Body Surfing

At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well to — do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt for herself is threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an author at one with her métier" (Miami Herald), Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

"Deceptive love and stark betrayal form the icy core of this dark 12th novel from Oprah-anointed (The Pilot's Wife), Orange Prize finalist (The Weight of Water) Shreve. Set adrift at 29 by the sudden death of her second husband (her first divorced her), smart, underemployed Sydney (no last name) signs on for a quiet New England oceanfront summer of tutoring 18-year-old Julie, the intellectually slow but artistically talented and strikingly beautiful daughter of the fractious Edwards clan. The family includes Julie's brothers — 35-year-old Boston corporate real estate man Ben and 31-year-old M.I.T. poli-sci professor Jeff — and the three children's parents. Sydney is half-Jewish, and Mrs. Edwards is anti-Semitic. Family tensions escalate when Julie disappears, then resurfaces in Montreal as the lesbian lover of 25-year-old Helene (a body surfer who frequented the beach near the Edwardses' home). Jeff and Sydney bond during their search for Julie, nights of passion leading to plans for a joyous wedding, which get very complicated when the couple returns to Edwards central. Shreve's devastating depiction of the family's dissolution — the culmination of sublimated jealousies suddenly exploding into the open — is wrenching. Shreve's omniscience is asserted with such ease that it often feels like she's toying with her characters, but her control is masterful, particularly in the sure-handed and compassionate aftermath." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Over the course of 12 previous books, Anita Shreve has presented her characters with some of life's worst vicissitudes, and Sydney Sklar, the heroine of 'Body Surfing,' is no exception. Once divorced and once widowed by 29, she's deeply shaken, but in a manner so circumspect and stoical that Shreve barely nods at it: 'The double blow of the divorce and death left Sydney in a state of emotional paralysis,... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) during which she was unable to finish her thesis in developmental psychology and had to withdraw from her graduate program at Brandeis.'

As a way to 'drift and heal,' Sydney takes a string of 'odd jobs,' the most recent of which is tutoring beautiful Julie Edwards, a teenage girl with learning disabilities, at her parents' atmospheric beach house on the New Hampshire coast.

The Edwards' house is quickly recognizable as the one featured in three of Shreve's previous novels, 'Fortune's Rocks,' 'Sea Glass' and 'The Pilot's Wife,' so Sydney fits neatly into a long line of troubled women. Not only is she bereaved and divorced, she's estranged from her parents and essentially alone in the world. Plus she's half-Jewish in a WASP enclave that makes the L.L. Bean catalogue look diverse. (Shreve has some fun with preppy stereotypes, such as the guest who 'has the studied reticence of a recovering alcoholic surrounded by alcohol.') Sydney's troubles increase with the arrival of Julie's much older brothers, Ben and Jeff, who are both smitten with Sydney the first afternoon when they watch her bodysurfing. As she stumbles out of the surf, Jeff greets her with a dry towel, and romantic complications ensue.

One of the pleasures of Shreve's novels is that nothing ever happens simply, especially not affairs of the heart. In this case, Sydney falls for Jeff over Ben, though Ben is single and Jeff is supposed to be marrying the polished Victoria — adored by his shallow, social-climbing mother. Even this entanglement looks straightforward when docile Julie ties the whole household in knots with an unanticipated romance of her own.

Because Jeff and Sydney become engaged at almost the exact midpoint of the book, one knows that difficulties lurk ahead, all of which Sydney meets gracefully, if somewhat automatically. Her 'emotional paralysis' is conveyed in the fragmentary style Shreve has adopted in this novel: Every scene is chopped into short, deadpan segments. The effect of so much white space also highlights the curious detachment both Sydney and Shreve maintain toward Sydney's precarious situation. If only Sydney would swear a few times! Throw a fish fork at someone! But even when subjected to shocking cruelty, she responds with somber wisdom: 'She knows now that with time ... a kind of necessary acceptance will form around her, like a lobster making its new shell, one that will be soft and easily breakable in the beginning but so hard that only lobster crackers can shatter it in the end.'

This passage points to what is so alluring and so puzzling about this book: the notion that pain can be borne attractively. Like Sydney, who recovers from a hideous disappointment in an elegant Boston hotel (where she is courted by a suave Italian), the suggestion seems to be that one can look good in misery, be dignified instead of abject. Shreve quite rightly emphasizes the importance of plunging into life bravely again and again, no matter how tumbled one gets by the waves of fate. Unfortunately, people in pain tend to look and act as wretchedly as they feel, and when at last they stumble out of the surf, rarely is anyone smitten with them. Usually the beach is deserted, not a dry towel in sight.

Suzanne Berne's most recent novel is 'The Ghost at the Table.'

" Reviewed by David S. BroderAlan WolfeDennis DrabelleRon CharlesWendy KannAlan EhrenhaltRobert PinskySuzanne Berne, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"In simple yet eloquent style, Shreve portrays the arc of a complicated romantic relationship, from infatuation to betrayal. What's more, she builds in a palpable sense of suspense as well as a deep empathy for human frailty. The ever-skillful Shreve delivers yet another gripping read that will satisfy her many fans and earn her some new ones." Booklist

"Shreve's beautifully drawn tale of family and connection will leave readers feeling a bit slammed themselves: against the vagaries of life and the rocky shoals of love. A winner." Library Journal

"[A] thoughtful, tightly woven meditation on marriage and mortality, family devotion and dysfunction, with subtle, skillful segues into class and religion." USA Today

"Descriptions of fog, sunlight, swimming, eating, conversation, gardening, intimacy, and frustration are rendered in lucid, lean prose, so the story of an almost-disaster in the midst of such beauty moves quickly, slyly, toward its revelation." Providence Journal

"The characters don't bleed and the plot doesn't rise above cliche. In the end Shreve is too good a writer to be satisfied with a role in romance fiction." Chicago Sun-Times

"Not one of this crowd-pleasing author's best, but a solid, workmanlike B-plus effort." Kirkus Reviews

A spellbinding novel about a young widow torn between two brothers she meets one New England summer, Body Surfing is from the bestselling author of A Wedding in December and The Pilot's Wife, an Oprah Book Club selection.

Anita Shrere is the author of the acclaimed novels Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water and The Pilot's Wife. She teaches writing at Amherst College and divides her time between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.