Fortune's Rocks

Rating:
Summary: Fortune's Rocks
Review: Well just call me sentimental, because I loved the book and found it hard to put down. It's a beautiful tale of a young woman who had the courage to rebuild her life after the worse circumstances imaginable even by today's standards. I was initially tentative about purchasing the book, but am so very glad I did. Anita Shreve is an awesome writer who immediately captures your imagination and carries you along from start to emotionally draining finish. Her sensitive and perceptive understanding of the perils of someone who abandons all for love is quite convincing. I plan to read and treasure all her novels.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not believable, nor provocative
Review: One would think that with the delicate subject matter at hand there would be many provocative themes and scenes explored. Not so. Shreve's writing is uninspired and particularly strained in the first part of the novel where she tries to imitate the rigid style of the period. It is contrary to her usual style and I applaud her effort to be, as a reviewer said, "Austen-like," but her characters are way too poorly rendered to support the sophisticated language, which became irksome and tedious after a while. I tried very hard to sympathize with Olympia's plight, but whatever tenderness I may have felt for her was really not due to any of Shreve's storytelling but due to the fact that I could personally imagine the circumstances as being very traumatic for a girl not very much younger than myself. I think the main problem was that I could not understand the intensity of the passion between Olympia and John. Shreve simply resorted to elusive references about fate and soulmates and such to explain their "connection," which I thought was cheap, since that should have been one of the most arresting aspects of the story (for those who are not morally allergic to such love affairs, anyway). Perhaps I felt it to be lacking all the more keenly because I had just finished "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving, which also happens to focus (though hardly exclusively) on an affair between a teenager and a middle-aged person (though the sexes are reversed in his case, it is a 16-year-old boy with a 39-year-old woman) and he had dealt with it much more convincingly and powerfully than Shreve.
Overall though, I must say, Shreve is one of the better bestselling authors out there currently and the book, even if often insipid, is entertaining and even endearing. I recommend it if you are not looking for strenuous literature but just a good ol' romance.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Page Turner.....
Review: I was apprehensive about this book because of the affair between a 40 year-old and a 15 year old. (I beleive another reader said the same thing.) However, while you delve into this book you can understand why it happened. The girl was educated at home by her father and he made sure she was well-read and intelligent enough to carry on conversations with adults. He was a well-respected and wealthy man who needed his daughter to pocess these skills. I beleive since her mother was often sickly he was sort of using his daughter has a surragate wife without any sexual overtones. It all made sense that she would pick an older man to love. She was mature way beyond her years, the time was the 1800's and she was smart. Now you would think at a time like that it was especially scandulous. It was but it also made the relationship more beleivable. I have always gotten the feeling that women were a bit more sophisticated during that time out of need more than anything else. In order to find a husband you did have to learn the "duties" of being a good wife. Especially if you were poor and wanted to find a rich husband. These duties included things like a good conversationlist, a good mother, a women who is able to run a household in genral, and be subservant to her husband. The modern woman of today would mostly scolf at some of these things. This is no Mary Kay Louretourno ( pardon my spelling) story. It is full of romance, heartache, lies, and emotional intrigue. A very good read.

Rating:
Summary: A Page-Turning Scandal
Review: I was uneasy of this book at first, the idea of a 40 year old man having a love affair with a 15 year old girl, however I found myself unable to put the book down. Shreve pulls the reader into Olympia's mind and emotions, and one can't help but secretly hope all works out for her. From beginning to end this book is incredible, a surprise waiting around every chapter!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing ending
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book until the ending. Shreve is an excellent storyteller, and writes beautifully. However, I found Shreve to be morally irresponsible in tying up the loose ends. I won't give anything away, but the ending was ridiculous and totally unbelievable.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but nothing special
Review: This makes me wonder if "The Pilot's Wife" was somewhat of a fluke. This is the fourth novel of Ms. Shreve's that I've read, and while it's entertaining, it's nowhere near the level of "Wife". It's a period novel, and has a novel approach in that the author tries to write like she was from that time. It's a little off-putting at first, but ends up okay, if a little gimmicky. The story line could be straight from a soap opera - tears and affairs and strong-willed women, and the requisite happy ending, of course, but the novel rising a little bit above that... though not that much above.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite Edith Wharton
Review: The author commented in an interview that she was such a fan of Edith Wharton that she was attempting to give this novel a Whartonesque feel. Unfortunately, only Wharton should write Wharton. She is the only one who can effectively write about the fall of women in a Victorian society. The protagonist of this book simply would not have done the things she did in her society, and without any seeming motivation or moral conflict. It is presumptive of Anita Shreve to compare her work to Wharton's, instead of presenting it as what it is - an engrossing, but completely modern novel.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve

Every year the Biddeford's spend the summer months vacationing at a beachside resort in New Hampshire. Their summer home at Fortune's Rocks becomes the center of their lives among the upper class during these summer months. This year however, events that occur that summer cut their vacation short and many lives are ruined. In FORTUNE'S ROCKS by Anita Shreve, the reader is transported back in time to the turn of the century, and to a young girl's first steps into the world of adults. What she does that summer changes her life and the life of her family forever.

The story opens with fifteen-year old Olympia Biddeford walking along the beach at Fortune's Rocks. She's out where common decency does not allow her to go, near the bathhouses among the men and boys who watch her as she walks by. She is no longer a child, and as she walks by the men, she senses that she is being eyed in a different light. She feels the power that she has as a woman, and the reader senses that she is quite pleased with this effect on the men.

She does not attend school, but has been home-schooled for years by her father, who has taught her everything from literature to science. One of their passions is reading, and he encourages her to read a book written by a doctor, John Haskell. Haskell is to be the guest of honor at a dinner party they are hosting, and her father is quite anxious to show off his daughter by having her read and critique the book. She is not interested at all, until she sets eyes upon Haskell for the first time.

What happens between Olympia and John Haskell, who is married with children and nearly three times her senior, shocks the small resort town of Fortune's Rocks. This plot line, plus the flowing writing style of Anita Shreve, helped me read this book in record time. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and although I was not totally happy with the ending of the book, which I found a little bit contrived, I am still recommending this book. This was my first Anita Shreve book but it certainly will not be my last.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable
Review: At first I did not think I was going to like this book. The first part of the book was a little disturbing. A 15 year old having an affair with a 40 year old kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But once I kept reading and got past the initial affair, I really started enjoying it and I did not want to put the book down. I wanted to get to the end so bad to see how it would all play out. I really liked it. I also liked how the ending was not predicatable. This is the first Anita Shreve book I have read and I can't wait to read another one.

Rating:
Summary: Dissapointed
Review: I'm currently trying to get through this book. I think what's making it hard to read is that I don't have much feeling for the characters, because I find the ENORMOUS age difference between Olympia and Haskell quite disturbing.....actually it pretty much grosses me out.