Product Description

A man escaping from a hotel fire sees a woman standing beneath a tree. He approaches her and sets in motion a series of events that will change his life forever. Years later, travelling from New England to Florida by train, he reflects back on his obsession with this unknown and ultimately unknowable woman - his courtship of her, his marriage to her, and the unforgivable act that ripped their family apart. Spanning three decades from 1899 to 1933, ALL HE EVER WANTED gives us a tale of marriage, betrayal and the search for redemption. It has the unmatched attention to details of character, place and emotion that have made Anita Shreve one of the world's best-loved and bestselling novelists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #312732 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Anita Shrieve's bitter novel All He Ever Wanted is a fascinating demonstration of the theory that old stories give new stories the bones from which they derive their power. There is a sense in which this is a reverse Bluebeard narrative--the quietly monstrous narrator Van Tassel is obsessed with taking possession of all the secret rooms in the heart of the woman he loves and cannot understand why secrets might be a good thing. Van Tassel is one of the best characters Shrieve has created--a fussy, pedantic man with a real capacity for passion and some genuine grievances with life, but lacking in some crucial ingredients of his moral compass. His love for his wife, Etna, and with the petty politics of the college where he is teaching, turn him steadily rancid, and it is only within the framing narrative that an older Van Tassel seems to be approaching a capacity for redemption. Part of the strength of the book is that Shrieve has understood the beginnings of the 20th century, not merely in terms of the surface details, but in the permissions the ideas of the time give those with small amounts of domestic power to behave badly. In the end, though, Van Tassel loses almost everything--if there is a weakness here, it is that Shrieve is so optimistic that, out of his reach and knowledge, Etna finds a contentment that Van Tassel's narrative cannot show us. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'A painful tale of obsession ... impeccably done' SUNDAY TIMES; 'Shreve is prolific, polished, unputdownable. Above all, she delivers serious topics with a readable touch' GUARDIAN; 'Fluent and purposeful in its portrayal of the despair and claustrophobia seething beneath an ordered surface' SUNDAY TIMES; 'Etna is a woman operating under rigorous and agonising self-discipline. Volcanic passions exist beneath her submissive facade' JOANNE HARRIS

Anita Shreve's earlier novels have proved her to be a sensitive analyst of the most intricate workings of the heart. She does not deal with the fervent rollercoaster of love, but rather the simmering cauldron, the barely suppressed desire, the nature of secrecy and the power of betrayal. This latest novel is vintage Shreve; with her customary grace, she dissects the marriage of Nicholas van Tassel and Etna Bliss to expose the raw misery of a passion which is not reciprocated. Nicholas first catches sight of the elegant Etna Bliss in the aftermath of a hotel fire. A somewhat pompous, studious college professor, bound up with his work on Sir Walter Scott and unable to relate to his students, van Tassel finds himself embroiled in an inexplicable passion for this beautiful, distant woman. Passion quickly becomes obsession - he is determined nothing shall stand in the way of their marriage. Despite her initial refusal of his proposal, van Tassel does offer Etna a means of escape from the claustrophobic confines of her sister's house. She makes no secret of her lack of affection for Nicholas - 'This must be said: I do not love you' - but he is convinced that time and a growing physical intimacy will warm her heart towards him. Nicholas's hopes are destined to be dashed, however, as the couple fail to find any spark of sexual compatibility. Nicholas is distraught when he realizes his adored Etna is not a virgin on their wedding night - unable to confront her about her past, this knowledge eats away at him, until his jealousy becomes even more obsessive than his desire. The years drift by, two children are born and it seems that an accommodation of sorts has been reached; Nicholas is up for the post of Dean of Thrupp College, and feels certain that he will be elected. But the arrival of a handsome young academic to deliver a series of lectures shatters this illusion. Long-buried passions resurface, secrets are revealed and as he senses everything he wanted crumbling around him, Nicholas is driven to terrible lengths in order to cling on to his wife and his sanity. This is a brilliant and painful exploration of hopeless love. (Kirkus UK)

Shreve (Sea Glass, 2002, etc.) daringly makes the bad guy her narrator in a creepy tale of relentless love. Nicholas Van Tassel may not seem so awful at first, as he describes the hotel fire in the winter of 1899 that introduced him to Etna Bliss. We quickly see that this 30-year-old English professor at Thrupp College in New Hampshire is pompous, ambitious, and something of a hypocrite, as well as a minor plagiarist, but we're inclined to sympathy thanks to Nicholas's immediate passion for Etna. Her mother has recently died, she's living temporarily with her uncle, and the future seems to promise little more to this regal and mysterious woman than life as an unpaid governess to her sister's children. Unless she marries Nicholas, that is, who isn't above pressing his suit on those grounds. She accepts, making sure he knows that "I don't think that I could . . . love you . . . in the way that a wife must love a husband." (Their sex life, in fact, proves a disaster.) We already know through Nicholas's framing narration, from September 1933, that this marriage has turned out badly-but the story's central section, from fall 1914 through spring 1915, reveals just how badly-and just how far Nicholas is prepared to go to assert his desires. As he campaigns to be named dean of Thrupp's faculty, he learns that Etna has a secret independent life. It's entirely innocent, but that doesn't stem Nicholas's rage, especially when he learns that his wife had a lover before they were married. Shreve lets her narrator damn himself by his own sanctimonious words as he stoops to Jew-baiting, marital rape, and persuading his teenaged daughter to tell a catastrophic lie-all to further his ambitions, which, it becomes increasingly plain, are not just selfish but scarily obsessive. Still, since Nicholas is our window into the events, we feel his humanity even as he performs a series of despicable acts. Full-bodied storytelling with an unflinching moral backbone: one of Shreve's best. (Kirkus Reviews)

The Times
'It is fluent and purposeful in its portrayal of the despair and claustrophobia seething beneath an ordered surface'

Customer Reviews

An anti-hero's passion
This is a fascinating book, based around the obsessive love of a man for a woman. This love is built on fantasy; it is fuelled by the restrictions of the society in which the two main characters live, & it is ultimately doomed because it is not rooted in reality. Even though the main characters are unlikeable - the anti hero is pedantic and pompous & the woman he adores uses his passion to her own ends, they are described in such detail that the reader is fascinated by the gradual drawing towards doom of the relationship. I was left wondering how many other lives were ruined by the need to fit in with the social mores of the time.

not a Shreve classic
I tend to enjoy Anita Shreve books, I love how they are written and all the subtle undertones in the stories she tells. This book, delivers on both these counts, but written as it is, from the main characters obsession with a woman he marries, fails to fully engage.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what I did not like, except to say I would have liked more, from another perpective. I wonder if Shreve felt she had ended up in a cul de sac with the narrative she chose?

However, the agony of an obsession and small town politics comes across very well.
Van Tassel, the main character is someone who gets all he ever wanted, and yet ends up with nothing of value.

What has happened to the Anita Shreve we know and love?
I am a massive fan of Anita Shreve but it seems I am now only a fan of her earlier books. Long awaited I found this book a let down - after reading Fortunes Rocks, Last Time They Met and Strange Fits of Passion. All fantastic books. I could not relate or even like the characters in this book and found it difficult to read. I do enjoy her writing style, which is why i've given it a 2 instead of a 1 but I would not recommend this to any Anita Shreve 'virgin'.