Book Review: Sea Glass by Anita Shreve

Photo taken from Goodreads

 Book Info

Title:  Sea Glass 

Author:  Anita Shreve
Publisher:  Little, Brown Books

Language: English

Format:  Hardcover

Pages:  384 pages 

ISBN - 10:  9780316780810

ISBN - 13:  978-0316780810

Source:  Gift

Buy this book on Amazon 

Summary

From Goodreads: 

"It is a house on the beach. Honora doesn't mind renting - despite its age and all its flaws, the old house is the perfect place for a new marriage. She and Sexton throw themselves into fixing it up, just as they throw themselves into their new life together. Each morning, Honora collects sea glass washed up on the shore, each piece carrying a different story in its muted hues.

 

Sexton finds a way to buy the house, but his timing is perfectly wrong. The economy takes a sickening plunge, and as financial pressures mount, Honora begins to see how little she knows this man she has married - and to realize just how threatening the world outside her front door can be.

 

Like those translucent shards that Honora finds on the beach, Sea Glass is layered with the textures, colors, and voices of another time. There is Vivian, an irreverent Boston socialite who becomes Honora's closest friend even as she rejects every form of convention. McDermott, a man who works in a nearby mill, presses Honora's deepest notions of trust - even as he embroils her in a dangerous dispute. And there's Alphonse, a boy whose openness becomes the bond that holds these people together as their world is flying apart."

Review

One of the risks in writing a period novel is crowding your book with too much history that the story itself gets drowned within all the historical trivia.  Striking the perfect balance between historical fact and fiction is therefore essential in ensuring that the story presents an accurate portrayal of the chosen setting, yet dreamlike enough to remind the readers that they are traversing a fantastical realm.

 

Sea Glass by Anita Shreve is set in the Great Depression in America where it follows the lives of Honora and Sexton, a newlywed; Vivian, a flighty socialite; McDermott, a half-deaf Irish immigrant; and Alphonse, the young boy who has found a father figure in the latter; and Alice, Honora's mother.  Every chapter tells a story of a particular character that seamlessly blends into succeeding chapters that comes full circle towards the end.

 

In the tradition of this author's intense character examination, each of the cast in this book were given enough room to demonstrate their unique personalities and stories that by the end of this book, the reader feels like he/she is already friends with all characters and knows them inside out.  However, this does not mean that they are already very predictable; indeed, they - like the story itself - was very unpredictable and complex that the reader could only read on to learn what will happen next, any speculation as to what will come of this book would only be proven wrong towards the end.  But never fret, the ending is as remarkable, vivid, and profound as the rest of this story.

 

But.  Yes, I had a slight problem with this story.  I felt that it read a bit too slow and most of the significant events were all shown towards the ending and the beginning and middle chapters of this book was mostly dedicated to thoroughly examining each character's background.  I have no problem with detailed character descriptions, but this story had too much character background than need be.  There were a few other plot twists that could have been explored as related to each character's overview but were otherwise left untouched.  I think that leaving some threads hanging is not too much of a big deal but the character detailing could have been shortened a bit more in order to provide a better pace for this novel.

 

Other than the slow pace, I have no other issues with this book and would probably read this again and again.  In fact, my mother read this before I even had the chance to thumb through its pages and she was also very satisfied with how this turned out but felt that it did read a bit slow.  For those who do not mind an intensely detailed character overview and a slightly slow-paced book, Sea Glass would prove to be a very magically realistic story of that sadly unforgettable time of the Great Depression. 

Rating

If you have any questions on this particular rating, please refer to my ratings system here.

Notice 

All opinions expressed in this book review are my own and not influenced by any party in any way.

Please contact me for questions, comments, and suggestions.  

Teaser Tuesday: Sea Glass by Anita Shreve

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two "teaser" sentences from that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
* Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser:

 

I was so amazed by The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve, so I'm very excited to start reading Sea Glass by the same author.  Both books were given to me by a friend and it's really fun to receive free books that prove to be really awesome reads :D

The Teaser:

"CELEBRATION OF FOURTH COSTS 148 LIVES."

