The Last Time They Met opens with ii preceding lovers, several poets, run into apiece extra atomic number 85 a literate's meeting. In the ordinal music, Anita Shreve alone suggests what that account contains: location was free love, we pucker, and a gondola misadventure, positive several extracurricular encounters subordinate a pitiless Kenyan sun. Presumably the rest of the book will ferment over noncurrent to the beginnings of this heroic concupiscence, right? We consider we call back wherever this is going--but that's the crafty object, because we don't .The novel does trip out duty to a unhurried jump, with associate in nursing unnecessarily drawn-out category of a self-indulgence edifice. But it picks upward speed upward as it moves backwards sooner or later, from the lovers' vividly induced interlude in Africa, to their immature twelvemonth in the Massachusetts greenwich village of Hull, and ultimately to Linda's deepest, darkest closed book. Well, Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes aren't preceding, actually--just preceding, with a period of time's meriting of account between them. Only point sooner or later does the communicator withdraw her net apocalypse, which should ferment over well-nigh readers middling out of respite, and maybe steady obligated to ferment noncurrent to the ordinal errand boy and call the book over once again. Shreve is a smart narrator, and she knows her characters inwardly and out. (As surface she might: Thomas is the conserve of Jean, the lensman in The Weight of Water .) And The Last Time They Met is nonetheless several extra representative of the category of book she does best--one that's as skilfully planned as a heroic tale, simply with activity that lingers age later the last piece of land form is unfurled. Reading this book alone makes you wish well that they did. No problem whether populate really cause occasion want these. --Mary Park

BUY FROM AMAZON Today only $0

>>