All He Ever Wanted: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The fire began in the kitchen and spread to the hotel dining room..." (more)
Key Phrases: tin cake box, white chandelier, Van Tassel, Phillip Asher, Etna Bliss (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Anita Shreve's All He Ever Wanted reads like Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own told from the perspective of the husband. The wife gains a measure of freedom, but how does the repressive, abandoned husband feel about that freedom? Set in the early 1900s in the fictional New England college town of Thrupp, and narrated by the pompous Nicholas Van Tassel, All He Ever Wanted is at once an academic satire, a period novel, and a tale of suspense. Shreve's ability to nimbly hop through genres brings a liveliness to this story of love gone depressingly wrong. Van Tassel is an undistinguished professor of rhetoric at Thrupp College and a confirmed bachelor when he meets--in no less flamy a scenario than a hotel fire--the arresting Miss Etna Bliss. Immediately smitten, he woos and wins her. At least, he persuades her to become his wife. But Van Tassel hasn't really won her. Etna keeps her secrets and her feelings to herself. The extent of her withholding only becomes clear after a couple of kids and a decade or so of marriage. Then we find out that she's been creating a secret haven for herself all along. Van Tassel is in turn revealed--through his own priggish, puffed-up sentences--as something of a monster. The book is cleverly done; watching Etna through Van Tassel's eyes is like looking at beautiful bird from a hungry cat's point of view. But Van Tassel's voice might be too well written; he's pedantic and dull and snarky all at once, and by the end we find that we, like Etna, can't bear his company a minute longer. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In bestsellers such as Fortune's Rocks, Shreve has revealed an impeccably sharp eye and a generous emotional sensitivity in describing the moment when a man and a woman become infatuated with each. She is less successful this time out, perhaps because the epiphany is one-sided. Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy. Nicholas tells the story in retrospect, writing feverishly on a train trip in 1933 to his sister's funeral in Florida. His pedantic style is full of parenthetical asides, portentous foreshadowing and rhetorical throat. His erotic swoon commands sympathy, until it carries him past any definition of decency. He will do anything to bring down Philip Asher, his academic rival and the brother of Etna's true love, Samuel. He plays on prevailing anti-Semitism (the Ashers are Jewish), and he persuades his daughter, Clara, to claim that Philip touched her improperly, which besmirches not only Philip's reputation but Clara's as well. We see Etna herself only secondhand, except for some correspondence with Philip reproduced toward the end of the tale. Credit the author for making the point that Etna and her sisters had too little autonomy even to tell their own stories, but filtering Etna's experience through Nicholas's sensibility deprives the novel of intimacy and immediacy.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; 1st Edition: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 edition (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316735736
• ISBN-13: 978-0316735735
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (120 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,058 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shreve at her very best! One of my favorite books of 2003!, January 15, 2004

By	Nancy R. Katz "NancyK18" (NJ) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: All He Ever Wanted (Hardcover)

Like Fortune's Rocks and Sea Glass, All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve is a book filled with wonderful characters set against a historical background of social mores and traditions. And as she did in he previous historical novels, the author offers her readers a wonderful novel and one that left me wishing for another book by Anita Shreve.

All He Ever Wanted begins during a fire when Nicholas Van Tassel, a professor at a small college in New Hampshire, spots a young woman and accompanies her home that evening. Almost immediately Nicholas becomes besotted with the woman Ms. Etna Bliss and begins courting her. From this point of the narrative, Shreve moves the scene to a time many years later as Nicholas recounts the story of his love for Etna on a train as he is bound for his sister's funeral in Florida. At this point Shreve becomes almost a modern day Edith Wharton as through Nicholas we come to learn about his views of society in the early 1900's through 1930. As readers, we watch as Nicholas becomes further obsessed with Etna, thwarts a rival for a competitive position at the college and eventually comes under scrutiny for a transgression he did many years before. And as these events are taking place we also watch as Nicholas' and Etna's relationship begins to spiral out of control and wonder how this will all be resolved. For in the end all Nicholas ever wanted is the love of Etna.

I highly recommend this book to those readers who have enjoyed Anita Shreve in the past and for those who may want to read her for the first time. The author has a wonderful ability to put her readers right between the pages of the book. In addition the narrative evokes the language and society of the 1900's. Shreve has done an excellent job of describing these events from the point of view of a man deeply in love and this book makes for a very worthwhile read. I enjoyed it so much that I rated it among my ten top favorite reads for 2003.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping and Unforgettable, February 25, 2004

By	W. Carol "dog lover" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: All He Ever Wanted (Hardcover)

Anita Shreve simply does not write ordinary books. Even her lesser efforts tend to leave the reader gasping for air at the end--and "All He Ever Wanted," one of her best, in my opinion, is breathtaking in the same shocking way.

Written entirely from the point of view of a stodgy male college professor circa 1900, this is the story of a passion so intense, so unlike the writer himself, that it is scarcely believable, especially when related in the stilted flowery language of the day.

Nicholas Van Tassel, a rather ordinary pedantic with nothing particularly unusual about him, happens to be in a hotel restaurant when it catches fire. This single pivotal episode in his otherwise unremarkable life changes him forever--it is during the rescue effort that he encounters Miss Etna Bliss, and falls head over heels into a passion that borders on, indeed IS, an obsession.

Hampered by the extreme rules of etiquette governing proper men and women of the day, Van Tassel nevertheless pursues Miss Bliss, finally persuading her to marry him despite her the fact that, as she honestly tells him, she does not love him. Love will come, thinks Van Tassel, hardly able to believe his luck in winning his prize. And that hope, that fantasy, that overwhelming obsession of his entire being, eventually destroys the narrator, his wife, and his entire family.

Shreve stays in character completely and thoroughly, managing to evoke the failings of the man himself, the restrictions of the society in which he lives, and the hopelessness of his obsession without ever once betraying herself. It is safe to say that the author stays well in the background while letting Van Tassel tell his own tragic story.

I consider this book a minor masterpiece. Shreve is an acquired taste, I know--but truly innovative and absolutely original in every book she writes. "All He Ever Wanted" is no exception.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong characters, good plot twists, June 22, 2004

By	B. McEwan "yellokat" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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I've read all of Shreve's novels and this one is near the top of my list. The heroine, Etna, is a powerful figure, but in the tradition of the period in which Shreve writes, Etna must keep her power undercover and hidden from her husband, a boorish professor at a local New England college.

The source of Etna's power -- perhaps the very power itself -- is her ability to hold a part of herself back from her husband and family. She keeps secrets, both of fact and of feeling, so that her integrity as a person can't be breached by a husband who feels entitled to know and own her totally. I identified deeply with Etna's need to do this, as I believe many women will who have been married to men who at first seemed innocuous but after a few years of marriage are revealed to be unbearably possessive. In self defense, Etna must keep her true self contained and hidden from her husband's impulse toward emotional rape.

While that may sound a bit strong, it seems very legitimate to me. I found the fact that Etna creates a personal studio space for herself -- and keeps it secret from her husband -- a natural response to his overwhelming intrusiveness. It's a testament to Shreve's ability to finely draw her characters that a reader such as myself can so thoroughly identify with the heroine's emotions, as well as feel stifled by a fictional character such as the husband.

Overall, this is a very good novel with enough depth and action to entertain readers without being shallow.