Body Surfing

Very typical Anita Shreve. Slow to start but I could not put down once I got into the story. It was an excellent read and I greatly look forward to her siguel to this continuing story of the "house on the beach".

I loved the book and found that it was one of those wonderful books that I could not wait to get back to. The story of family dynamics was so well written and very believable that I found myself caught up in the story very quickly. I am sure we can all relate some of the characters and family behaviors in the book to our own families. GREAT BOOK !

When Sydney becomes a live-in tutor for teenager Julie Edwards, the New Hampshire beach house is full. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards have company, and their grown sons --- Jeff and Ben --- visit along with Jeff's elegant girlfriend, Vicki. Sydney is just beginning to feel alive again after the death of her husband, as well as her divorce from her previous husband. At the Edwards's beach house, she adores friendly Mr. Edwards, but Mrs. Edwards treats her as distantly and formally as if Sydney were a servant. Sydney realizes that Julie is destined to disappoint her mother's unrealistic scholastic ambitions. Julie is intellectually slow, too slow to ever attend the big-name colleges Mrs. Edwards pines for. The beautiful blonde teenager worries Sydney in other ways. Julie attracts the attention of local boys, and then mysteriously vanishes during a dinner party. Could Julie be meeting a man? Sydney's own situation turns electric with the presence of the two Edwards sons. One of them --- she's sure it's Ben --- gropes her in the ocean as the three body surf at night. She's hyper-aware of Jeff's closeness as he helps her wash dishes and then again when the two of them search for his missing sister. When Julie returns, drunk and disheveled, Sydney and the brothers keep the evening's secrets from the parents while trying to pry answers from Julie, who cannot or will not tell them what happened to her. Sydney is amazed to learn that Jeff has kept Julie's secret from Vicki. The relationships within the house are as ornate and complicated as a fine tapestry. Sydney's ease with Mr. Edwards makes her yearn for family, while Mrs. Edwards's coolness pushes her away from theirs. Yet Mrs. Edwards is revealed as a multi-layered personality when Sydney realizes that her relationship with her husband is unexpected and complex. As Sydney begins to feel she has been given a new chance at life, she must navigate the stormy waters of a family torn by conflicts, lending suspense and tension until the startling climax. Don't be fooled, as I was, halfway through the novel when the author appears to be summing up the lives of the characters. It feels as if the story has been told, and the tension driving the plot has dissipated. That momentary lull, however, is a setup for unexpected twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat --- and turning pages all night long. BODY SURFING shares common themes with other Anita Shreve novels: the main character is tested repeatedly, the Edwards's beach house is the setting for several of her books (with different characters and time periods) and the tone is dark. This latest work has everything a reader could wish for: atmosphere, a sympathetic main character, suspense, longing, desire and unpredictable plot twists. --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

I seem to fall two sides of Anita Shreve: I either love them - recommend them to everyone, or I can't finish them. Body Surfing was a treasure, from beginning to (surprising) end. Her language is so devoid of extras, as if she writes sentences, then crosses out all the superfluous words, leaving just the bare bones of eloquent, beautiful prose. Somehow this house, and its predecessors,makes an appearance in every book. This time around, you can almost smell the beach...and the rotteness that corrupts the house and family within. A wonderful summer choice - or any other time. I read it in one day - sorry it didn't go on, and fervently hope to meet the characters again in a future novel.

I may be a man, and not just a man, but a businessman, and the only times that I am not going over a spreadsheet or quarterly report are when I am on a plane, but that is when I like to prop a cheap airline pillow behind my neck, wrap myself in a thin airline blanket, and dive into the latest Anita Shreve novel. I usually wrap another dust jacket over the book, something with "Success" or "Winning" in the title, but underneath the fake jacket I am unwrapping the lives, histories, and fates of complicated and compelling characters, and I often finish a Shreve novel in tears at the sheer power of her vivid and powerful descriptions of the turmoil within the human heart, at which point a flight attendant or a fellow passenger will ask if anything's wrong, and I usually reply, "These success/winning/business strategies are just so powerful (sniff)... I can bench 200 pounds." "Body Surfing: A Novel" continues Shreve's chronicling of the relationships between people seemingly thrown together by chance but whose lives eventually become so intertwined that one feels Fate, or an omniscient author, has brought them together. Sydney, a young woman escaping her own past, steps into the seemingly idyllic, New Hampshire seaside home of wealthy architect Mr. Edwards. The elegant, two-story, white clapboard house with the wraparound porch and mansard roof has become a recurring character in many of Shreve's novels, and here it serves as the repository of growing resentments, passions, and betrayals as Sydney becomes entangled in the Edwards family slow dissolution. I fairly dissolved myself as I read of Sydney's growing attraction to one of the Edwards brothers and the bitter actions of the other, all leading to a climax that left me, dare I say it, body surfing--on a wave of overwhelming emotions and uncontrollable feelings.