All He Ever Wanted

I struggled through the first chapter or two of this book, then it swept me up and I didn't put it down until I had finished. The language is old-fashioned and a little flowery yet works well to draw the reader in to the story. The story is told by a college professor looking back over his marriage which took place 30-odd years before. The old man feels the need to explain his marriage to his son who is about to become a father. Nicholas Van Tassel meets Etna Bliss when they both escape from the dining room of the local hotel which happens to be burning down around their ears. From the start Van Tassel is overwhelmed with longing for Etna. Even when they are married he never stops longing for her. While she becomes his wife, Etna never gives herself to her husband in any sense of the word. In many ways she remains a stranger to both him and to the reader. We only ever hear her husband's version of events, apart from a few letters he discovers. Etna is a woman of secrets and all is not revealed by the book.This is a good story that is beautifully written. I was fully absorbed by it and once it got going it was never dull. All the major characters are deserving of sympathy in their own way and I spent most of the book knowing it was knowing it was all going to end in tears but hoping it wouldn't. There is no simple happy ending to this book, although it isn't totally without hope, which felt very right. A happy ending would have been a cop-out.

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.

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.

Anita Shreve just can't seem to write a bad book.In All He Ever Wanted, her tale concerns unrequited love, the results of the somewhat unlikely 'love at first sight.' Maybe this was more commn in the early 20th century, the era in which this book is set, but it was the only part of the tale that stretched my credulity. The story covers a lot of ground: anti-Semitism, ... abuse, women's rights, and academia.If you liked Shreves' other books, you won't be disappointed by this one.

Now in his senior years, Nicholas Van Tassel travels on a train from New England to Florida for the burial of his sister, while writing the memoirs of his ruined life. He begins years earlier with the fire --- the fire that would set his fate.As crowds escape a hotel blaze, Van Tassel spots a riveting woman under a lamppost. "There was about her a quality of stillness that was undeniably arresting, and if I close my eyes now," he recalls, "here in this racketing compartment, I can travel back in time more than three decades and see her unmoving form amidst the nearly hysterical crowd." From the start, Shreve sets up the initial sighting of Etna Bliss as something beyond normal attraction. Van Tassel tells us "my desire for this unknown woman was so immediate and keen and inappropriate that it quite startled me." In hindsight, Van Tassel describes his passion as capable of eroding and enhancing character --- in equal measure --- and yet it is the sentence about erosion that is most telling of things to come: "The erosion the result of the willingness to do whatever is necessary to obtain the object of one's desire, even if it means engaging in lies or deception or debasing what was once treasured."Enamored, Van Tassel pursues the aloof Etna immediately and with vigor. He ingratiates his way into her life, which is easy to do in the small quiet town where he has made his life and where there is little else to entertain or distract Etna. A seemingly harmless type --- professorial by vocation and character --- he is, by his own account, loyal and disciplined, even, ironically, when visiting the less savory neighborhood of Springfield, Massachusetts for trysts with women of some reputation. Etna proves to be a formidable mystery, but Van Tassel, who is obsessed, perseveres. They ultimately wed and have children, but Etna remains distant and impenetrable, and Van Tassel suspects that she has known love before him, though he dare not ask. Instead, he lets his jealousy fester. Eventually Etna's past comes to light and collides with Van Tassel's need to totally possess her. A grand scale betrayal ensues, wreaking destruction and devastation on all involved.Shreve peppers the story with the telltale detail she has come to be known for. Set in the last 19th and early 20th centuries, Van Tassel and Ms. Bliss engage in a proper courtship of afternoon teas, walks in the park and the exchange of books. All the while Van Tassel's desire grows, consumes and seethes below the surface.Shreve is one of those rare great authors who is equally at ease writing about any period. One sees the clothes, the furniture and the architecture in lively, captivating detail. Even in sharing his want, Shreve shows the reserve appropriate of the time: "Had it been at all within the realm of possibility, I would have crossed the distance between us and forced her face to mine. I would have dug my hand into the small of her back so that she was pressed hard against me. I would have l