Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [0]
FORTUNE’S ROCKS
“Beguiling and richly rewarding. . . . This story of passion and scandal at the end of the last century is a breathtaking, highly entertaining novel. . . . Olympia may well be the most alluring female since Nabokov’s Lolita. . . . No praise is too high for Fortune’s Rocks. The book will take hold of you and not let go until the last word.”
—Robert Allen Papinchak, USA Today
“Shreve is a wildly entertaining novelist. . . . Fortune’s Rocks is a classic fin de siècle novel wrapped in millennial optimism . . . a morality tale that reads like something Edith Wharton would have written if she’d been a friend of Gloria Steinem instead of Henry James. . . . Indeed, what makes Fortune’s Rocks so compelling is Shreve’s attention to detail and her remarkable restraint.”
—Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
“Anita Shreve, consummate historical novelist, has her own capacity for enthralling the reader and Fortune’s Rocks engages totally. . . . Shreve’s ability to build dramatic tension is remarkable.”
—Victoria Brownworth, Baltimore Sun
“Wonderful. . . . Fortune’s Rocks is intelligently told and beautifully written. . . . Shreve makes the reader care not just about Olympia and John, but about the supporting characters as well. She skillfully spins out several subplots, meanwhile tantalizing the reader with hints of what surely must happen next.”
—Michele Ross, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Anita Shreve has seduced this reader. . . . She is a skilled storyteller with an uncanny eye for detail: She excels in descriptions of fin de siècle clothing, styles of architecture, the manners and mores of New England families. . . . I found Fortune’s Rocks more satisfying than her previous books.”
—Kunio Francis Tanabe, Washington Post Book World
“Refined in style, powerful in feeling, Fortune’s Rocks creates a heroine who risks all for love. . . . The novel works on several levels: as love story, as social criticism, and as a depiction of the manners and mores of a stratified society in 1900. . . . Novelists Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow, and Edith Wharton all challenged the rosewater-and-lavender tradition of women as creatures of invincible innocence. . . . Anita Shreve writes in this line of literary succession.”
—Peggy Nash, Dallas Morning News
“This book is not to be missed. . . . Shreve’s writing is just complex and meaty enough to portray the time period perfectly, and it’s a beautifully told story [with] a tense, page-turning trial at the end.”
—Beth Gibbs, Library Journal
“Shreve unravels her story painstakingly, allowing readers to experience the full measure of Olympia’s struggle as well as Haskell’s alternating periods of romantic passion and aching remorse. . . . Through it all, Shreve carefully contrasts the intellectual with the emotional and draws a compelling portrait of highly moral, ethical people who commit the one unforgivable crime of their time.”
—Diane Carman, Denver Post
“Fortune’s Rocks projects an inevitability and authorial confidence that bristles with the word now. Shreve’s heroine is similarly self-assured. . . . This novel of a forbidden love a century ago is a satisfying read.”
—Sunil Iyengar, San Francisco Chronicle
“Lolita meets Hester Prynne in this sexy, hard-to-put-down novel. . . . Fortune’s Rocks has all the ingredients for success.”
—Gabriella Stern, Wall Street Journal
“Desire takes center stage in Fortune’s Rocks. . . . Shreve’s luminous prose is splendid. She plumbs such emotional depths and can describe anything — light, the weather, suffering, remorse, passion, sexuality, despair, clothes. She beautifully documents, explores, and charts the course of this seemingly doomed affair from initial sexual bliss to exposure, expulsion, and exile. All of it is written in a present tense that keeps you on the edge of your seat.”
—Sam Coale, Providence Sunday Journal
ALSO BY ANITA SHREVE
The Pilot’s Wife
The Weight of Water
Resistance
Where or When
Strange Fits of Passion
Eden Close
The characters and events in this book are