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Summary: Shreve teaches writing?
Review: The back cover says Anita Shreve teaches writing at a university in western Massachusetts. After reading this book I'm not confident in her ability to write let alone teach.The characters (especially Charles) were totally unappealing, the plot is ridiculous (one week of puppy love at a camp 31 years ago is reignited?), and Shreve drones on for pages about lines from various songs that Charles sends Sian. Don't waste your time. This is one of the most poorly written books I've ever read - not just in terms of the plot, but in terms of sentence construction.
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Summary: A triumph for the scions of morality
Review: I must admit I was drawn to the characters of this novel. I felt they were well written enough to draw me into their story--Shreve did an admirable job weaving their tale of rediscovered passion. Unfortunately, she opted to turn it into a pathetic morality lesson, taking the easy way out by punishing the adulterous pair through tragedy and loss. I was hoping for a novel that would break the typical moral confines and formulaic plot that seems to accompany all novels that deal with extra-marital affairs, but I was yet again disappointed. This was the first book by Anita Shreve that I have read, and it will probably be the last. I even told my mother not to read it--she did anyway, and she chastized me for not having thrown it away before she stumbled upon it and was subjected to the same disappointment. Skip this one, it's an emotional drain.
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Summary: Unfortunately, a huge disappointment
Review: As a rule, I almost always finish a book. This was the first book in years I tossed aside before ending. I simply couldn't stand the dreariness any longer. I was extremely disappointed. I loved The Pilot's Wife and enjoyed Fortune's Rocks, particularly for the language, not as much the story. This book however, in my opinion, was a failure. The characters did not conjure any form of sympathy or reality and the story itself was dull. I haven't given up on Shreve though and will continue to read her stories, until I encounter another of this caliber, then that is it.
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Summary: Captivating until its contrived end...
Review: I've read Anita Shreve before (Resistance) and enjoyed her work. And this book seemed to be no different, until the last several pages. She does an excellent job of fleshing out sympathetic characters. The reader so hopes for these two estranged lovers to find a way to work things out. However, once I realized the inevitable twist at the end, I was sorely disappointed. I felt like the conclusion was a cop-out, leaving all the characters in a permanent lurch. While that alone isn't a huge writing flaw, I simply felt that the author wrapped things up the way she did for lack of imagining a more realistic conclusion. There's nothing more disappointing than an otherwise engaging novel that ends with a hokey twist.
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Summary: Another Story of Flirting with Infatuation
Review: Sian was Charles' first love, and when he sees her picture in a literary magazine thirty-one years later, he realizes she was his only love. At 46 he's on the brink of losing his home and business and Sian is an unexpected bright hope. For her part, Sian has had her share of tragedy. She's lost a son and is trapped in an empty marriage. Her release has been her poetry. It is the latest volume that brings Charles back to her life. The early stirrings of romance are light and teasing--a series of short letters traded back and forth. The inevitable must happen though and Charles and Sian agree to meet. Naturally the one meeting leads to a desire for intimacy. They give in. At the point where the two lovers decide to leave their respective marriages and forge their own, tragedy strikes (as it always will when innocents are hurt). In a Romeo and Juliet moment, one lover dies thinking they've been discarded by the other. And of course, things have moved beyond the possibility of restoring previous relationships. The surviving lover remains to pick up the unfamiliar shards of brokeness.
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Summary: Touched my Heart
Review: It is the first book I have read by Anita Shreve. I know I will have to read more. This is a story about trying to recapture a love from your past, teenage love, so pure, and the consequences that follow. This book was touching, romantic and sad. I couldn't put it down.
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Summary: Wonderful read
Review: Though this is not my favorite Anita Shreve novel, it was still wonderfully touching. The story of two childhood lovers reunited after 31 years, finding the same passion that they felt at age 14 is almost surely to have concluded they way it did. Sian is married with a beautiful girl, and Charles is married as well, with three children. Yet they can not tear themselves away from each other, even to salvage the lives that surround them. The love letters that the two recklessly divuldge in are perhaps what makes the story flow as it does, and Shreve does a wonderful job in noting the dates and times in the headings of them to demonstrate the ferosity of the two lovers. I stayed up all night to finish reading this, just to see how it ends.
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Summary: A Big Let-Down
Review: I wish I had read some of the reviews featured here before I bought this book, but on the heels of "The Pilot's Wife", which I read in one sitting, I thought it was a sure thing. Wrong!! What a disappointment!! I fought to stay tuned until the end, and then could only bring myself to scan the last chapter. Better luck next time, Ms. Shreve.
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Summary: In Sympathy of Cheaters Everywhere
Review: Charles Callahan is a father of three, a husband of sixteen years and, what appears to be a real family man. Until one day while reading the paper he sees the picture of an old girlfriend from some thirty years ago. What ensues is a rigorous affair and the family's rapid disintegration - unbeknownst to them, of course, until it is already irreparable. Shreve surprises me by glorifying this affair even though four children are involved to say nothing of the perspective spouces. I almost put it down because I am so tired of authors requesting sympathy for the adulterer or adulteress who is, above all, blatantly self-serving. It makes me sick to read about it in this manipulative manner. Nonetheless, the writing is good and the plot stable. Just disturbing. I will say it is not one of Shreve's best.
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Summary: I'm so disappointed
Review: After the first three books I read by Shreve (The Pilot's Wife, he Weight of Water, and Strange Fits of Passion) I was sure she could never miss. But with Where or When I was left so disappointed. The story was good, but throughout the whole book I was wondering when something was going to happen, and it all happens in like the last chapter of the book and you are left thinking, well now what?
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