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All He Ever Wanted, Anita Shreve
In bestsellers such as Fortune's Rocks, Shreve has revealed an impeccably sharp eye and a generous emotional sensitivity in describing the moment when a man and a woman become infatuated with each. She is less successful this time out, perhaps because the epiphany is one-sided. Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy. Nicholas tells the story in retrospect, writing feverishly on a train trip in 1933 to his sister's funeral in Florida. His pedantic style is full of parenthetical asides, portentous foreshadowing and rhetorical throat. His erotic swoon commands sympathy, until it carries him past any definition of decency. He will do anything to bring down Philip Asher, his academic rival and the brother of Etna's true love, Samuel. He plays on prevailing anti-Semitism (the Ashers are Jewish), and he persuades his daughter, Clara, to claim that Philip touched her improperly, which besmirches not only Philip's reputation but Clara's as well. We see Etna herself only secondhand, except for some correspondence with Philip reproduced toward the end of the tale. Credit the author for making the point that Etna and her sisters had too little autonomy even to tell their own stories, but filtering Etna's experience through Nicholas's sensibility deprives the novel of intimacy and immediacy.
At times pansy-assed, this is a story of refined obsession. As more of Van Tassel's character is revealed, I found myself feeling more and more sorry for him. I boo'ed at Etna's agreement to marry him, but cheered when her secret cottage was revealed (though, to be clear, that whole storyline could have used about 50 more pages of development).
The book is written almost as one of the early 1900s and successfully comes off as a tribute to that time--the language, the affectations, the ideas. There are some inconsistencies, but they aren't glaringly obvious.
Since the story is written as Van Tassel's memoir (composed en route to a funeral in Florida), the timeline shifts inconsistently and it often becomes unclear just what is happening when. Van Tassel speculates much too much on his wife's activities and those passages read more like pseudo-Victorian porn than anything else.
Overall, a decent read, especially if you've got nothing else to do. I biked home with this book in my pack a couple of nights and read it before drifting off to la-la land.
In bestsellers such as Fortune's Rocks, Shreve has revealed an impeccably sharp eye and a generous emotional sensitivity in describing the moment when a man and a woman become infatuated with each. She is less successful this time out, perhaps because the epiphany is one-sided. Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy. Nicholas tells the story in retrospect, writing feverishly on a train trip in 1933 to his sister's funeral in Florida. His pedantic style is full of parenthetical asides, portentous foreshadowing and rhetorical throat. His erotic swoon commands sympathy, until it carries him past any definition of decency. He will do anything to bring down Philip Asher, his academic rival and the brother of Etna's true love, Samuel. He plays on prevailing anti-Semitism (the Ashers are Jewish), and he persuades his daughter, Clara, to claim that Philip touched her improperly, which besmirches not only Philip's reputation but Clara's as well. We see Etna herself only secondhand, except for some correspondence with Philip reproduced toward the end of the tale. Credit the author for making the point that Etna and her sisters had too little autonomy even to tell their own stories, but filtering Etna's experience through Nicholas's sensibility deprives the novel of intimacy and immediacy.
At times pansy-assed, this is a story of refined obsession. As more of Van Tassel's character is revealed, I found myself feeling more and more sorry for him. I boo'ed at Etna's agreement to marry him, but cheered when her secret cottage was revealed (though, to be clear, that whole storyline could have used about 50 more pages of development).
The book is written almost as one of the early 1900s and successfully comes off as a tribute to that time--the language, the affectations, the ideas. There are some inconsistencies, but they aren't glaringly obvious.
Since the story is written as Van Tassel's memoir (composed en route to a funeral in Florida), the timeline shifts inconsistently and it often becomes unclear just what is happening when. Van Tassel speculates much too much on his wife's activities and those passages read more like pseudo-Victorian porn than anything else.
Overall, a decent read, especially if you've got nothing else to do. I biked home with this book in my pack a couple of nights and read it before drifting off to la-la land.
