Rating: 
Summary: What Price to Pay
Review: It has been said that middle age brings turmoil and discontent with love. However, at what price is one, far into their 40's or 50's willing to pay for a chance at finding the flickering possiblility of a younger (teenage) love of long ago?For most responsible persons, the price is far too high. In this novel, the price is not. Charles Calahan recognizes the picture of a girl he met at camp, and that is all it takes for him to toss aside wife, family with small children, home, business and township respect. Intrigued by the recollection, he begins to write the woman named Sian Richards, successfully seducing her into meeting him at a romantic hotel. The initial correspondences are met with trepidation, but between the two of them a line is crossed and they decide to meet, they flaunt, they flirt, they .... A psychological peek at middle-aged angst, the novel scratches irritantly for those who play by the rules, those never willing to risk losing the people they love most. For Charles and Sian, the price is high. What they do not know is just how high it is going to get.
Rating: 
Summary: Where or When Will This Awful Novel End?
Review: Charles and Sian met at a Catholic summer camp when they were teens and lost touch soon after (it wasn't explained why exactly). Years later they are middle aged and married with children: Charles has money problems and Sian husband's onion farm (you read correctly--onion farm)is not doing so hot either. Charles contacts Sian via letter and they strike up an affair (the place for these rendevouz is the old Catholic summer camp grounds that is now a bed and breakfast). Predictably the time comes to decide whether to leave their families to be together or part ways. During this whole charade, which I honestly tried to like, the plot is so thin and the characters fail to earn any empathy for their weekly love fests. The affair is never really justified. The characters seem so shallow and dispicable because they are ruining so many lives and their own relationship lacks chemistry. Sian seems way too intellectual to ever give Charles a second thought (she is a poet and he is an insurance salesman). I loved Anita Shreve's other novels but this novel is page after page of unearned sentimentality. Try reading her novel Sea Glass, it is much better.
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