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  • The Last Time They Met: A Novel
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The Last Time They Met: A Novel Kindle Edition

3.8 out of 5 stars 1,078 ratings
3.5 on Goodreads
18,799 ratings

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From the last time Linda and Thomas meet, at a charmless hotel in a distant city, to the moment, thirty-five years earlier, when a chance encounter on a rocky beach binds them fatefully together, this hypnotically compelling novel unfolds a tale of intense passion, drama, and suspense. The Last Time They Met is a singularly ambitious and accomplished work by one of today's most widely celebrated novelists.
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About the Author

Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of more than fifteen novels, including Testimony; The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oprah's Book Club; and The Weight of Water, which was a finalist for England's Orange prize. She lives in Massachusetts. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Shreve is one of those rare novelists whose prose is just as remarkable as her storytelling. This new work picks up the character Thomas Janes from Shreve's The Weight of Water (LJ 10/15/96). (He is the husband of narrator Jean.) We learn the history of Thomas's great love with fellow poet Linda Fallon. The novel is told in reverse time, starting with the present, when Linda and Thomas, now in their fifties, reconnect at a literary festival. The middle section takes place in Africa, where the couple, then age 26, had a disastrous affair that horribly affected a number of loved ones and changed their own lives forever. The intensity of Africa's vibrant texture and color heightens the passionate drama. And the last section, during high school, takes place in New England, where Thomas and Linda launched their life-long obsession with each other. While the backwards progression is confusing at times and can necessitate some rereading, it is time well spent. The tragic relationship of these two connected souls will stick with you for days. Oprah-pick Shreve does it again with this achingly emotional novel. Stock up.
- Beth Gibbs, formerly with P.L. of Charlotte & Mecklenburg Cty., NC
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000SEJZ1S
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 10 2001
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 761 KB
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 328 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0759523081
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • 鶹 Rank: #173,611 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 out of 5 stars 1,078 ratings

About the author

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Anita Shreve
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Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts (just outside Boston), the eldest of three daughters. Early literary influences include having read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton when she was a junior in high school (a short novel she still claims as one of her favorites) and everything Eugene O'Neill ever wrote while she was a senior (to which she attributes a somewhat dark streak in her own work). After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston. In the middle of her last year, she quit (something that, as a parent, she finds appalling now) to start writing. "I had this panicky sensation that it was now or never."

Joking that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejections from magazines for her short stories ("I really could have," she says), she published her early work in literary journals. One of these stories, "Past the Island, Drifting," won an O. Henry prize. Despite this accolade, she quickly learned that one couldn't make a living writing short fiction. Switching to journalism, Shreve traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived for three years, working as a journalist for an African magazine. One of her novels, The Last Time They Met, contains bits and pieces from her time in Africa.

Returning to the United States, Shreve was a writer and editor for a number of magazines in New York. Later, when she began her family, she turned to freelancing, publishing in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine and dozens of others. In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 14 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, Body Surfing, Testimony,and A Change in Altitude.

In 1998, Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot's Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah's Book Club and an international bestseller. In April 2002, CBS aired the film version of The Pilot's Wife, starring Christine Lahti, and in fall 2002, The Weight of Water, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn, was released in movie theaters.

Still in love with the novel form, Shreve writes only in that genre. "The best analogy I can give to describe writing for me is daydreaming," she says. "A certain amount of craft is brought to bear, but the experience feels very dreamlike."

Shreve is married to a man she met when she was 13. She has two children and three stepchildren, and in the last eight years has made tuition payments to seven colleges and universities.

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3.8 out of 5 stars
1,078 global ratings

