I have found another favourite book. Not for a long time now have I found a book that I knew would stay with me until I am old and grey. But Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve is definitely one of those books. I picked it up in a charity shop last month without knowing anything about the author or even if she had previously written anything. As it turns out she has written 13 novels now, two of which have been made into movies. In fact I remember seeing The Weight of Water a few years back although I admit i didn't much get it at the time and can remember little of it now..
The story opens with 15 year-old Olympia Biddeford taking a walk down to the shoreline on the first day of arrival at her family's summer home at Fortunes' Rocks and this is the point where she begins to step over the threshold from girl to young woman. Indeed, during these first few moments we are not the only ones to realise this, as the moment is also captured by the male bathers at the sea and also by Olympia's doting, if not somewhat utilitarian father, Phillip Biddeford. During a weekend gathering at the cottage hosted by her father Olympia meets John Haskell, a 41 year-old essayist, physicist and campaigner for the poor along with his wife Catherine and their four children. And thus this meeting sets in motion a passionate affair between the two which dramatically changes the lives of everyone. When their affair is discovered by a disgruntled poet (introducing Cote, a deliciously sly and fetid character) whose work was rejected by Olympia's father, the two are found out and for a few years neither knows of the others whereabouts. Olympia is whisked back to the family home in Boston in shame, but a few months later gives birth to the couple's child but is taken away against Olympia's wishes and placed in an orphanage. Circumstances finally lead Olympia on a mission to retrieve her child where many issues of class and status are raised. The ending leads to the cementation of Olympia as one of the most memorable heroine's I've come across since Jane Eyre.
.
The way Shreve writes this novel is amazing to me. Her prose (the only word for her writing) has a relaxing, almost languid quality to it, like a dream. I must admit that when I first started to read, I found the text a little hard going so different is it. But once you settle into it reading Fortune's Rocks is like watching a story unfold through a glass tube or water. You are led along the story and in the way the author intends, but the area around the immediate is slightly blurred and hazy so that, even though you can make out the shapes and colours, it's how you interpret and imagine them that makes the story yours. With Shreve's writing it is just as much about what is implied rather than what is spelled out. In fact, there is relatively little dialogue throughout the book, with Shreve seemingly intending that actions and feelings be the predominate focus with much of the passion being narrated in the past tense. A clever way to proceed since one can not ever do justice to the topic of all-encompassing love simply with words. In fact the dream-like prose and it's mistiness lends an air of sad inevitability to Olympia and John's fate. And again, the only time we get any continuous dialogue is during the coutroom scenes when Olympia is trying to win back her child. The change in prose serves to highlight the autere nature of the courts and how they are only concerned with facts rather than emotions.
.
The setting of the story at the edge of the sea has no small influence on the way the story reads and also has some bearing on the characters themselves. The constant ebb and flow of the tide seems to highlight the plight of John and Olympia. Their wish is for things and time to stand-still, so that they might always be together. But like the sea, nothing remains constant and things will inevitably change. John and his wife will move into their new cottage further down the beach, and Olympia and he will no longer be able to snatch time with each other. If you can imagine what it's like to be near the sea; the noise of the ocean, the cleansing smell of the air, the breeze - it seems to have a sad melody in it's transient state, highlighted again by the holiday makers it sees each year, who then go back to their real lives fore the winter. John and Olympia meet by the sea that summer, but by the end of the season they are gone from each other, caught in the act of love by Zachariah Cote. Indeed, the only other time they are together again in the book is when the two go back to Fortune's Rocks under very different circumstances.
The story opens with 15 year-old Olympia Biddeford taking a walk down to the shoreline on the first day of arrival at her family's summer home at Fortunes' Rocks and this is the point where she begins to step over the threshold from girl to young woman. Indeed, during these first few moments we are not the only ones to realise this, as the moment is also captured by the male bathers at the sea and also by Olympia's doting, if not somewhat utilitarian father, Phillip Biddeford. During a weekend gathering at the cottage hosted by her father Olympia meets John Haskell, a 41 year-old essayist, physicist and campaigner for the poor along with his wife Catherine and their four children. And thus this meeting sets in motion a passionate affair between the two which dramatically changes the lives of everyone. When their affair is discovered by a disgruntled poet (introducing Cote, a deliciously sly and fetid character) whose work was rejected by Olympia's father, the two are found out and for a few years neither knows of the others whereabouts. Olympia is whisked back to the family home in Boston in shame, but a few months later gives birth to the couple's child but is taken away against Olympia's wishes and placed in an orphanage. Circumstances finally lead Olympia on a mission to retrieve her child where many issues of class and status are raised. The ending leads to the cementation of Olympia as one of the most memorable heroine's I've come across since Jane Eyre.
