Rating: 
Summary: Quick reading
Review: "Resistance" was a most readable story that took place in a small window of time during World War II in Belgium. An American B-17 plane crash-lands and the crew is spirited off to nearby safe houses by members of the Belgian Resistance. The story focuses on Claire, a local woman in an unhappy marriage, and Ted Brice, the pilot.Shreve depicts the seemingly hopeless situation, tempered by hope, in the face of wartime hardships and the risks that the Resistance members took on a daily basis. I found the ending a bit contrived and rushed, with some questionable aspects. This is a story that encompasses only a little more than a month in the thousands of days of war, but it is a story of great emotional intensity. I cannot remember when I read a book this quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: An Engaging, Wonderful Story
Review: This is my favorite Anita Shreve novel and I highly recommend it. As mentioned in other reviews, it is largely a love story set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Belgium during World War II. It is so well written that I still have clear pictures in my mind of various scenes -- as if I had seen a movie. The characters are engaging and realistic, the story is suspenseful, and it carries the same misty, romantic "feel" as Casablanca.
It's just a great story!
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Resist This Book
Review: This is a very poignant book of how a horrific event like world war II can rip apart a town, a country... a people. Yet it is also about how these people still find the fortitude to continue on through undescribable loss, fear and deprivation. Some manage to find a way to love and be loved...to comfort and give comfort under the most bizarre circumstances and with the most unlikely of individuals.
The last sentence of this book speaks volumes about the thousands of men and women who survived unimaginable events and chose to keep those events locked away deep inside themselves.
I would have given this 5 stars if the two main characters had not all of a sudden wanted to go out in public despite their acute fear of being found in their hiding place. Was that supposed to be temporary insanity?
Rating:
Summary: Love and Resistance
Review: In the foreground of WWII, a young wife named Claire Daussois and her husband, Henri are members of an underground resistance movement in a small Belgian village. There is little romance between the two, indeed Claire takes extreme precautions to prevent conception, fearful of bringing a child into the unpredictable chaos of war. Commited as they are to the resistance, one feels the emptiness of their relationship, and in this environment falls Ted Brice, an American pilot, injured in a crash landing of his plane in their town of Delahaut. Saved by a spunky ten year old Jean Benoit, he manages to find his way to the Daussois home. There he is placed in protective hiding and must face his future at the hand of strangers. A tense story line unfolds as the town is caught up in the deception. Who can you trust? Citizen turns against citizen and everything is at stake. One must realize that this kind of activity happened. This is not just fiction, but based on realities of many villages across Europe and the horror of it all is almost unbearable. There is love in the hole of hell itself. There is forgiveness and strength in moving on. This is a lovely novel of a time many of us have no knowledge of. Therefore, it is very important to contemplate these stories, for in so many other words, most of them did happen. There was just no one left to write the story.
Rating:
Summary: Shreve is my break novelist
Review: I try to read classics and the award winning books but when I need a break from the technical stuff I pull out a Shreve novel. This is her best novel that I have read. I hope like the others they make this one into a movie. I would say the Weight of Water is next and the Pilot's Wife is last. This would make an excellent novel for a vacation read on the beach.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant writing on a difficult time.......
Review: This was my second book by Shreve, Fortune's Rocks being my first. Without a doubt, Anita Shreve is one of my favorite authors. She astounds me with her brilliant writing and ability to touch emotions to the core.
The fact that I've visited the area in Belgium she writes about and also the fact that my father was at Normandy for the invasion made this story all the more powerful for me.
I believe when one chooses to read a book called "Resistance" one cannot expect a "happy" ending. It was a horrific time in our history and Shreve did an incredible job of portraying this. I admit some parts of the story on what the Gestapo did in the villages were very graphic.....graphic but real. Yes, the story was disturbing when one realizes it is fact. But I also feel (and I'm paraphrasing) "When one forgets history, one is doomed to repeat history."
