Thomas Janes and Linda Fallon are high school sweethearts and soulmates. The story has three parts. The first part opens when Thomas and Linda are both 52 years old and they meet at a poetry reading in Toronto. The star-crossed lovers, through many ups and downs of life, meet three times. At 52 (Part 1), at 26 in Africa (Part2), at 17 when their relationship is cut in an abrupt manner with a car crash (Part3).

readers who enjoy really great love stories and don't mind being shocked or being put off by an unexpected ending.

the second Africa part. It is told with vivid imagination and an emotional coming together.

check it again if I understood it right.

dizzied and shocked. It was often hard to follow the story well for it was told backwards in time. The last page was especially stunning for in a split second everything changed.

Anita Shreve started writing fiction while teaching high school. Although she won an O. Henry prize for a story, she though she couldn't make a living as a fiction writer and turned journalist and traveled to Africa, spending three years in Kenya. When she came back to USA, she free-lanced and began working on her first novel, Eden Close. With its publication in 1989, she gave up journalism for writing fiction full time. Anita Shreve's other novels are: Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water, The Pilot’s Wife, Fortune's Rocks, The Last Time They Met, Sea Glass, All He Ever Wanted. In 1998 Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction.

it shows what can be done with fiction, if the author has enough daring. Also as a love story, every word and line is to be savored through Anita Shreve's wonderful use of the language.

I found this novel to be of high fiction; therefore, it deserves some re-reading at parts and contemplation throughout, but especially at its end. Although it is love/romance genre type of a story, it doesn't have not one of those pre-formatted or expected storylines. It may not feel comfortable for some readers who are used to chronological order and may not like being stunned by the sudden twist at its end.

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Created Aug 22, 2003 at 1:05pm • Submit your own review...