Reading matters

'Body Surfing' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - hardcover; Little, Brown; 304  pages; 2007. REVIEW COPY.

When this advanced readers' copy of Anita Shreve's soon-to-be-published Body Surfing thudded through my mail box (courtesy of a blog friend and not the publisher) I was -- to be perfectly frank -- just a little excited. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I am a Shreve fan. Not only does this American author produce quality fiction, she's not afraid to experiment and go off in different directions without losing the very essence of what makes her a great writer: she knows how to spin an entertaining, often emotional, yarn without sacrificing plot or character.

Body Surfing is a welcome return to form after the disappointment of her previous novel, A Wedding in December, in which the pacing was thrown off kilter by two narratives that did not particularly compliment one another.

But in this latest addition to Shreve's ever-expanding body of work (this is her 13th novel) the author has ditched her preference for dual narratives and stuck to one simple, and very solid, storyline.

'Where or When' by Anita Shreve

 Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 242 pages; 1993 (this edition 2004).

Charles Callahan, a real estate agent and insurance salesman, is married with three children. One day he chances upon a newspaper advertisement for a new poetry book, which is accompanied by a photograph of the author. Charles is immediately transported back to another time and place, for he once had a summer romance with the author -- Siân Richards -- when the pair were on a Catholic camp as carefree, young 14-year-olds, but lost contact with her afterwards.

With a recession biting and the bank about to foreclose on his Rhode Island house, Charles decides to risk his marriage and stable family life too by getting in touch with Siân, whom he has not seen in 31 years.

He re-establishes contact through an exchange of letters, which soon veer from innocent communication into more dangerous territory. When the pair meet at the site of the original camp of their youth -- now converted into a remote but posh hotel -- they embark on an illicit affair, which has tragic consequences.

'A Wedding in December' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 336 pages; 2006

A group of college friends, many of whom have not seen each other for 27 years, gather for a wedding at an inn in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.

This once tight circle of friends - Rob, an out-of-the-closet pianist; Harrison, a book publisher; Jerry, a burly businessman with a stuck-up wife; Agnes, an umarried history teacher tormented by a long-running love affair and writing a novel; Nora, the widowed owner of the inn; and the wedding couple, Bill and Bridget, who dated at school but then went on to marry other people - spend three days at the inn.

The ceremony, restricted to just this group of seven friends and one or two others, takes on a special significance because Bridget, the mother of a 15-year-old son, has breast cancer and isn't expected to live much beyond two years.

And if this doesn't sound melancholy enough there are other shadows hovering over this group of friends, including the death of Steven, a charamastic classmate, at a drunken highschool party all those years ago, and the tragic events of 9/11 just three months earlier.

Amid this somewhat downbeat atmosphere the party gets snowed in and, fueled by the ensuing claustrophobia, tension and too much alcohol, comes the spilling of sordid secrets from the past...

'The Weight of Water' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 248 pages; 2005 [first published in 1997]

Jean, a photojournalist, takes her husband Thomas, a struggling poet, and young daughter Billie on assignment with her to the New Hampshire coast.

They sail on an old boat captained by Thomas's younger brother, Rich, and Rich's new girlfriend, Adaline, towards the unusually named island of Smuttynose. Here, in 1873, two Norwegian immigrants were murdered. A third woman, Maren Hontvedt, escaped.

Jean's assignment is to photograph the bleak, now abandoned island for a magazine feature on the murders, for which a local man was later tried and executed.

Intrigued by the case, Jean goes slightly off brief and decides to do some research of her own. In a local museum she chances upon a sheaf of papers written by Maren Hontvedt that reveal exactly what happened...

'Light on Snow' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 288 pages; 2005

Twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon and her father are starting life anew in rural New Hampshire following a family tragedy. As both finally settle into familiar patterns and routines, an unexpected "find" one wintry day impinges on the natural order that they have worked so hard to achieve. When they stumble upon a newborn baby girl left abandoned in the woods little do they realise the maelstrom that is about to follow.

In Light On Snow Shreve focuses on her usual themes of love and loss. But she also explores family relationships, the responsibilities we have to one another through thick and thin, the fine line between happiness and despair, and the ties that bind us to people and places. Through the eyes of her female narrator we also get to glimpse the bond between a daughter and her grief-absorbed father, and, in turn, the loss felt by a young girl for her dead mother.