The love affair Shreve tells of Claire and Ted was not only poignant but I'm sure based on thousands of stories very similar. I thought she captured it best with Ted's thoughts, "And he himself knew that the war itself had changed the rules, twisted them beyond all recognition." This is exactly what war does. It's unavoidable. I feel people hurt more and love more during war.....just as Claire and Ted did. Shreve beautifully captured this love and the pain and horror that surrounded all of it.
Realistically, the story/love affair could end no other way. I believe the reader knows this from the first page and this particular reader wants to thank Anita Shreve for a passionate love story combined with a realistic account of the heartbreaking tragedy of war. I highly recommend this book and at just 222 pages, it's a quick read difficult to put down. To quote the LA Times, "I reached the last chapter with hungry eyes, wanting more." And more for me is to now read "Eden Close" and continue soaking up this tremendous author and her powerful prose.
Rating:
Summary: Another pleaser from Anita Shreve
Review: This is my fifth book of Ms. Shreve's that I have read and it was by far my favorite. I felt as if I were in WWII Europe myself. I need a book that can be read for short periods of time and put down... but when I pick it back up I can continue without having to reread a few paragraphs. (Ms Shreve is very talented in that all her books are good that way for me. ) The story was so intense that in RESISTANCE you didn't forget a thing. There were days I missed a class bell because I was sucked in to the story. The only reason I scored this with 4 stars instead of 5 is I would have liked a bit more on the ending. It was a bit rushed as someone else mentioned.
Rating: 
Summary: Ultimately Depressing
Review: As this is a typical Anita Shreve novel, the reader should not expect a happy ending. As in her other popular offerings, "The Pilot's WIfe" and "The Weight of Water", this well-written book probes to the bone the depth of human emotions stretched to the limit of endurance. The characters are well drawn but painful and desperate. As in her other novels, the interplay between man and woman is imperfect; this time stunted by circumstance and the inert sense of duty enflamed by the cruel reality of war. Ted and Claire come together briefly with no real connection; their love does not have time to settle and die as the other characters Shreve has focused upon, it sparks like an engine whose wires are wet; its only fruit is flawed. For the most part this book like other Shreve selections tries to mingle the sweet with the inevitable. In this case, the sweet---the love affair between the Ted and already married Claire is an almost wordless ballet of emotions. She, married to older Henri, is a pragmatic villager. wise enough to not wish a child born during the war. She goes about her business housing wounded soldiers and helping refugee Jews make their way to France and freedom through Spain in the almost gruff and nonchalant way a normal woman would make dinner or drive her kids to school in the morning. Perhaps some readers will get the sense that she and Henri do not have a great love and that she is just waiting to be ignited by someone that speaks more readily to her soul. I did not get this sense. I felt she loved Ted as a defiance to the stagnation and betrayal surrounding them. Perhaps Ted felt more. Nevertheless, the relationship is doomed to be ephemeral in terms of actual history, yet everlasting in its impact on their lives. Bottom line: the story is engrossing in parts but ultimately disappoints the more romantic reader who hopes against hope that the lovers will somehow be reunited in happiness rather with the stabbing and dour pain of which Shreve allows us to partake like a cyanide pill.
The most notable aspect of 'Resistance' for me was a glimpse, real or fictionalized into the mindset of the occupied people who bravely 'resisted' the Germans during WWII. When asked by Ted, the downed American pilot she is hiding from the Nazis & collaborators, if given a choice between saving a busload of children and a jeep full of American aviators,Claire, immediately selects the American aviators because they are helping to free her country from the German grasp. Ted is fascinated and a little surprised by her response, but then his definition of war is much different from hers--he is surrounded by death and suffering but not on his home turf.
As this is not an escapist romance novel, I would recommend this book only to those who want to get an excellent feel for what war does to real lives and are not expecting a happily-ever-after tale. As Shreve seems intent to deliver a vision of the 'real' with all its warts I must wonder how she pulls herself out of the emotional slump writing such novels must engulf her in. Although fine-tuned, her vision of modern woman is a Greek tragedy of sorrow and pain; her Pandora's box is devoid of ironic hope.
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