All He Ever Wanted

Anita Shreve returns to New England for another look into the lives of men and women in the early twentieth century. Nicholas Van Tassel is writing his memoir of a life centered around Etna Bliss, a woman whose love remained elusive even after their marriage many years earlier. Dennis Boutsikaris is masterful as the voice of Professor Van Tassel, portraying the character as he is: insecure, arrogant, and blindly devoted all at once. Like the heroine in Shreve's Fortune's Rocks, Etna is a woman oppressed by the times in which she lives; these restrictions inevitably lead to conflict and bewilderment. Shreve writes with masterful description and is capable of taking the listener back in time. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

March 17, 2003
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. (Apr. 15)Forecast:A coordinated laydown will energize sales, and Shreve's latest will likely hit the charts.

December 1, 2002
Set at the turn of the last century, like Fortune's Rocks, this work begins when a man fleeing a hotel fire encounters a mysterious woman who will ultimately become his wife.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.