forget to the point of amnesia. This book does justice to honor the alchemical transformation that love brings to our lives.

I read this book after listening to the abridged edition on audio. The first time you read The Last Time They Met, you may find yourself having a good cry for the bittersweet love between Thomas and Linda.

Rating:
Summary: Cheap Trick
Review: The title of my review says it all, as far as I'm concerned. Totally unbelievable. You just do NOT do that to your readers. I went back and leafed through the book again to see if it worked, and it didn't. A real stretch.

I give it one star because there was some fine writing in the Africa section. Otherwise, if I'd not been on a Philippine island on vacation with little else to read, I might not have finished. And I felt cheated when I had.

Rating:
Summary: Not at all disappointed
Review: This book was one of the best books I've ever read. I recommended it to all my friends. I read and re-read the entire last chapter 3 times. I actually was relieved at the ending. Like most Shreve novels, you aren't looking for "and they lived happily everafter."