I believe an entire story, an entire marriage was written in that embrace, though I could not have foreseen it then, and based on that experience, I would advise young lovers to be as attentive to the first embrace with the beloved one as one would be to a soothsayer...

It is a fire in a New Hampshire hotel that brings Nicholas Van Tassel and Etna Bliss together, a chance meeting that lights up a lifelong passion. But their life is not everything they could have imagined. Many years later, Nicholas recounts their courtship and their time together. As the threads of the story begin to unravel, what is revealed is a patchwork of promises, truths, secrets, lies and a man, madly in love, for whom his wife is all he ever wanted...

Sending to Cassiopeiea as part of the BCuk extra Birthday book Exchange

I haven't read any Anita Shreve for some time, thank you ladkyis for sending this one.

While very well written and an excellent observation of the period, I found it very difficult to engage on any level with this story. Van Tassel was to my mind a completely unredeemable character and as we only saw Etna through his eyes she also failed to win any sympathy. Not that I mind unsympathetic characters, but they never reached me in any part of the narrative that engaged my mind enough to make me want to finish and find out what happened. I have to say that this is the first of Shreve's works where I have felt like this at the end.

Left on a bench in the Market Square.

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Happy reading.

Visiting Scotland from Toronto and stumbled upon this book on a bench in Melrose. I didn't actually read the book myself, instead I gave it to my mom; she had actually read it before but gave it another read. According to her this isn't one of Shreve's best works but nonetheless still well written, a bit of a downer though. I brought it back to Toronto with me and release it most likely somewhere on the University of Toronto campus.