The Last Time They Met [Import] [Hardcover]

Anita SHREVE (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First edition. edition (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316856142
• ISBN-13: 978-0316856140
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (483 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,182,665 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

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning!, July 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Time They Met: A Novel (Hardcover)

I highly recommend reading Anita Shreve's "THE WEIGHT OF THE WATER" before you begin "THE LAST TIME WE MET." But whatever you do, definitely read them both. The stories are surprisingly intertwined with characters taking us through the most important times of their lives. Lives filled with hope, love, loyality, success, betrayal, loss, and deep regrets. Both endings will leave you feeling stunned. You will, no doubt, find yourself wanting to re-read the last chapters over and over again. When a book grabs you this way, I consider it a successful story told (despite how I feel about the outcome). Anita Shreve is a wonderful author and "THE LAST TIME WE MET" (as well as "THE WEIGHT OF THE WATER") is an excellent read. Don't pass these two books up!

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprise ending transforms novel, June 5, 2001

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Time They Met: A Novel (Hardcover)

Anita Shreve's latest novel presents some problems for the reviewer. Reading it, I found certain elements of character, motivation and maturity baffling, even annoying, despite the beauty of the writing. The surprise ending, however, cast these apparent flaws in a new light, giving subtle, poignant meaning and transforming the story. But it's impossible to discuss any of this without giving away the ending.

A story of intense, enduring, but frustrated love, the novel begins with the two protagonists in their early fifties, meeting at a literary festival after an interlude of some years. Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes, both poets, are free now, for the first time since their high school romance ended over an automobile accident.

Widowed, Linda had a long, happy marriage while Thomas, twice divorced, never fully recovered from the death of his 6-year-old daughter, which occurred at the end of Shreve's "Weight of Water." Thomas was the husband of that book's protagonist and there are numerous references to the shipboard events of that novel from Thomas' point of view. (I wondered: Did Shreve have this novel in mind even then; is that why she killed off the little girl, an abrupt shock which seemed pointless in that context?)

The first section is told from Linda's point of view - the reunion, her cautious renewal of this first love, reflections on her marriage, problems with her children. In sharp, anguished exchanges, they revisit the events that tore them apart. Linda, still harboring resentments, seems brooding, tentative, a little irritating.

"He seemed taken aback by the contest. She knew what later she would mind this the most; that she'd become common in her anger. That in an instant, she'd reinvented herself as a shrew."

The second section jumps back more than 20 years to their affair in Africa, seen through Thomas' eyes. An accidental meeting, both married, snatched, torrid graplings, literary love letters, all of it ending badly in a cataclysmic clash of duty and jealousy. Thomas, a more immediate, passionate presence, though no less conflicted, brings the heat and turmoil of Africa to bear on an illicit relationship which walls itself off from outside influence. "Were there people, he wondered, who had genuine, more-or-less continuous fun when they fell in love? It didn't seem possible, the enterprise too fraught to sustain the lightheartedness fun required."

Thomas' wives - Regina, whose lack of confidence makes her ugly and desperate and Jean, mother of Billie, adulterer - both seem remote, unloved, and mildly repellant. Thomas himself seems to be drifting, fully engaged only in his writing. Thinking of Regina, he reflects: "What she wouldn't forgive, he knew, was the pleasure the writing gave him: sensual and tactile, a jolt that ran through him when it worked. Always, he was writing in his head; at parties, he craved to be at a desk. He sometimes thought it was the only honest conduit he had to the world around him, all other endeavors, even his marriage (Jesus, especially his marriage), lost in the excessive caution of failed expectations and injured feelings."

The final section regresses in time again to the high school days of their first love. Told from Linda's viewpoint, this beginning has a spontaneous and organic feel, capturing the tentative, self-conscious forays of adolescent emotional and intellectual exploration, the blossoming of passion and respect, the surge of lustful love. Orphaned Linda is the poor, despised relation in a poor, overcrowded family. Thomas is the scion of privilege. A victim of sexual abuse, Linda struggles to overcome her fears; Thomas works hard to comprehend them. Together they are lovely, full of joy and fear. It's the best section of the book and I'm sure Shreve intended it to be.

This is a novel for book groups. Readers will enjoy discussing the ending with others, arguing about its meaning, its repercussions, how it colors everything that went before, the subtleties Shreve employs, her handling of obsession, loss and, well, you'll see.

45 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! Anita Shreve can sure tell a story!, March 30, 2001

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Time They Met: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read this because I loved the way The Pilot's Wife was so cleverly crafted. I expected more of that kind of writing here and I was NOT disappointed.

In "The Last Time They Met", Anita Shreve writes a story that reveals secret after secret that makes you gasp at even single words she uses. Her writing is razor-sharp and so cleverly crafted that each time a secret is unveiled, you have to go back to the first clue and marvel and how she got there.

This is a wonderful novel about "might-have-beens" and "should-have-dones" and the regrets and decisions that make the tapestry of a life. Well done, Anita!!