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Read Fortune's Rocks (2002)

Fortune's Rocks (2002)

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Author
Genre
Rating
3.85 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
0316734837 (ISBN13: 9780316734837)
Language
English
Publisher
little, brown and company

Fortune's Rocks (2002) - Plot & Excerpts

Epic!! I thought this book was so very good!! The first half made my upper lip sweat and I was reminded what it was like to be young and in love for the first time. The author describes the feelings, the thought process, the intensity so well that you are really remembering it all. Shreve does not smut love up nor does she describe the sexual act. She hints at it thereby also keeping true to the time period...early 1900s. The entire book is a love story but one so layered, involved, and all encompassing that I truly did not want to put the book down.This is the 2nd Shreve book I've read. The first book, Sea Glass, was lent to me by my daughter. I think she picked up the book because of the title. It was good but not at all like this. This book does focus on the upper Atlantic coast (New Hampshire). There is one reference to beach glass in it (p. 144). The setting is a beach house, the characters walk & fall in love on the beach, the house and clothes are perpetually moist from the sea spray, and the setting is exhiliarating. Olympia's life is told so that I felt I had a little better understanding of what it must have been like to be a woman in the early 1900s. I had worn the clothes, lived the customs, and dealt with the oppression. I also was in love again.Olympia Biddeford and John Haskell are the main characters, although Olympia's mother and father are also a large part of the first half of the book. Catherine Haskell and children are also important characters. I really like this book! I'm now going to make sure I read another--probably "The Pilot's Wife".

In the beginning this book is almost everything I least like reading. It's a historical love story set in 1899. If I hadn't read any of Shreve's books before I'd have given up then and there. I carried on reading about the affair between fifteen year old Olympia Biddeford and forty one year old married with four children John Haskell because I thought that Shreve must have something in mind other than a pure romance (or not-so-pure depending on which sense you apply pure in, I suppose). And of course there was far more to this book than that but it took the author a long time to get there. The first two hundred pages of the book concern the romance and the trailing two hundred and fifty concern the long reaching after effects. It didn't feel balanced to me though. The first part of the book dragged on and on and on as I put the book down endless times and wondered when something would happen. The second half of the book felt much shorter as a whirlwind of things rushed by me and I got ever so involved in Olympia's life and didn't want to put the book down. It's a book I'd hesitate to recommend because of how tedious I found the first half but the second half does more than make up for what I saw as the shortcomings of the first half and turns into a really interesting look at life and legality in a small coastal New England town in the early years of the last century.

What do You think about Fortune's Rocks (2002)?

This is definitely the best Shreve book I've read so far. From the first page, writing in the literary style of the Victorians, you have no doubt that this story is not a modern one. In 1899, Olympia Biddeford is nearing 16 years of age and vacationing at the family cottage at Fortune's Rocks. She lives a privileged, educated existence; an only child who seems rather lonely but quite mature for her years. There she meets a married man with 4 children, a friend of her father's nearly 3 times her age, and the two fall madly in love, with tragic consequences. The age difference really bothered me; but as the years progressed, they still had the same feelings for each other. And Shreve was diligent about ensuring the reader that this was not rape (that word was never used but often in my mind); that Olympia was mature enough to be the pursuer, not the pursuee. And it was 1899, when girls married at a very young age. The background story, that of the deplorable working conditions in the mills of the nearby town of Ely Falls, NH, becomes more relevant as the book progresses, and is almost as fascinating as the love story.
—☮Karen

I can't really say that I liked this book, but I was interested enough in what happens to Olympia to finish. The story seemed to spend to much time on one period in Olympias life and felt jumpy when it skipped to the next. The setting and storyline was intriging enough right off the bat but it soon began to feel like a dime store romance. Had I ever read a dime store romance, I would guess that the authors use of language was somewhat better, but the smutiness was the same. I think that Olympia is a very silly girl whom I had a very hard time identifing with. I guess I learned what it would have been like to be a young woman, as far as not having control over one's own life. However, Olympia and the story it self was just not very believable. A very important aspect of any novel is the readers ability to sypathize with the protagonist, in this case I found myself more on the edge of being glad when bad things happened to her. Once again, I find myself feeling negative and unable to sympathize with a woman who has had everything handed to her on a silver platter and screws it up.
—Amanda

I'm not sure how to review this book. First of all, I didn't like it being written from the third person view. The author missed an amazing opportunity to delve into the intense feelings that must have been going on inside or Olympia. Maybe she couldn't write about them because she's never experienced them to the level Olympia did. I have been there,so I know what the writer couldn't express.Let's see, what else? Haskell and Olympia are two people who experience that "connection" so many people seem to discount or refuse to believe exists. He is 41 and she is 15!! I know, I know!!! I don't approve either, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Haskell should have definitely stayed away, but maybe he couldn't. All his self chastisement, ect. was not as powerful as the love he had for Olympia. Were they meant to live their lives denying each other or did what happen be the only way they could survive?? Questions???To love from a distance and not be able to touch is not always an easy thing to do no matter how right that decision is.
—Shanda

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