Product Description

When an English biographer, Mr Moxton, sets out to write a story on the Rose Street Massacre of 1983, he interviews elderly Honora Beecher, one of the few remaining survivors. Centred around union labour and the textile mills of Depression-era New Hampshire, the massacre involved Honora's husband Sexton. Nearly fifty years have passed and, although she has plenty of time to reflect, the story is still hard to tell. Moxton wants to know everything and sets out to get Honora's and her late husband's life story to tell the tale. Seen from the alternating points of view of Mr Moxton and Honora Beecher, this is the story of two divergent lives, each experiencing love and loss, sorting our the past and looking for one thing and finding another.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63101 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-21
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Anita Shreve's new novel Sea Glass represents a remarkable advance. She previously caught the attention of many readers with Fortune's Rocks and The Pilot's Wife, beautifully crafted novels with rich and subtly observed characterisation. But however impressive those books were, Sea Glass has the same adroit creation of character, but the prose is even more rich and allusive. This is a story of the human heart, of the demands of the past, and of the necessity for pragmatism in human relationships. It's 1929, and Honora Beecher and her husband Sexton are enjoying their new marriage in a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. Honora is renovating the rundown property and searching for pieces of coloured glass washed up on the beach. Sexton attempts to buy the house they both adore, but with disastrous results: like many other Americans, he is a victim of the stock market crash and is financially wiped out. He is forced to work in a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is having violent results. The couple's struggle to maintain their marriage in the face of dangerous forces that threaten to overwhelm them is vividly and poignantly told.

Shreve has written nine novels and throughout her work she has painstakingly honed her storytelling skills with elegance and intelligence. She is particularly skilful at depicting interlocking lives, as in Sea Glass, and adroitly invests each with its own portion of love and tragedy. If you want to be one of the "early adopters" of Shreve's cherishable novels, now is the time:

In the wet sand by her foot, a bit of colour catches her eye. The glass is green pale and cloudy, the colour of lime juice that has been squeezed into a glass. She brushes the sand off and presses the sea glass into her palm, keeping it for luck.

Christina Hardyment, INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE
'superbly read by Emilia Fox and Kerry Shale, and when it ended I decided to listen all over again.'

Synopsis
The year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything they own to buy the house they both love. Along with millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the stock market crash and finds himself penniless. The only work he can find is at a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is erupting into violence. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand, Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and home while overwhelmed by passions of every kind. Writing with the power and immediacy that have made her novels bestsellers, Shreve unfolds interlocking lives, each with its own share of love, loss and challenge. This is another gripping and unforgettable story of the human heart from one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.

Customer Reviews

Subtle but powerful
Shreve writes elegant and restrained prose, but under the surface, there are deep emotions at work. The story line sounds like a plot from one of those genre novels beloved by little old ladies who take them out from libraries in little wheeled trollies - you know the type, they have a cover picture of a girl in a shawl with her arms crossed, and she's called Maggie, or Sarah, or Nelly, and she fights through hard times to attract the son of the mill owner ...

This is the antithesis of one of those books. The characterisation is subtle, and finely drawn. The plot moves gently but inexorably through peaks and troughs. The interlacing stories meld naturally together, and for readers of her previous novels, returning to Fortune's Rocks feels like returning to a favourite place - although one that changes, and isn't frozen in time.

I also felt I learned a lot about manufacturing in New England at the time. It seems cotton didn't only tyrannise the South.

Striking and thoughtful
If you only read one Anita Shreve book, make it this one - and then you'll make time to read many more!
Beautiful descriptions and characterisations draw the reader into the lives of the characters. Shreve is especially good at describing her unlikeable characters as sympathetically as the likeable, so that their situations become fascinating and it is impossible to put the book down. The melancholy beauty of the setting and the nostalgic of the period all add to the enjoyment.

Visting Familiar places at different times.
This is the most enjoyable of the more historical Shreve books I have read. Also it is set in the same place as Fortune's Rocks - the main characters live in a house formerly owned by the main people in that previous novel - which is lovely to recognise parts even though the stories and characters are unrelated. Also there is a side story in another Shreve Book - A Wedding in December - which although being set in more modern times features a character fascinated about an event which occured in Halifax harbour in the past. The same event appears in this book in the history of Honora's Uncle. It was another small part which you would not miss if this is the first Shreve book you have read - but it really added to my enjoyment of the book recognising places and events. Excellent story - wonderful characters - un-putdownable!