Body Surfing [Paperback]

Anita Shreve (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Abacus; First Printing edition (2007)
• Language: German
• ISBN-10: 0316026042
• ISBN-13: 978-0316026048
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,427,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts (just outside Boston), the eldest of three daughters. Early literary influences include having read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton when she was a junior in high school (a short novel she still claims as one of her favorites) and everything Eugene O'Neill ever wrote while she was a senior (to which she attributes a somewhat dark streak in her own work). After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston. In the middle of her last year, she quit (something that, as a parent, she finds appalling now) to start writing. "I had this panicky sensation that it was now or never."

Joking that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejections from magazines for her short stories ("I really could have," she says), she published her early work in literary journals. One of these stories, "Past the Island, Drifting," won an O. Henry prize. Despite this accolade, she quickly learned that one couldn't make a living writing short fiction. Switching to journalism, Shreve traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived for three years, working as a journalist for an African magazine. One of her novels, The Last Time They Met, contains bits and pieces from her time in Africa.

Returning to the United States, Shreve was a writer and editor for a number of magazines in New York. Later, when she began her family, she turned to freelancing, publishing in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine and dozens of others. In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 14 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, Body Surfing, Testimony,and A Change in Altitude.

In 1998, Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot's Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah's Book Club and an international bestseller. In April 2002, CBS aired the film version of The Pilot's Wife, starring Christine Lahti, and in fall 2002, The Weight of Water, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn, was released in movie theaters.

Still in love with the novel form, Shreve writes only in that genre. "The best analogy I can give to describe writing for me is daydreaming," she says. "A certain amount of craft is brought to bear, but the experience feels very dreamlike."

Shreve is married to a man she met when she was 13. She has two children and three stepchildren, and in the last eight years has made tuition payments to seven colleges and universities.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed this Anita Shreve book as much as her other books, July 17, 2007

By 

Ratmammy "The Ratmammy" (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Body Surfing: A Novel (Hardcover)

BODY SURFING by Anita Shreve

July 17, 2007

Amazon Rating: 4/5 stars

Anita Shreve has to be one of my favorite authors, and BODY SURFING is yet another book I enjoyed immensely. It takes place in the same location as several of her previous books, notably FORTUNE'S ROCKS, and SEA GLASS. Compared to most of her other novels, BODY SURFING takes place in more contemporary times, so it has a different feel than the others. I wasn't sure I would enjoy this one because of it. However, I found that once I got into the story, I was enjoying it as much as I had FORTUNE'S ROCKS and SEA GLASS. Shreve has a wonderful way with words, and this book was no exception. It's what makes her books that much more of an experience.

29-year old Sydney is tutoring a young woman for the summer, a woman with a noticeable learning disability. She is slow, but her parents have high hopes that she will be able to further her education with some help from Sydney. Sydney is to live with the Edwards family, who are summering on the New Hampshire coast in a beach house, a very lovely location that plays as an important a part to the story as the characters do. Sydney's background is that she has been married twice now, and is at the age of 29 a widow. She is still trying to recover from the shock of losing her beloved husband, when she arrives at the summer home.

Not too long after she's moved in, the two grown sons also show up for the weekend. Ben and Jeff are two very different men. Jeff is a professor and Ben is in real estate. Sydney connects with Jeff, and finds herself pulled into his affections faster than she can blink an eye. It is during a secretive romp in the waters one night when Ben, Jeff and Sydney steal away, during which a rather awkward moment in the water occurs that somehow leads Sydney to bond closer to Jeff, thinking Ben had come on to her in a very lascivious way. She is appalled at Ben's actions toward her, and she tries her best to avoid him.

The summer progresses and Jeff and Sydney's relationship moves forward rather quickly. But it's not the relationship that is important, but what is really going on in Jeff's mind, as well as Ben's, while the relationship advances. What appears on the surface is not what is going on underneath.

At the same time, there is a subplot centering on the younger sister. Julie, who bonds with Sydney and blossoms under her tutelage, proves that she has hidden talents that her parents would never nurture, but Sydney, who realizes that Julie may never excel in the traditional courses in school, tries to find other talents that may help Julie survive as an adult. In the mean time, Julie is starting to develop into a very beautiful woman, and the local boys are starting to notice her. Sydney cannot understand why Julie's parents are totally blind to this fact, to the point where they are not even aware that their daughter has been going out on her own without the family knowing.

