"Like Shreve's last novel..., FORTUNE'S ROCKS is a slickly made confection for readers who want to laugh and cry at the noble struggle of the human heart...."
New York Times Book Review - Albert Mobilio (12/26/1999)
"[P]leasantly atmospheric....Olympia leaps out in sharp focus from the first page, but the conscientiously tangled plodding and the muddle it provokes in her show the strain of transplanting a millennial sensibility back a hundred years."
Kirkus Reviews (10/15/1999)
"FORTUNE'S ROCKS is a powerful portrait of that dangerous limbo of a girl's adolescence when she is no longer a child but not yet a woman."
Literary Review - Kirsten Davison (05/01/2000)
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
EVOCATIVE AND PROVOCATIVE...,
By Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (COMMUNITY FORUM 04) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)
This review is from: Fortune's Rocks (Hardcover)
This is a well-crafted and lyrically written narrative, evocative of an era gone by. It tells the story of Olympia Biddeford, the unusually erudite and well-educated fifteen year old daughter of a Boston Brahmin. One hot and steamy summer in turn of the century New Hampshire, she falls passionately and utterly in love with her father's friend, forty one year old John Haskell, a physician and man of letters, who has a wife and four children. She, captivated by his intelligence and his crusade on behalf of exploited mill workers, and he, drawn to her youth, intelligence and beauty, leave all thought of propriety behind. Breaking every moral and social taboo of the time, they enter into a forbidden, illicit love affair, which is ultimately doomed, with cataclysmic ramifications for all whom the affair touches.
The book explores how this young woman copes with the loss of her life in a larger social milieu, once the affair enters into the public domain through the machinations of another. She and the doctor, as well as their respective families, are tainted with scandal and presented with the fruit of that illicit love. The book explores how Olympia must reconstruct the tatters of her life into one in which she is finally able to expiate her youthful indiscretion within the context of the mores of the time. In doing so, she goes on a voyage of self-discovery. Yet, through it all, she never once renounces her devotion to the man who introduced her to the throes of a passion so deep and profound that she gave herself over to it, body and soul. How these star-crossed lovers finally come to terms with their grand passion is a story that the author seamlessly weaves into a book that will keep the reader riveted to its pages. Bravo!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
