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Searching... Independence Public Library | LP FICTION - SHREVE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Shreve, A. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
With all the narrative power and emotional immediacy that have made her novels acclaimed international bestsellers, Anita Shreve unfolds a richly engaging tale of marriage, money, and troubled times-the story of a pair of young newlyweds who, setting out to build a life together in a derelict beach house on the Atlantic coast, soon discover how threatening the world outside their front door can be.
Author Notes
Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English from Tufts University, she taught high school English for five years before becoming a full-time author. She worked for an English-language magazine in Nairobi and wrote for everything from Cosmopolitan magazine to The New York Times. Her nonfiction books included Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone. Her novels included Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Fortune's Rocks, Rescue, Stella Bain, and The Stars are Fire. Several of her books were made into movies including The Pilot's Wife, Resistance, and The Weight of Water. She died from cancer on March 29, 2018 at the age of 71.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In addition to spinning one of her most absorbing narratives, Shreve here rewards readers with the third volume in a trilogy set in the large house on the New Hampshire coast that figured in The Pilot's Wife and Fortune's Rocks. This time the inhabitants are a newly married couple, Sexton and Honora Beecher, both of humble origins, who rent the now derelict house. In a burst of overconfidence, slick typewriter salesman Sexton lies about his finances and arranges a loan to buy the property. When the 1929 stock market crash occurs soon afterward, Sexton loses his job and finds menial work in the nearby mills. There, he joins a group of desperate mill hands who have endured draconian working conditions for years, and now, facing extortionate production quotas and reduced pay, want to form a union. The lives of the Beechers become entwined with the strikers, particularly a principled 20-year-old loom fixer named McDermott and Francis, the 11-year-old fatherless boy he takes under his wing. A fifth major character is spoiled, dissolute socialite Vivian Burton, who is transformed by her friendship with Honora. As Honora becomes aware that Sexton is untrustworthy, she is drawn to McDermott, who tries to hide his love for her. The plot moves forward via kaleidoscopic vignettes from each character's point of view, building emotional tension until the violent, rather melodramatic climax when the mill owners' minions confront the strikers. Shreve is skilled at interpolating historical background, and her descriptions of the different social strata the millworkers, the lower-middle-class Sextons, the idle rich enhance a touching story about loyalty and betrayal, responsibility and dishonor. This is one of Shreve's best, likely to win her a wider audience. 6-city author tour. (Apr. 9) Forecast: Expectations of brisk sales, indicated by the one-day laydown, will likely be achieved. Readers should find timely resonance in the setting of 1920s economic turbulence. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In Shreve's ninth novel, a bitter strike racks the New Hampshire coastal community that also provided the setting for Fortune's Rocks (1999). Newlyweds Honora and Sexton Beecher move there in June 1929. Twenty-year-old Honora barely knows her husband; Sexton loves his wife but quickly proves just as shifty as you'd expect a traveling salesman to be. He cuts a few corners to get them a mortgage just days before the stock market crashes, loses his job, and is forced to go to work at one of the local textile mills that have been slashing wages and speeding up production for years before the Depression began. Shreve cogently contrasts the Beechers' fearful, middle-class scrimping with the more desperate situations of mill workers like Francis, an 11-year-old who works the bobbins, and McDermott, at 20 already nearly deaf from the looms' noise. On the other end of the social spectrum is wealthy, hard-drinking, promiscuous Vivian Burton, whose friendship with Honora draws her into the strike that erupts after yet another pay cut. Falling in with labor activists gives Vivian a new perspective on life: "My sort," she says to McDermott, "seem, well, despicable, really"-though that doesn't prevent her from rewriting a communist strike leader's cliche-ridden leaflet in one of the novel's few humorous scenes. Honora and Vivian gain purpose and moral stature over the narrative's 15-month course, but the men don't fare so well. Sexton's stupid (but convincingly motivated) recklessness provokes a violent climax that puts an end to any hope for the burgeoning tenderness between Honora and McDermott, while Francis sees the two people he most loves brutally murdered. The mood here is dark, but Shreve's fans will take some comfort in her typically elegant, lucid prose, evocative of the natural world and subtly probing of character. Even the abrupt entrance of death, so annoying in The Last Time They Met (2001), here seems plausible and appropriate. A sterling effort from an intelligent and entertaining popular novelist.
Booklist Review
Shreve's latest is set during the 1920s in a New Hampshire house that has been featured in two of the author's previous novels, The Pilot's Wife (1998) and Fortune's Rocks (1999). After a three-month courtship, 20-year-old bank teller Honora marries 24-year-old typewriter salesman Sexton on a bright June day in 1929. They move into an abandoned house on the beach, which they have agreed to fix up in exchange for rent. Excited by the first heady days of their new marriage and their new life together, Honora and Sexton throw themselves into redecorating the house. When the owner of the house offers to sell it to them, they jump at the chance even though it will be a financial stretch. Their timing couldn't be worse. Within months, the stock market crashes, and their life changes completely when Sexton is forced to take a brutal, low-paying job in the local mill. In contrast to the riveting story lines of Shreve's previous titles, the plot is a bit thinner here. Yet the characters are compelling, especially the hard-living, smart-mouthed socialite Vivian and the reticent union activist McDermott. Even as Shreve stays resolutely on the surface of her story, readers will respond to her well-crafted prose. Fine entertainment. --Joanne Wilkinson
Library Journal Review
Following The Last Time They Met and Fortune's Rocks, Shreve once again scores big with a wonderful new novel about marriage and love played out during the early months of the Depression. At age 20, in the summer of 1929, Honora marries Sexton Beecher, a traveling typewriter salesman. Although the first months of their marriage are idyllic, Honora begins to lose respect for her husband when she realizes that he plays fast and loose with the truth in both his business dealings and with her. After Sexton loses his sales job, he finds work at a local New Hampshire mill, where he becomes involved with a group of union organizers protesting the terrible working conditions. When Honora meets McDermott, a union activist, and Francis, an 11-year-old mill worker whom McDermott has befriended, her life takes an unexpected turn. As Honora's disenchantment with Sexton grows more serious, she is increasingly drawn to McDermott, with tragic consequences. Vibrant characters, coupled with a graceful writing style, make Shreve's novel perfect for readers who appreciate multilayered stories with a social conscience. For all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/01.] Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.