Where Or When

Rating:
Summary: Flirting With Disaster
Review: I am a big fan of Anita Shreve, but feel this is not among her best books. The story of the adulterous affair of Charles Callahan and his long lost childhood love, Sian Richards captured my attention, but not my heart. While one does believe that these two are deeply attracted to each other, there was not a deeply felt feeling of consuming love, which is what they are supposed to have. The tale of the childhood love rang far truer for me than the adult love. While we are given some idea of why Charles and Sian are attracted to one another, their respective spouses are not fully developed, and so there is very little understanding of why the two would sacrifice so much of their lives to an obsessive love affair. Ms. Shreve's writing manages to evoke sympathy for the lovers, and there is an overwhelming feeling of longing in the book, but the conclusion to the story is a jolt, and leaves one with an equally overwhelming feeling of sadness. If you want to read an outstanding Shreve book, start with The Weight of Water, or The Piolt's Wife, which in my opinion were far better books.

Rating:
Summary: What Price to Pay
Review: It has been said that middle age brings turmoil and discontent with love. However, at what price is one, far into their 40's or 50's willing to pay for a chance at finding the flickering possiblility of a younger (teenage) love of long ago?

For most responsible persons, the price is far too high. In this novel, the price is not. Charles Calahan recognizes the picture of a girl he met at camp, and that is all it takes for him to toss aside wife, family with small children, home, business and township respect. Intrigued by the recollection, he begins to write the woman named Sian Richards, successfully seducing her into meeting him at a romantic hotel. The initial correspondences are met with trepidation, but between the two of them a line is crossed and they decide to meet, they flaunt, they flirt, they ....

A psychological peek at middle-aged angst, the novel scratches irritantly for those who play by the rules, those never willing to risk losing the people they love most. For Charles and Sian, the price is high. What they do not know is just how high it is going to get.

Rating:
Summary: Where or When Will This Awful Novel End?
Review: Charles and Sian met at a Catholic summer camp when they were teens and lost touch soon after (it wasn't explained why exactly). Years later they are middle aged and married with children: Charles has money problems and Sian husband's onion farm (you read correctly--onion farm)is not doing so hot either. Charles contacts Sian via letter and they strike up an affair (the place for these rendevouz is the old Catholic summer camp grounds that is now a bed and breakfast). Predictably the time comes to decide whether to leave their families to be together or part ways. During this whole charade, which I honestly tried to like, the plot is so thin and the characters fail to earn any empathy for their weekly love fests. The affair is never really justified. The characters seem so shallow and dispicable because they are ruining so many lives and their own relationship lacks chemistry. Sian seems way too intellectual to ever give Charles a second thought (she is a poet and he is an insurance salesman). I loved Anita Shreve's other novels but this novel is page after page of unearned sentimentality. Try reading her novel Sea Glass, it is much better.

Rating:
Summary: Plagued by underdevelopment
Review: Sian Richards has just published her third book of poetry, an ad for which appears in the newspaper. When Charles Callahan happens upon the ad, and sees Sian's picture, he realizes that she is the girl he fell in love with at summer camp, when they were both 14, some 30-odd years ago. Overwhelmed with memory and emotion, he decides to write her a letter and thus begins a correspondence which leads the two of them, very quickly, into each other's arms. Trapped in unhappy marriages, together they find release from their individual realities and obsessively romanticize their relationship. Of course, guilt and complications ensue. And then, abruptly, the novel ends.

There is now no reason for any of you to read this book. The extent of its depth is encapsulated above. In fairness, it is a moving, quiet novel, at times both sad and beautiful in its language and emotion, but ultimately one which leaves you unsatisfied; it is so lean, both in length and development, that the reader is never afforded the opportunity to fully involve himself in its world. Everything about the story and its characters sits on the surface of the page, as if the writer is keenly afraid of exploring the deeper issues at hand.

With "Weight of Water" a few years later, Shreve proved that she is a very capable talent who can write above the sort of superficial emotion she concerns herself with here. Skip "Where or When," but don't skip Shreve altogether.

Rating:
Summary: High romance, not yet perfected
Review: While this is certainly not the strongest of Anita Shreve's novels, it does offer some lovely writing and some tasteful, quite sexy, scenes involving its two heroes -- a middle aged man and woman whose affection for one another has been rekindled after 30 years apart.

Some reviewers have asserted that this novel lacks adequate character development. I have a contrarian point of view in that I think Shreve deliberately omits describing the internal moral struggles of her characters because they really don't experience much moral struggle. I see them as being caught up in the powerful flow of emotion, of a love that they believe was destined to occur, and suspect that what drives other reviewers' antipathy toward this novel is not lack of character development, but the characters' lack of self-recrimination.

