Anita Shreve is my new favorite writier...she tells stories very well by creating realistic scenarios, genuine, well developed characters, and interesting twists in her stories.
This book involved several different characters and how they all come together during the beginning of the Great Depression. The main character, Honora, gets married, and she and her husband buy a beach house, which becomes the headquarters to a group who is trying to organize a labor union in a factory. While the story's elements were not the most interesting to me, it is apparent that Shreve puts a lot of time researching information that she includes in her novels, which provides the reader with a rich experience, even if the subject matter is not what attracts them to the book in the first place.
This is the first of Shreve's books that I have read in which she uses symbolism. Honora walks the beach often and picks up sea glass, which she collects and displays in her house. My understanding of the sea glass is that it represents Honor's inner self. This is the one thing that she can have to herself, and she often sits and sorts through the glass, noticing each color and shape, and finding beauty in each one. The other characters react to this hobby as they interact with Honora herself, some appreciating the glass's beauty, and some growing frustrated and annoyed with it. At the end of the book, Honora moves to another house and begins a new life, taking the sea glass with her.
Each of Shreve's stories are uniqe, and her characters are all women to whom I can relate. The experiences they have and how they grow and change as people is what keeps bringing me back to Shreve's books.
No comments:
Post a Comment