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Top reviews from Canada

  • Reviewed in Canada on August 9, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Excellent story
  • Reviewed in Canada on June 5, 2001
    Anita Shreve's latest novel presents some problems for the reviewer. Reading it, I found certain elements of character, motivation and maturity baffling, even annoying, despite the beauty of the writing. The surprise ending, however, cast these apparent flaws in a new light, giving subtle, poignant meaning and transforming the story. But it's impossible to discuss any of this without giving away the ending.
    A story of intense, enduring, but frustrated love, the novel begins with the two protagonists in their early fifties, meeting at a literary festival after an interlude of some years. Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes, both poets, are free now, for the first time since their high school romance ended over an automobile accident.
    Widowed, Linda had a long, happy marriage while Thomas, twice divorced, never fully recovered from the death of his 6-year-old daughter, which occurred at the end of Shreve's "Weight of Water." Thomas was the husband of that book's protagonist and there are numerous references to the shipboard events of that novel from Thomas' point of view. (I wondered: Did Shreve have this novel in mind even then; is that why she killed off the little girl, an abrupt shock which seemed pointless in that context?)
    The first section is told from Linda's point of view - the reunion, her cautious renewal of this first love, reflections on her marriage, problems with her children. In sharp, anguished exchanges, they revisit the events that tore them apart. Linda, still harboring resentments, seems brooding, tentative, a little irritating.
    "He seemed taken aback by the contest. She knew what later she would mind this the most; that she'd become common in her anger. That in an instant, she'd reinvented herself as a shrew."
    The second section jumps back more than 20 years to their affair in Africa, seen through Thomas' eyes. An accidental meeting, both married, snatched, torrid graplings, literary love letters, all of it ending badly in a cataclysmic clash of duty and jealousy. Thomas, a more immediate, passionate presence, though no less conflicted, brings the heat and turmoil of Africa to bear on an illicit relationship which walls itself off from outside influence. "Were there people, he wondered, who had genuine, more-or-less continuous fun when they fell in love? It didn't seem possible, the enterprise too fraught to sustain the lightheartedness fun required."
    Thomas' wives - Regina, whose lack of confidence makes her ugly and desperate and Jean, mother of Billie, adulterer - both seem remote, unloved, and mildly repellant. Thomas himself seems to be drifting, fully engaged only in his writing. Thinking of Regina, he reflects: "What she wouldn't forgive, he knew, was the pleasure the writing gave him: sensual and tactile, a jolt that ran through him when it worked. Always, he was writing in his head; at parties, he craved to be at a desk. He sometimes thought it was the only honest conduit he had to the world around him, all other endeavors, even his marriage (Jesus, especially his marriage), lost in the excessive caution of failed expectations and injured feelings."
    The final section regresses in time again to the high school days of their first love. Told from Linda's viewpoint, this beginning has a spontaneous and organic feel, capturing the tentative, self-conscious forays of adolescent emotional and intellectual exploration, the blossoming of passion and respect, the surge of lustful love. Orphaned Linda is the poor, despised relation in a poor, overcrowded family. Thomas is the scion of privilege. A victim of sexual abuse, Linda struggles to overcome her fears; Thomas works hard to comprehend them. Together they are lovely, full of joy and fear. It's the best section of the book and I'm sure Shreve intended it to be.
    This is a novel for book groups. Readers will enjoy discussing the ending with others, arguing about its meaning, its repercussions, how it colors everything that went before, the subtleties Shreve employs, her handling of obsession, loss and, well, you'll see.
  • Reviewed in Canada on March 31, 2003
    As its title implies, Anita Shreve's novel is about a couple with a past. The first clever thing Shreve does is present their story backwards, beginning when the man and woman are age 52, both successful poets, meeting again after 26 years at a literary festival, picking up rather easily, all things considered. The story then moves to them at age 26, meeting after a gap of 9 years, in Africa of all places; they pick up again rather easily, despite all the hints of a mad teenage love affair rendered apart by some car accident, despite the fact that both of them are married to others. Along the way, tragedies in their lives are alluded to, and you have to wonder, what is it about this specific accident that makes all this melodrama and tragedy, not to mention some inconsistencies and odd effects, make sense? Well, you do find out, in the very last paragraph of the book. That's the second clever thing Shreve does, produce a very late, very surprise ending that turns everything on its ear at the same time it repulses any criticisms about content that may seem accidental or inconsistent. Gotcha!
    Darn clever, but is it art? It is literate, a rare pleasure in this world, but is it literary? Genuine art, or literary fiction, must tell the truth. Well, this is "well-observed," it creates its own world and keeps a lid on it. That said, there are times when you question the motivations, reactions and choices made by the hero and heroine, aspects that are not necessarily resolved by that final moment. Also, for all of Shreve's tightly controlled sentences, the language within sometimes echoes romance novel conventions. Tears rise "unbidden." The bedroom scenes especially do not rise above conventions. The book is absolutely humorless in the way that popular melodrama can be. The main characters are sympathetic and pleasant to be with, the African scenery is rendered well, and there are questions to puzzle out. Ultimately, though, to be good literature, a book just can't kick up the questions, it has to answer them responsibly, and Shreve's work doesn't quite hold up that end of the bargain.

Top reviews from other countries

  • ELI (Italy)
    5.0 out of 5 stars Ouch. That unbearable foreknowledge of loss...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    Another Anita Shreve's hit, sober, heart-wrenching and full of texture. I had no idea it had a connection to one of her previous books, "The Weight Of Water", which I read years ago (and liked very much). It connects us with one smaller character in that book, Linda, but it is not necessary to read its predecessor to get into this one, as it is not a sequel.

    Linda and Thomas meet and fall in love as teenagers, but the story unfolds backwards, after a chance meeting in Toronto, when they are both in their fifties. They have not seen each other in twenty-six years. Their past life with all its joys, flaws and pains resurfaces. The anatomy of a very deep, moving true love is described with such emotional substance, its essence never lost to the reader.

    And the end. The surprising ending. I found this novel to be a page-turner and possibly the best one I've read by this author (I've read almost everything written by Ms. Shreve). A love story to be remembered.
  • Diane S.
    5.0 out of 5 stars great read
    Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2023
    Verified Purchase
    Loved the literary references, the Africa details, and beautiful writing!
    Recommend for anyone tired of the banal book’s coming out now.
  • R. Murray
    4.0 out of 5 stars Intense book
    Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    A story that is fraught with sad and regretful images. Told in 're terse chronology from midlife to teenage years. A love that was meant to be and yet never was.
  • Mgintexas
    3.0 out of 5 stars Good beginning, excellent ending, boring middle.
    Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    "The Last Time They Met" is the story of Linda and Thomas and unfulfilled love. The book tells the story of two teenagers who find themselves as soul mates, yet are separated due to choices that are not their own. The story is told from the adult point of view and describes their meetings as adults, but even though their love is still strong, conditions never allow them to be truly together.
    The beginning of the book was good and kept my interest, even though I found it disjointed. People and situations were mentioned and I would feel like I had dozed off and missed some relevant info explaining who or what was being referred to, but eventually an explanation would be given. I found this frustrating.
    I actually skimmed through the middle of the book, it was bogged down with poetic descriptions that weren't really relevant to the story. The last 75 pages did make me glad I had not given up and not finished the book. The end, which left me wondering, I liked. I believe that Ms. Shreve could have made a more interesting book by leaving out the majority of the months in Africa.
  • ann chaston
    3.0 out of 5 stars Read right to the end. Don’t look
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Magic memories

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