'Eden Close' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 265 pages; 1994

This is a kind of sweet, simply told novel, the first by the prolific Anita Shreve, which explores the notion of love and loss.

It's about a man, Andrew, who returns to his childhood home after the death of his mother. As he packs up her things and makes plans to sell her home, he finds himself reminiscing about the past and reflecting on an horrific incident that still haunts him. He was only a teenager when his neighbour, Jim Close, was shot and killed in his home. Jim's daughter, Eden, Andrew's childhood companion, was blinded in the incident. Seventeen years on, Eden still lives at home with her elderly mother, but is shut off from the world with no friends and no life. Andrew tries to befriend her again and in doing so, begins to slowly chip away at the secrets Eden has kept all these years about the real truth of that murderous night in which her life was changed forever.

Shreve's languid prose adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere of life in small town America. But at times I felt the story was a little dull and slow-paced and tended to work over the same ground again and again. Despite this, the climax was unexpected and worth waiting for. Still, if you haven't read anything by Shreve before, I'm not sure this is the first place to start; her other novels are more accomplished.

'All He Ever Wanted' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 304 pages; 2003

This was a surprisingly enjoyable book. I say surprising because as much as I have enjoyed Shreve's other novels, Sea Glass and Strange Fits of Passion, I found the opening chapter a little stodgy and wasn't quite sure whether I wanted to continue.

But I'm glad I persevered. Once I got used to the voice of the narrator, Nicholas Van Tassel, an English professor, who "speaks" in a pompous, sometimes convoluted, manner, I got swept away by the story.

'Strange Fits of Passion' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 368 pages; 2002

Shreve takes an old plot — a woman on the run from an abusive husband — and tells it in a fresh, engaging manner in this entertaining and moving novel. Told through the eyes of an investigative reporter, the story is built up as a series of "interviews" as she goes about her research for a magazine article on a crime committed by a young woman, Maureen English, some 20 years earlier. This lends the story a strange kind of authenticity, blending as it does the line between fiction and reportage. Shreve uses this to her advantage, rendering Strange Fits of Passion with an emotional impact that would be much less effective if told in a more traditional plot-driven way.

Through these "interviews" we learn that Maureen English, a young and impressionable rookie reporter, fell in love with a senior journalist with whom she later married. On the surface it looked like the perfect relationship, but Maureen soon realised that her new husband was a violent man with a raging temper. She decided to flee, taking their baby daughter with her. Moving to a small Maine fishing town, she rented an isolated house and tried to begin life anew under an assumed identity. As she settled into her new existence and fended off the prying townsfolk, Maureen began to feel the healing affect of time and distance. But then she discovered that the past has a strange way of catching up with the future . . .

All in all, Shreve has turned a predictable storyline on its head and given voice to the shame and agony of domestic violence in a highly original way. Quick to read, this is a superb novel to devour in bed or in front of the fire on a wet day.

'Sea Glass' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 368 pages; 2002

This was the first book by Anita Shreve I've ever read. I wasn't sure what to expect; maybe something like a New England version of Maeve Binchy. (Not that Maeve Binchy is bad, mind, it's just that sometimes her novels are cloying, overly sentimental and hackneyed, and you have to be in the right mood to read them.) I was surprised, then, to find that this book was not only enjoyable and thoroughly readable, but it was also quite well-researched, and, dare I say it, literary.

It's set in 1929, a short time before the huge stock market crash which plunged America and, indeed, the rest of the world, into a gut-wrenching economic depression. A young bride, Honora, makes a home in an abandoned house by the sea with her new husband, Sexton, a travelling typewriter salesman. At first things are, if not idyllic, then at least happy and reasonably comfortable. But the first flush of love soon dissipates when Sexton loses his job and takes up a lowly-paid position at a nearby woollen mill, where conditions are difficult and dangerous. When the workers retaliate by taking industrial action (unheard of at the time), Honora, provides support, shelter and food for those involved in the strike, while her marriage slowly crumbles around her.

It's a simple tale but it's very well told. There's an emotional resonance which can be difficult to achieve without resorting to cliche and stereotypes, something Shreve never does. Shreve also fills her novel with rich historical detail that makes the era come alive. And her characters, which take it in turn to tell their version of the story chapter by chapter, are sharply drawn and very believable. I found myself reading this book at a very fast rate of knots, wondering what was going to happen next. If the rest of Shreve's novels are as entertaining as this one, then she had definitely won a new fan. But which of her other eight or so novels to read next . . . ?