All He Ever Wanted: A Novel - Softcover

Shreve, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316010367 ISBN 13: 9780316010368

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2005

Synopsis

"A marriage is always two intersecting stories." This realization comes perhaps too late to the husband of Etna Bliss-a man whose obsession with his young wife begins at the moment of their first meeting, as he helps Etna and her companions escape from a fire in a hotel restaurant, and culminates in a marriage doomed by secrets and betrayal. Written with the intelligence and grace that are the hallmarks of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, this gripping tale of desire, jealousy, and loss is peopled by unforgettable characters as real as the emotions that bring them together.

About this title

Review

Anita Shrieve's bitter novel All He Ever Wanted is a fascinating demonstration of the theory that old stories give new stories the bones from which they derive their power. There is a sense in which this is a reverse Bluebeard narrative--the quietly monstrous narrator Van Tassel is obsessed with taking possession of all the secret rooms in the heart of the woman he loves and cannot understand why secrets might be a good thing. Van Tassel is one of the best characters Shrieve has created--a fussy, pedantic man with a real capacity for passion and some genuine grievances with life, but lacking in some crucial ingredients of his moral compass. His love for his wife, Etna, and with the petty politics of the college where he is teaching, turn him steadily rancid, and it is only within the framing narrative that an older Van Tassel seems to be approaching a capacity for redemption. Part of the strength of the book is that Shrieve has understood the beginnings of the 20th century, not merely in terms of the surface details, but in the permissions the ideas of the time give those with small amounts of domestic power to behave badly. In the end, though, Van Tassel loses almost everything--if there is a weakness here, it is that Shrieve is so optimistic that, out of his reach and knowledge, Etna finds a contentment that Van Tassel's narrative cannot show us. --Roz Kaveney

Review

*'A painful tale of obsession . . . impeccably done (SUNDAY TIMES)

Shreve is prolific, polished, unputdownable. Above all, she delivers serious topics with a readable touch (GUARDIAN)

Fluent and purposeful in its portrayal of the despair and claustrophobia seething beneath an ordered surface (SUNDAY TIMES)

Etna is a woman operating under rigorous and agonising self-discipline. Volcanic passions exist beneath her submissive façade (JOANNE HARRIS)

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0316010367
• ISBN 13: 9780316010368
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 372