All He Ever Wanted 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
At the turn of the 20th century, Nicholas Van Tassel, an English literature professor at a small New Hampshire college, manages to escapes from a hotel fire. As he stands in the dark among the other souls lucky enough not to have perished, he sees Etna Bliss. Though she is not beautiful, he is immediately drawn to her. The result of that first fateful meeting is an obsession from which he is unable to escape. Nicholas courts Etna and eventually marries her, though she admits that she does not love him and never can. The jealousy that begins to simmer on their wedding night eventually leads to Nicholas's demise. Their marriage, though filled with companionship, mutual respect, and concern about their two children during the daylight hours, grows ever more precarious as evening draws near. Ultimately, a betrayal occurs. Shreve's prose is as compelling as the story itself, and her characters are all too human in their weaknesses. The author asks whether we can really possesses another person and reminds us of our tendency to cling to the past. Readers who loved Shreve's portrayal of human relationships and her building of tension, particularly in The Pilot's Wife, will find it again here. For most public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/02.]-Nanci Milone Hill, Lucius Beebe Memorial Lib., Wakefield, MA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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