.
The way Shreve writes this novel is amazing to me. Her prose (the only word for her writing) has a relaxing, almost languid quality to it, like a dream. I must admit that when I first started to read, I found the text a little hard going so different is it. But once you settle into it reading Fortune's Rocks is like watching a story unfold through a glass tube or water. You are led along the story and in the way the author intends, but the area around the immediate is slightly blurred and hazy so that, even though you can make out the shapes and colours, it's how you interpret and imagine them that makes the story yours. With Shreve's writing it is just as much about what is implied rather than what is spelled out. In fact, there is relatively little dialogue throughout the book, with Shreve seemingly intending that actions and feelings be the predominate focus with much of the passion being narrated in the past tense. A clever way to proceed since one can not ever do justice to the topic of all-encompassing love simply with words. In fact the dream-like prose and it's mistiness lends an air of sad inevitability to Olympia and John's fate. And again, the only time we get any continuous dialogue is during the coutroom scenes when Olympia is trying to win back her child. The change in prose serves to highlight the autere nature of the courts and how they are only concerned with facts rather than emotions.
.
The setting of the story at the edge of the sea has no small influence on the way the story reads and also has some bearing on the characters themselves. The constant ebb and flow of the tide seems to highlight the plight of John and Olympia. Their wish is for things and time to stand-still, so that they might always be together. But like the sea, nothing remains constant and things will inevitably change. John and his wife will move into their new cottage further down the beach, and Olympia and he will no longer be able to snatch time with each other. If you can imagine what it's like to be near the sea; the noise of the ocean, the cleansing smell of the air, the breeze - it seems to have a sad melody in it's transient state, highlighted again by the holiday makers it sees each year, who then go back to their real lives fore the winter. John and Olympia meet by the sea that summer, but by the end of the season they are gone from each other, caught in the act of love by Zachariah Cote. Indeed, the only other time they are together again in the book is when the two go back to Fortune's Rocks under very different circumstances.
.
The summer house that the Biddeford's own also bears some significance in the story I think, although since finishing the book and searching a few websites I find that the house is apparently used in some of Shreve's other novels. Before being converted the house was a nunnery, complete with chapel which had to be deconsecrated before being bought by Olympia's father. At one point in the book Haskell says to Olympia that "most of a love affair is in the mind", which certainly is true of them both since time and circumstances can not allow them to have many physical moments together. This echoes somewhat the lives of the nuns who lived in the house and where married to God - their love for him also being largly in the mind.
.
Lastly, Olympia's mother and father are also very intriguing characters. Phillip Biddeford is intellectual, educated and travelled. Having been disenchanted with the current schooling system in America he has taken responsibly for Olympia's education and thus removed her from the influences and friendships of people her own age - an act which goes much of the way in contributing to Olympia's personality and her subsequent relationship with Haskell. Olympia's mother Rosamund, is one of those characters which flits about in the background and seems inconsequential to the story. However, is just this removal as a significant female role model that also aids Olympia along her path and into the arms of Haskell. In fact we know very little about Olympia's mother other than that she is a woman afflicted with vague and unspecific ailments, and she that she is most partial to hues of blue. The reasons for this are alluded to in the story although we get a hint later when Rosamund, thinking that Olympia has gotten herself a 'young beau', briefly tells of a time when she met a boy as a teenager, who had remarkably blonde eyelashes (take this to mean blue eyes), and that one day whilst walking to the beach he said something to her. What he said she never knew since at that moment her father found them out and she never saw him again. We can't help but think that the loss of love is the ailment that afflicts Olympia's mother although Shreve never directly indicates this.
.
Needless to say this book left a big impression on me. I don't really think that anything I can say can fully do justice to how good this book is and the beautiful way in which Shreve writes and creates characters. I will leave by saying that, if I ever manage to write that novel I am promising to do, then this is the kind of prose and quality I am aiming for. If I even achieve half of what Shreve has managed, I will be happy :)