In any case, I rather enjoyed this book and, as a big Shreve fan, fancy that I can see the budding of her considerable talents in this early example of her work. It is also a refreshing change to read about middle-aged characters who are coping with the effects of aging on their bodies, and the awkward feelings that arise when one engages in a romantic relationship at an age where physical beauty is on the wane. These are challenging issues for many people that are not often addressed in popular fiction.

So while I do not recommend this novel without reservation, I do recommend it to those who have enjoyed the more sophisticated Shreve books and are now down to reading her earlier works while awaiting a new book from her.

Rating:
Summary: Early Look At Things to Come
Review: Published in 1993, "Where or When" seems almost a rough draft for the later books "The Weight of Water" and "The Last Time They Met," but without the depth.

As in her later books, Shreve explores the rather desperate idea that love only comes once, and that the first time it hits, at no matter what age, is the last time. All that comes afterwards is merely living...not life. Thus, when a married insurance broker, Charles, comes across a newspaper photo of his first love, Sian, his already tense life falls apart.

Facing the loss of his business and his home because of the recession in his seaside Rhode Island town, Charles becomes obsessed with reconnecting with his lost love--whom he knew for one week only at a summer camp when he and she were 14 years old. Sian, a poet, is also married with one child--but their connection is so strong that it overwhelms all other reality until it causes ripples that destroy them both.

Could this have been avoided? Shreve seems to think not--and the reader is left wondering what possible connection a relationship forged at 14 years old could have on two seemingly intelligent and connected adults. A strange, disturbing story, one that hints at Shreve's later brilliance, but certainly does not contain it.

Rating:
Summary: Ugh! A resounding disappointment
Review: Shreve's "Pilot's Wife" is one of my favorite novels, so I was surprised and disappointed by "Where or When". My attention wasn't engaged until almost half-way through, at which point I was so dismayed by Charles' relentless pursuit of this affair that I almost put it down. The concept of reigniting a summer camp love is romantic and nostalgic, but this story overshadows that with a shallow relationship and destructive results.

Rating:
Summary: Huh??
Review: I read this book quickly, so possibly I missed some of the logic that would lead two married 46 year olds to abandon evryone significant in their lives to be together. Their relationship didn't make sense to me - surely we all have a special girl- or boyfriend from our teen years. I simply cannot see myself overcome with lust in a public place upon first sighting of someone I thought I loved 31 years ago. I'd like to think we both required a longer period of reconnection. Also, how did both parties have so much unfettered time? Did Charles' financial worries disappear when he bought champagne, gifts, meals and a hotel room for them? Didn't his wife's reaction seem a bit odd? Mmmm. I think I am a consummate romantic, but I just can't buy it.

Rating:
Summary: A disaster waiting to happen...
Review: There are an infinite number of love stories and almost all of them tell the same tale. Certain stories are so compelling that they must be told. Anita Shreve tells a tale of such hopelessness that I, an intense guy who has missed disaster by a hair's breadth more than once, felt sheer relief that something this intense has never played out in my life (yet, ah!).

Charles met Sian when they were 14 years old at a Catholic summer camp in Pennsylvania. They developed a special relationship beyond a teenager's obsession, an attraction so profound as to have its own momentum, spinning out of the orbit of mere definition. They separate and 31 years later Charles rediscovers Sian through a book jacket photo. Despite the responsibilites of a wife and three loveable children, Charles must contact Sian who is also married and raising a daughter. They exchange letters and, in Pennsylvania where the camp has been converted into a hotel and restaurant, they meet four times during deep winter. Both lovers are deeply conscious that their behavior is irresponsible and hurtful. In fact, their story is unrelentingly hopeless. Inevitably, intense mishaps occur which complete the frisson of doom lurking in every page.

Although it is beautifully written, reading this is a melancholy experience at best and at times is discomfiting, like watching a disaster waiting to happen. I was fascinated by the flashbacks to summer and the camp. As teenagers, Charles and Sian are deeply moving. The final sentence is deft, deflecting all this pain into something simple and timeless.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but definitely not Ms. Shreve's greatest!!
Review: I did enjoy this novel and really liked the concept behind it, but it could be really slow-moving at times. I did really enjoy its twists and turns and the ending was good.When it wasn't slow, the plot was great but I would just recommend Fortune's Rocks or The Pilot's Wife instead. I just wasn't that great, like I was hoping for.