Body Surfing – Anita Shreve

Sydney is twenty-nine and has already been married twice, one marriage ended in divorce and the other in widowhood. Slowly, she is trying to put her life back together after the shocking and unexpected sudden death of her beloved Daniel.

During the summer of 2002 she takes on the job as tutor to Julie, the teenage daughter of Mr and Mrs Edwards. The family and Sydney are staying at their oceanfront cottage until September which is ideal as this enables Sydney to escape her former life in Boston in the hope that distance will help her work out what she wants to do with her future. From the start it is clear to Sydney that Julie is slow and no amount of tutoring will help her make progress. In spite of this the two become close and Sydney realises that Julie has a strong artistic bent and begins to encourage her talents.

Jeff and Ben are Mr and Mrs Edwards’ grown up sons. They meet Sydney for the first time during a weekend break at the cottage. Later in the summer they come back to join the family for a holiday in August. It is clear that Ben is fond of Sydney but it seems that Jeff has his eye on her too. So Sydney is drawn into the middle of a powerful web of old rivalries, tensions and family secrets.

This is a stunning piece of writing and I couldn’t put the book down. As only the second Anita Shreve book I have read it was no less intriguing or enjoyable than the first and it will not be the last. The style in which this story is written, its short, jagged paragraphs, is emotionally exhausting to read. The clever and witty use of language and brilliant insight into the human condition sets Anita Shreve’s work apart from most other authors writing in this genre. The descriptiveness of her words is mesmerising:

“….the sense of mission, the rhyming clacking of the rails, the fast receding lights in the distance….”

And this is just one line in the book but it describes a train journey so precisely.

"Sydney enters her room and is immediately overwhelmed by grief for Daniel..........She remembers their fit, her pale leg slipping between his two when they lay together after making love, as if their limbs had been deliberately fashioned for this purpose. The way Daniel would never cross a room without glancing at her face. The way he'd come home from his shift, drained, searching for her, room to room, only the sight of her allowing him access to normal life."

That sounds like love to me!

It is difficult to say more about this particular story without giving too much away so all I will say is, if you haven’t done so already, pick up this or any of Anita Shreve’s books. You will not be sorry.

Frances and Bernard – Carlene Bauer

Frances Reardon is an author and Bernard Eliot a poet who meet for the first time at a writer’s colony in 1957. They have mutual admiration for each other’s work, which is more than they can say about many of the other attendees at the colony that year. They agree to become correspondents after they leave the colony and over the following nine years the most extraordinary love story begins.

This is an epistolary novel which has only five voices. The majority of letters are from Frances and Bernard but there are also contributions from Frances’s friend, Claire, Bernard’s friend, Ted and their joint publisher, John. Reading the letters is a perfect way for the characters to be uncovered and for the reader to watch the love story unfold. I adore reading stories told through correspondence and even though it sometimes feels like an intrusion into the subject’s private thoughts and feelings, I find I cannot wait to read the next letter in the story!

This novel proved to be an extraordinary accomplishment in penmanship, especially as the main characters are artists and quite opposite in character. Frances is restrained, religious and erudite and Bernard is entirely learned, passionate and suffers with mental illness episodes which seem to be brought about by his struggles with thoughts on love and the nature of faith. Even though there are a lot of religious references and discussions in this story, it did not detract from my enjoyment of it. Frances is devoutly Catholic although she has a hearty dislike of religious hypocrites and most of the nuns who taught her as a child. Bernard is a recent convert to Catholicism and soon realises the construct of his faith is flawed. The discussions around this are so well thought out and not in the least bit “preachy” which is what I dislike most about religion-centric novels. Religion is included in this novel because it is such an important issue to both characters and not just to make a statement to the reader.

Carlene Bauer has written an astonishingly witty, absorbing and ingenious novel which does not shy away from questions of faith, love and suffering for ones art. She skilfully uncovers the controlled and explosive natures of Frances and Bernard and is completely masterful with her use of language throughout the story. It is one of the most enjoyable novels I have read in many years and I was totally absorbed by the prose. I know I will read it many times not only to feast on the language and turn of phrase but to amble rather than gallop through the letters, now that I know what happens next!

This book is a feast of eloquent and witty prose and an absolute joy to read.

9.95/10