Add
an intimate wedding celebration at a bed and breakfast in the
Berkshires between reunited high school sweethearts to a reunion
of their best friends from prep school, and you have a feel-good
book about happy endings, right? Wrong. Just as in everyday
life, things are not as they seem, and as the weekend progresses
the former best friends discover truths about themselves and
each other that they've hidden or dodged since the tragic death
of Steven, the golden boy of their youthful alliance.
As the friends disclose the circumstances of
their lives, either through conversation with others or through
narrative passages, their stories become the fragments that
comprise the history of the group. Set just a few months after
9/11, the 40-somethings discuss their reactions to the World
Trade Center catastrophe while one of the friends, Agnes,
continues to write pages of her short story about the tragedy
of an explosion in Halifax that killed 2,000 ordinary citizens
and blinded many others.
As in her earlier books, Anita
Shreve has created a cast of characters who speak the words
we hear in our heads as we ponder life's obstacles. She develops
characters who are likable but flawed, and she makes them
so familiar to us that we almost expect to see them sitting
across from us at the next family gathering. Linda Emond's
narration gives the listener the sensation of hearing a story
told by a concerned, sympathetic observer.
Just as she's crafted books based on a house,
as in The Pilot's Wife, Sea Glass, and Fortune's
Rocks, Anita Shreve has written another wonderful book
with characters who deserve to be revisited in a sequel or
prequel. Perhaps the next time roadtrippers check into a bed
and breakfast, they will take a closer look at their fellow
guests and imagine the histories they bring to their stay
and the memories they will take away.
,
by Anita Shreve and Linda Emonds (Narrator)
