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


From Publishers Weekly
In bestsellers such as Fortune's Rocks, Shreve has revealed an impeccably sharp eye and a generous emotional sensitivity in describing the moment when a man and a woman become infatuated with each. She is less successful this time out, perhaps because the epiphany is one-sided. Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy. Nicholas tells the story in retrospect, writing feverishly on a train trip in 1933 to his sister's funeral in Florida. His pedantic style is full of parenthetical asides, portentous foreshadowing and rhetorical throat. His erotic swoon commands sympathy, until it carries him past any definition of decency. He will do anything to bring down Philip Asher, his academic rival and the brother of Etna's true love, Samuel. He plays on prevailing anti-Semitism (the Ashers are Jewish), and he persuades his daughter, Clara, to claim that Philip touched her improperly, which besmirches not only Philip's reputation but Clara's as well. We see Etna herself only secondhand, except for some correspondence with Philip reproduced toward the end of the tale. Credit the author for making the point that Etna and her sisters had too little autonomy even to tell their own stories, but filtering Etna's experience through Nicholas's sensibility deprives the novel of intimacy and immediacy.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Set at the turn of the last century, like Fortune's Rocks, this work begins when a man fleeing a hotel fire encounters a mysterious woman who will ultimately become his wife. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Anita Shreve returns to New England for another look into the lives of men and women in the early twentieth century. Nicholas Van Tassel is writing his memoir of a life centered around Etna Bliss, a woman whose love remained elusive even after their marriage many years earlier. Dennis Boutsikaris is masterful as the voice of Professor Van Tassel, portraying the character as he is: insecure, arrogant, and blindly devoted all at once. Like the heroine in Shreve's Fortune's Rocks, Etna is a woman oppressed by the times in which she lives; these restrictions inevitably lead to conflict and bewilderment. Shreve writes with masterful description and is capable of taking the listener back in time. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Boldly plotted and inventively told, Shreve's latest novel is further proof that she is a natural-born storyteller with a shrewd sense of how to shape her material to best appeal to the commercial market. This is a story of obsessive love spanning the years 1899-1916 and told in the somewhat stilted and formal language of a pompous English professor. Nicholas Van Tassel first meets Etna Bliss while escaping from a hotel fire, a conflagration that serves to foreshadow their relationship. He pursues her relentlessly, ascertaining that she is financially dependent on her sister's family. Sensing her restlessness, he proposes marriage, deceiving himself about her feelings for him. The bargain they have struck comes back to haunt them when Nicholas discovers that his wife, unbeknownst to him, has inherited a painting, sold it, and used the proceeds to buy herself a small house, where she can find some small measure of freedom. Considering this act the height of betrayal, Nicholas sets in motion a series of disastrous events. Shreve artfully explores the gamut of emotions provoked by passion, from selfless generosity to base pettiness, subtly tracing the bargains people make and the price exacted, all in the name of love. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Etna Bliss her just moved to the New England town where her uncle teaches college when her life is transformed in a single stroke. She is dining in a hotel downtown when a fire forces her to escape to the snowy streets outside. Amid the smoke and chaos of that night she is glimpsed, standing under a streetlight, by a man who was dining in the same room - a man who is so overwhelmed by the sight of her that he rebuilds his life around a single goal: to marry Etna Bliss." That man is Nicholas Van Tassel, and All He Ever Wanted is his account of how two lives changed from that tumultuous night forward. A proud and orderly man, Van Tassel is ill equipped to deal with the ferocity of love. But he is determined to have Etna, no matter what the cost. Riding a train south many years later, he unwinds his memories of the drama that followed and struggles to understand the mystery his life became on that night.

SYNOPSIS

Ebook Special Feature: Includes essays written by Anita Shreve and chapter excerpts from Sea Glass, The Last Time They Met, and Fortune's Rocks.

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Boston Herald

Shreve is by far one of the finest novelists of her time.

USA Today

Shreve is a master at depicting passion's ferocious grip....there's something addictive about her literary tales of lust and love.

The Washington Post

Anita Shreve knows something about narrative momentum. Whether you line up at the library to reserve her latest novel or roll your eyes at the melodrama that heats up her pages, once they are turning you will not be bored. All He Ever Wanted is no exception. It may not be particularly memorable, but it is artful entertainment, with the occasional neat turn of phrase as an added bonus. — Janice P. Nimura

Publishers Weekly

In bestsellers such as Fortune's Rocks, Shreve has revealed an impeccably sharp eye and a generous emotional sensitivity in describing the moment when a man and a woman become infatuated with each. She is less successful this time out, perhaps because the epiphany is one-sided. Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy. Nicholas tells the story in retrospect, writing feverishly on a train trip in 1933 to his sister's funeral in Florida. His pedantic style is full of parenthetical asides, portentous foreshadowing and rhetorical throat. His erotic swoon commands sympathy, until it carries him past any definition of decency. He will do anything to bring down Philip Asher, his academic rival and the brother of Etna's true love, Samuel. He plays on prevailing anti-Semitism (the Ashers are Jewish), and he persuades his daughter, Clara, to claim that Philip touched her improperly, which besmirches not only Philip's reputation but Clara's as well. We see Etna herself only secondhand, except for some correspondence with Philip reproduced toward the end of the tale. Credit the author for making the point that Etna and her sisters had too little autonomy even to tell their own stories, but filtering Etna's experience through Nicholas's sensibility deprives the novel of intimacy and immediacy. (Apr. 15) Forecast: A coordinated laydown will energize sales, and Shreve's latest will likely hit the charts. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal