Strange Fits Of Passion: A Novel - Softcover

Shreve, Anita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156031396 ISBN 13: 9780156031394

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2005

Synopsis

A labyrinthine tale of truth and deception from acclaimed novelist Anita Shreve  Everyone believes that Maureen and Harrold English, two successful New York City journalists, have a happy, stable marriage. It's the early '70s and no one discusses or even suspects domestic abuse. But after Maureen suffers another brutal beating, she flees with her infant daughter to a coastal town in Maine. The weeks pass slowly, and just as Maureen begins to settle into her new life and new identity, Harrold reappears, bringing the story to a violent, unforgettable climax.

About this title

About the Author:

Anita Shreve was a high school teacher and a freelance magazine journalist before writing fiction full time. She was the author of over fifteen novels including The Stars Are Fire as well as the international bestseller The Pilot’s Wife, and The Weight of the Water, a finalist for the Orange Prize. Shreve taught writing at Amherst College and lived in Massachusetts.
 

From Publishers Weekly:

As she did in her first novel, Eden Close , Shreve opens this absorbing story with oblique hints of a violent event--here a murder committed by a woman in response to domestic abuse--then segues to flashbacks that slowly reveal the circumstances leading up to it. A reporter who wrote a book about the crime shares her notes, presented in alternating versions and voices. Most affecting is the voice of the accused woman, who flees Manhattan with her six-month-old daughter to seek sanctuary in a coastal Maine village where she is protected by the clannish but sympathetic townspeople. She finds temporary solace in an affair with a sensitive lobsterman, but is betrayed to her husband by another man out of jealousy. Shreve is particularly effective in evoking the landscape and atmosphere of a close-knit community and the authentic vernacular of its nicely differentiated inhabitants. Her elegiac, portentous prose provides effective pacing. The novel's main drawback, however, lies in its predictability, and in the lack of credibility for the heroine's violent act, faults Shreve somewhat overcomes by raising the question of journalistic integrity (did the reporter alter her notes?) and the possibility that the accused woman's account might have contained deliberate falsehoods. In spite of its superficialities, however, the novel is often insightful and moving.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0156031396
• ISBN 13: 9780156031394
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352