I hate to give a book that kept me entertained for the six-hour flight from Baltimore to Las Vegas only 3 stars, but there it is. I love Anita Shreve's books and only wish I had her talent and storytelling ability. That may be one reason this book disappointed me. Unlike "The Weight of Water", which told the story of a forbidden (and even more taboo) love in an lyrical and breathtaking way, this story left me cold.
Olympia Biddeford was, to me, a highly unlikable character. It is a testimony to Shreve's writing that I kept on reading despite this. Her lack of integrity, her total refusal to repent the evil of a love affair that hurt many innocent people, made me really angry. I know she was supposed to seem headstrong, sensual, and outside of the mores of her conventional turn-of-the-century world. Instead, Shreve shows us a spoiled young woman, much sheltered, doted upon, and privileged, who takes what she wants and doesn't much care who gets hurt in the process. I found it incredulous that such a properly brought-up young woman, living during the time that she did, would wantonly engage in a love affair with a man old enough to be her father, and care so little about the judgment of society and her parents. The scene in which they are discovered, in the chapel, on the altar of a church, was revolting. Why did Shreve choose this? And how can one possibly sympathize with this character after such behavior?
I also found the writing to be stilted, and I didn't understand the use of the present tense. I suppose it was to make the story seem more immediate, in spite of the awkwardly written 19th-century semantics. Instead, it just irritated me. "The Weight of Water", at least the parts about the Norwegian girl and her brother, was far better written, both elegant and believable.
Some people have compared this book to "Emmeline", by Judith Rossner. That is one of my all-time favorite books, and I can't really compare the two. Emmeline was a true innocent, manipulated by an older man as lonely as she, and her circumstances warranted all the reader's sympathies. Olympia, on the other hand, was the agressor in this love affair, and that she made out the winner in the end, just made me all the angrier.
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