Categories: book-review
Tags: book review
Date: 08 May 2008 20:46:19
This is the book I've just finished, and is the first Anita Shreve I've read. I felt an odd reaction really - I wasn't blown away by it, it took ages to plough through the first two-thirds even though it's a really easy read and the subject matter is interesting and the chapters are short and from different characters' perspectives which I like and I was interested enough in the characters to want to know what was going to happen (though I guessed one of the main end events) and and and on paper it should have been perfect. It just didn't particularly grab me. But then I got through the final third really quickly and got much more into it, so on reflection I can say I'm glad I read it, but I won't be running out to get her back catalogue or anything. It's a good easy read, but get it from the charity shop (which is where I got it from, I'm glad to say) rather than buying it new.
It's set in America at the time of the stock market crash/Great Depression, and is about a newly married couple who take out a huge mortgage on the eve of the stock market crash. The husband (who was a travelling salesman) loses his job and has to work at a local mill, which is going through wage cuts and unionisation and about to go on strike, like mills up and down the country, and the couple's marriage is put under severe strain. It is a part of history I know little about, so was interesting from that perspective, and as well as the couple parts of the story are told from the perspectives of various mill workers, and an initially shallow rich girl who lives next door to the couple during the summer (who ended up being my favourite character having not really liked her at the start of the book). I left the book feeling that some things could have been expanded upon and others written about in less detail, and in the hands of another author it could have been much better, but on balance I liked it more than I didn't, if you see what I mean.