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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
I was giving this three stars in my head while reading, despite the entire middle section being about two cheating lovers, which is not something I generally enjoy. Then the last page absolutely ruined the book for me. What was the point of me reading this if two-thirds of the story was fabrication, even within the fiction?
Spoiler - I don't like books with adultery so was not enjoying parts of this but...finished quite confused.
The big reveal was more frustrating that resolving.
It was interesting to me the role played by your feelings about your own body, your own looks. Other's impressions of Linda are different from her own impressions of her looks. Thomas' wife Genie ? believes she is too curvy and expressed that to Thomas and they he always sees her as too curvy.
The role of God/religion was also interesting. When Thomas invents that Linda no longer believes in God in middle-age...was that reflectory?
The big reveal was more frustrating that resolving.
It was interesting to me the role played by your feelings about your own body, your own looks. Other's impressions of Linda are different from her own impressions of her looks. Thomas' wife Genie ? believes she is too curvy and expressed that to Thomas and they he always sees her as too curvy.
The role of God/religion was also interesting. When Thomas invents that Linda no longer believes in God in middle-age...was that reflectory?
Usual beautiful prose but with an unusually clever story.
Hated it! Difficult to read! I made myself finish it because of the reviews I had read about a great ending. I kept waiting for it to get better. It never did and the ending was as bad as the entire book. Definitely a waste of my time.
I wanted to like this book, but compared to other Anita Shreve books I've read, it doesn't compare at all! I didn't mind the backwards story-telling, but it just didn't seem to flow at all! There were too many details that didn't seem relevant to the story. Also, I hated the ending!! I see that a lot of other people loved it, so maybe I'm missing something, but I just didn't care for it!
I wish I could give this 3 1/2 stars. I had a terrible time reading this - it was probably not until the last third of the book that I really got into it. I couldn't understand why my mother and sister recommended it so highly. I finished it, sobbing. Very clever, the way Shreve wrote it.
I loved the characters and the story. Unbelievable how two people in their 50's can be completely in love, yet only have met three times in their lives. However, Shreve manages to create such a compelling story that it actually makes me wonder if it is really possible.
Unusual for Shreve, in that she writes the back story of a character who appears in another novel; Thomas, from 'The Weight of Water'. This tells how he became the man he was in 'The Weight..'thanks to the loss of his childhood sweetheart through circumstances that were beyond both their control. Told in the present, when they have met again, and going back to the different times in their lives when they came together, it is a haunting story (what you'd expect from Shreve) with themes familiar to her readers. All of Shreve's novels revolve around what happens after an event, the way people handled it, how they reacted to it, and how it has changed their lives. It will leave you wondering how their lives could have been different if only something had been said differently, or not at all, or if they had said it out loud rather than just feeling it. As with Shreve's other novels, this one will stay with you long after you have put it down.
Wonderful plotting in this...Shreve just pulls the reader in little by little as the story developes. Loved it.