All He Ever Wanted

by Anita Shreve | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0349115583 Global Overview for this book
Registered by woosang of Campbelltown, New South Wales Australia on 2/17/2005
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by woosang from Campbelltown, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, February 17, 2005
In one day I ended up with two copies of the same book. One is this one, the other a trade paperback. The other is for releasing.
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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.

Product Description:
A man escaping from a hotel fire sees a woman standing beneath a tree. He approaches her and sets in motion a series of events that will change his life forever. Years later, traveling from New England to Florida by train, he reflects back on his obsession with this unknown and ultimately unknowable woman--his courtship of her, his marriage to her, and the unforgivable act that ripped their family apart. Spanning three decades from 1899 to 1933, ALL HE EVER WANTED gives us a tale of marriage, betrayal, and the search for redemption. It has the unmatched attention to details of character, place, and emotion that have made Anita Shreve one of America's best-loved and bestselling novelists

Journal Entry 2 by woosang at Convention in Adelaide, South Australia Australia on Thursday, October 5, 2006

Released 17 yrs ago (10/21/2006 UTC) at Convention in Adelaide, South Australia Australia

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Releasing at the 2006 Adelaide convention

Journal Entry 3 by italienfrancese from Adelaide, South Australia Australia on Friday, October 20, 2006

Journal Entry 4 by italienfrancese from Adelaide, South Australia Australia on Monday, November 13, 2006
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