-pages 61, Sea Glass by Anita Shreve

 

Book Review: The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Photo taken from Goodreads

 Book Info

Title:  The Pilot's Wife 

Author:  Anita Shreve
Publisher:  Little, Brown and Company
Language: English

Format:  Mass Market Paperback 

Pages:  320 pages

ISBN-10:  0316788228

ISBN-13:  978-0316788229

Source:  Gift

Buy this book on Amazon

Summary

From Goodreads:

"With five novels to her credit, including the acclaimed The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve now offers a skillfully crafted exploration of the long reach of tragedy in The Pilot's Wife. News of Jack Lyons's fatal crash sends his wife into shock and emotional numbness: "Kathryn wished she could manage a coma. Instead, it seemed that quite the opposite had happened: She felt herself to be inside of a private weather system, one in which she was continuously tossed and buffeted by bits of news and information, sometimes chilled by thoughts of what lay immediately ahead, thawed by the kindness of others ... frequently drenched by memories that seemed to have no regard for circumstance or place, and then subjected to the nearly intolerable heat of reporters, photographers and curious on-lookers. It was a weather system with no logic, she had decided, no pattern, no progression, no form." The situation becomes even more dire when the plane's black box is recovered, pinning responsibility for the crash on Jack. In an attempt to clear his name, Kathryn searches for any and all clues to the hours before the flight. Yet each discovery forces her to realize that she didn't know her husband of 16 years at all. Shreve's complex and highly convincing treatment of Kathryn's dilemma, coupled with intriguing minor characters and an expertly paced plot, makes The Pilot's Wife really take off."

Review

Many married couples would probably say that they know everything there is to know about their spouse - the way an arched brow might be a sign of disapproval, a tick in the cheek a sign of irritation.  But how well do we really know the person we love?  This is the challenge served to the readers in this emotion-packed novel by Anita Shreve.

Kathryn was content - content with her married life with Jack, content with her only daughter Mattie, content with their home in Fortune's Rock and the life she and her family had built there.  But when a man appears on her doorstep to inform her of her husband's death, the carefully-spun life of contentment unravels and she is left with a long thread of doubts, mysteries, and grief.  Reading through this book, one question nagged at my mind:  How do you deal with the truth behind one's person?

This book was so full of deep sorrow that I would almost advise those who are easily depressed to steer clear of this book, but to do so would mean never having the chance to experience the beauty of this poignant novel.  Alternating chapters of Kathryn and her daughter's dealing with their loss with that of Kathryn's life with Jack presented a clear view of the inner struggles that occur in marriages:  the complacency, the insecurity - the faith.  I first thought that this was a book that had some deadly mystery in it surrounding Jack's death, but when I saw those alternating chapters, I suddenly had this feeling that this book is leading me somewhere else.  Imagine my surprise with all the twists this book had taken - I wish I could tell you, but I could only warn you that it's not what you think!

The melancholic, lyrical, and profound writing suited this novel well.  The narration's voice was filled with this deep sense of dread, urgency, and emotion that would surely urge the reader on, letting him/her experience the same surge of feelings that the characters felt as if living within the book itself.  The characters themselves were very interesting, in that they all had something to offer - a story of their own.  I look at Mattie and I see a young woman tormented by the death of her father and she could have her own book in which she could be shown dealing with her loss.  I see Julia - that's Kathryn's grandmother - and I could almost read a whole prequel to this book of her life with a younger Kathryn, with her children, and how she coped with her own losses and struggles and how she enjoyed her triumphs.  I then turn to Robert Hart and I immediately have a sense of his life with his ex-wife, his views of his strange job and his complex personality.  At its heart, this book is Kathryn's story, but the other characters are very well-drawn and lifelike that their own stories emerge through the pages without really meaning to.

But although this is Kathryn's story, this is also a story of understanding that things are not what they seem, that truth itself is relative.  The truth for one person may be only half-true for another, it only depends on how much either of them knows.  That even the person you were most intimate with could be keeping secrets that are beyond your wildest imaginings.  That the world is only real so long as you believe in it.

This may be more of a dramatic fiction, but it probably serves up one of the best mystery plots ever written.  And I do believe having you told you that, you do not need any more convincing to read this book.

Rating

If you have any questions on this particular rating, please refer to my ratings system here.

Notice 

All opinions expressed in this book review are my own and not influenced by any party in any way. 

Please contact me for questions, comments, and suggestions.  

Third Sentence Thursday: The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Third Sentence Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Sniffly Kitty's Mostly Books for beating back the forces of OTHER sentences!

1) Take the book you are reading now and post the third sentence
2) Review this sentence anyway you want (funny and silly reviews encouraged)
3) Post a link to your sentence here or if you don't have a blog, just post it in the comments!

My Third Sentence for this week is from The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve:

"This is a masculine world, she thinks, with its odd bits of machinery, its briefing room, its tower."

 -page 75, The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Review:  'She' is Kathryn, and she just learned that her husband - a pilot - had died on a plane crash.  This sentence I think showed that although she longed for her husband, she is not altogether that she is not as privy to her husband's world as she used to be, as she entered a room that she immediately classified as 'a masculine world' which might also mean to be 'not her world.'  I don't know if you would agree with me, but I think that couples automatically associate each other with every thing/place in their house - no matter if it's your garage, you think of your wife; you still think of your husband even in your closet.