Just as I have with most of her works, I flew right into the world of this story, away from the here – the very thing every novel hopes to accomplish. Her writing is the kind we fall asleep holding. The kind that has us bargaining with ourselves. "Just 10 more pages, then I’ll ..." Before we know it, 10 have turned to 20, 20 to 50, and 50 to the epilogue.I can now proudly say I’ve read every book Anita Shreve has authored. Though first published 20 years ago, the style in Strange Fits of Passion is what first drew me to her writing, and, after reading Rescue, which was a deviation from this celebrated style, I was grateful to have a respite to her early days.I was never a great fan of the title, both before and after. It’s possible that is why I put off the reading of it for so long. Oddly enough, one line within the book, at the end of a paragraph in which the victim and protagonist is describing her approach to reporting, aptly captures my feelings about title, while, in its brevity, cuts immediately to the story’s core."[The] quotes, though accurate, would sound prosaic, seldom witty, and, even if important, rarely intriguing. Such people would want to disown their quotes. I would, of course, have my notes. I could tell them, if they asked: This had been put just this way; that word had, indeed been used. And yet I knew exactly what it was they objected to. What had been written wasn’t what they had meant to say at all."Even though the title is lifted directly from the William Wordsworth poem about his beloved Lucy, it fails to capture the grit and tenderness of the story, which Shreve reprised again in Testimony. Perhaps, though I only speculate, this non sequitur was exactly her intention.Using interviews, a form of casual testimony, Shreve dangles carrots, quasi-ambiguous nuggets that explain tight spots yet simultaneously introduce others. It is precisely this device that causes her readers to believe they have reached a natural stopping place but instead they find themselves sitting atop a catapult. Who could rest there?I certainly didn’t, and finished this in record time, under a week. Although I was on vacation in North Carolina near the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, since the story so easily transported me, it’s likely, had I read the book during a routine week, I would have still felt miles away.
On one level, Anita Shreve's Strange Fits of Passion is a story of domestic abuse. On another, far more interesting, level, it is an exploration of how we interpret a story and how we tell or retell it. Shreve tells the story of Maureen and Harrold English using multiple points of view, most of them in first person, and nearly all of them sympathetic to Maureen. Helen Schofield, a journalist, uses these first-person perspectives to tell the story in the form of a supposedly objective magazine article. How objective is Helen's telling of the story? More importantly, how objective are the first-person perspectives? A reader's instinct is to take the word of a first-person narrator, to believe the narrator is speaking in a 100% truthful, confessional way. Shreve calls that into question, and to me that's the most interesting part of the book. It's not the story itself, it's the way the story is told that's important--it's about perspective. This is what makes the novel genius.So why four stars instead of five? I think I withheld that final star because I didn't start worrying about how much I could trust the narrators until I got to the end of the book. Maybe that was my fault as a reader. I also wanted to see Harrold's perspective, though maybe Willis' was enough to give me that.
What do You think about Strange Fits Of Passion (2005)?
I read this book for a book group, otherwise I would never have chosen a book about domestic violence myself. The story was compelling but I am not a Shreve fan. As in her past books, the characters are unlikable and I feel she is a very manipulative, intrusive author. The characters feel like puppets on a stage; I never feel transported by the writing. In this case, the narrative is intentionally disjointed because the bulk of the story is related in a series of writings and interviews by the major and minor players in the tragedy. These versions of the truth are then distorted by a reporter into an expose that makes her career. I found the take-away message depressing and at odds with my opinion of human nature. The characters were unable to overcome their base desires which seems to be excused in some way by their personal circumstances or time in which they lived (ca. 1970, for goodness' sake). I prefer to believe that even in the worst circumstances people have some control over their actions and are only doomed when they give up on themselves. No one in this sorry tale is able to rise to the challenge: a very sad commentary indeed.
—Laurel
Who would have thought that a book about a battered woman trying to escape her abusive husband could be so boring? There are no surprises in the book. You start out knowing that the main character spends many years in prison for killing her husband, and the rest of the book is her writing from prison to explain how and why. None of the narrative is really surprising, it reads like a made-for-tv special about an abused woman that incorporates almost every domestic abuse cliche. There is a little bit of a surprise ending in the relationship between the daughter and the journalist who kept the main character's notes, but even that is dull. They are both such minor undeveloped characters that it is hard to care about their relationship. On the positive side, this is a quick read and would be a nice distraction for a long plane ride or some other time when you needed something light to kill time. Even though the plot rolls along in a predictable way, it is a pleasant read & I enjoyed the details about small town Maine life in winter.
—Beth Rosen
Curious book. Up until the last 30 pages, I thought this was very compelling. Then, it felt like Shreve did a quick wrap-up that included a lot of explanation of how society didn't understand abuse in the 1970s. But we all know that, and many writers have written much better on the topic. In addition, the bits about the reporter in the end were shallow and felt like they'd been thrown in for a twist. But I didn't buy them at all. It felt totally tacked on. POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT? Finally, suppos
—Gabi