Sydney's relationships with the family members, outside of that with Jeff, are crucial to the story. She is the outsider, welcomed by most of the family except for Mrs. Edwards, who sees Sydney as someone who is disrupting their lives and is only to be spoken to as the hired help.

Anita Shreve's novels often have these surprise endings, and this was the case with BODY SURFING. I knew there was something "big" that was going to be revealed at the end, and it made the book worthwhile. I recommend this book for fans of Anita Shreve as well as those who are looking for a well-written character-driven novel. Intense and beautifully written, BODY SURFING is a book you will not be able to put down.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A book that leaves questions unanswered, October 6, 2007

By 

Linda Bulger (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Body Surfing: A Novel (Hardcover)

It's always a thrill to start reading a book by Anita Shreve. Her writing has a refreshing astringency, like tart lemon sherbet after one scoop too many of rocky road. Every sentence is weighted, and the reader joins the writer in observing and interpreting the action.

BODY SURFING is the story of Sydney Sklar, recently widowed, who is tutoring eighteen-year-old Julie Edwards at a beach house in New Hampshire. Julie's older brothers visit and sparks ignite between Sydney and Jeff.

Now comes the trouble with spare writing: the reader SEES the various love affairs unfolding, but they're hard to fathom. The chemistry has to be taken on faith. The drawing of a finger along a thigh inspires sensual longing? An underwater touch in the dark is received with intractable revulsion? A distant swimmer in a wetsuit arouses a young girl's first sexual passion? We know it because the author tells us so, but it's all a bit abstract. Lives are changed by these minimal encounters but the reader doesn't feel the heat; the plot seems somehow under-explained.

The characters, too, are described by their actions, with interpretation laid on. Somehow you know they're as complex as anyone else but the narrative doesn't quite do that complexity justice. We might wonder why Mrs. Edwards ever thought a summer of tutoring would get her "slow" daughter into a Seven Sisters college; how an architect never came to discover that his daughter is gifted with artistic talent; why neither of them ever noticed that she was a lesbian. And as for Sydney, she seems strong, smart and kind, is already twice-married, yet she can't spot a cad when she sees one and instantly agrees to marry him, apparently because of the thigh-stroking mentioned above.

There's nothing awful about this book; the writing itself is a treat, though maybe better suited to stories with a period setting like SEA GLASS or FORTUNE'S ROCKS. However it's not Anita Shreve's best. If you haven't read her, don't start here. But if you love her style, you'll probably find this book a passable read.

47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Shreve Masterpiece, April 25, 2007

By 

viktor_57 "viktor_57" (Fairview, Your Favorite State, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Body Surfing: A Novel (Hardcover)

I may be a man, and not just a man, but a businessman, and the only times that I am not going over a spreadsheet or quarterly report are when I am on a plane, but that is when I like to prop a cheap airline pillow behind my neck, wrap myself in a thin airline blanket, and dive into the latest Anita Shreve novel.

I usually wrap another dust jacket over the book, something with "Success" or "Winning" in the title, but underneath the fake jacket I am unwrapping the lives, histories, and fates of complicated and compelling characters, and I often finish a Shreve novel in tears at the sheer power of her vivid and powerful descriptions of the turmoil within the human heart, at which point a flight attendant or a fellow passenger will ask if anything's wrong, and I usually reply, "These success/winning/business strategies are just so powerful (sniff)... I can bench 200 pounds."

"Body Surfing: A Novel" continues Shreve's chronicling of the relationships between people seemingly thrown together by chance but whose lives eventually become so intertwined that one feels Fate, or an omniscient author, has brought them together.

Sydney, a young woman escaping her own past, steps into the seemingly idyllic, New Hampshire seaside home of wealthy architect Mr. Edwards. The elegant, two-story, white clapboard house with the wraparound porch and mansard roof has become a recurring character in many of Shreve's novels, and here it serves as the repository of growing resentments, passions, and betrayals as Sydney becomes entangled in the Edwards family slow dissolution.

I fairly dissolved myself as I read of Sydney's growing attraction to one of the Edwards brothers and the bitter actions of the other, all leading to a climax that left me, dare I say it, body surfing--on a wave of overwhelming emotions and uncontrollable feelings.