Strange Fits of Passion [Import] [Hardcover]

Anita Shreve (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown (February 23, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0356203298
• ISBN-13: 978-0356203294
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)

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

86 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suspenseful and gripping, May 15, 2000

By 

Cathy A Belben - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Fits of Passion: A Novel (Paperback)

Fans of Shreve's other novels, including The Pilot's Wife and The Weight of Water, will appreciate this earlier effort, which, like the others, combines mystery and marriage to create a suspenseful, intriguing story about trouble. Like Anna Quindlen's novel, Black and Blue, Strange Fits of Passion revolves around a young mother who has taken her child and fled an abusive husband to settle in a new community and begin life again under an assumed name. The similarities end there, however, as Shreve builds a more complex, thickly layered story that involves numerous points of view and dips in and out of the past without ever becoming confusing or dense. The novel begins with a magazine writer, Helen Scofield, traveling to a college dormitory to visit Caroline English, the daughter of writer Maureen English, a woman who, we soon learn, was imprisoned for murdering her allegedley abusive husband, Harrold, also a writer, many years earlier. Helen's visit is, ostensibly, to deliver to Caroline the letters and transcripts that she collected as she investigated the murder for an article she was writing. We read of the relationship between Maureen English and her husband from her own point of view--reports of the abuse she suffered, the life she led in the small Maine fishing village to which she fled, and, later, the details of the event that took her husband's life. Interspersed with her memories are the reports from various members of the fishing community she lived in--people who variously report on Maureen and her life there, and who hold her responsible for the crime to varying degrees. Finally, we read the article Helen wrote about Maureen English, her marriage, and her decision to kill her husband, and learn an entirely other lesson about what the truth is and what it means to tell the truth. This is a fascinating, engrossing story.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully crafted masterpiece., April 1, 2001

By 

mirope "mirope" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Strange Fits of Passion: A Novel (Paperback)

Like many of Anita Shreve's novels, the structure of this book seems to have started as a writing assignment Shreve might have assigned as a college professor. The story begins with with Helen Scofield, an experienced journalist who began her career at a prominent weekly news magazine, visiting a young college co-ed. Helen has come to turn over her research and notes from a famous story she wrote decades earlier about the girl's mother. While we don't know the details, it is clear that the magazine piece had a profound effect of the family's life and that Helen has second thoughts about the story she wrote. The research consists of transcripts and notes from Helen's interviews with Mary Amesbury aka Maureen English, a former colleague at the magazine, and those who knew her during her brief stay in St. Hilaire on the Maine coast. It quickly becomes apparent that the subject of the piece is domestic abuse, as seen through the lens of the prejudices and ignorance of the early 1970s. Shreve lays out the facts in the "research" and allows us to hear the original voice of the relevant characters and come to our own conclusions about what happened and why. At the end of the book we get to read Helen's original article and consider the accuracy and sensationalism of Helen's take on the story.

The structure of the book certainly makes it a fascinating read, but equally noteworthy are Shreve's lyrical prose and vivid descriptions of the Maine shore. One constant in all of Shreve's books is her obvious love for and familiarity with the rugged New England coast and the people who live there. All in all, this is a wonderful book, challenging, intriquing, thought-provoking. You'll be glad you read it.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another hit for Shreve!, July 13, 2000

By 

Katherine Neis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Fits of Passion: A Novel (Paperback)

Anita Shreve does it again with Strange Fits of Passion, a story in which the main character is a victim of violent physical abuse. Maureen English meets Harrold at her place of employment as a reporter in New York City. They immediately begin a relationship and marry within a year or so. Their relationship is characterized by heavy drinking and erotic sexual experimentations which all seem harmless for a time. Until the beatings begin. And they only get worse as time passes. Maureen becomes pregnant and has baby Caroline and, still, the violence continues, spurred on by inane jealousy, over-drinking or losses of temper. Once Maureen runs away only to return scared and ashamed. The second time she leaves, however, after a particularly bad scuffle, is for good. This time she drives with their baby to Northern New Enland where she knows noone and risks discovery less quickly. Yet she lives in the fear that he will eventually find her and, this time, she knows he will kill her. Told from the point of view of a reporter who later writes a book based on Maureen's story, the reader views letters Maureen has written that act as interviews, and later on, the newspaper article written on the basis of these interviews. Scary suspenseful, and emotionally demanding, Shreve has once again won my utmost respect and admiration as a modern novelist.