I'm a big fan of Anita Shreve's books, but for some reason this one didn't catch my fancy. I didn't get more than a chapter or two into it, though, so I may have missed out by not going further!

SLow but interesting start, but once you're into the story it is addicting.

Such as sad story about obsessive love.

This is a unique tale with some very complex characters. As much as I wanted to feel sorry for the main character, I couldn't, because he knew what he was getting into when he married. The relationship between husband and wife was strange, and I always held out hope that something would happen to normalize it. At points the book became a little tedious, but all in all, it was memorable. This is definitely not a typical "happily ever after" book.

Etna Bliss has just moved to the New England town where her uncle teaches college when her life is transformed in a single stroke. She is dining in a hotel downtown when a fire forces her to escape to the snowy streets outside. She is glimpsed standing under a streetlight, by a man who was dining in the same room... a man who is so overwhelmed by the sight of her that he rebuilds his life around a single goal: to marry Etna Bliss. The man is Nicholas Van Tassel, and this is his account of how two lives were changed from that tumultuous night forward. It is a story of love, jealousy, obsession and loss. But it is no ordinary tale of obsession... it is a story about different kinds of love, and different ideas of what love is.

This is another well-written novel by Anita Shreve, with great character development. This would make a great book for a reading group discussion!

Etna Bliss has just moved to the New England town where her uncle teaches college when her life is transformed in a single stroke. She is dining in a hotel downtown when a fire forces her to escape to the snowy streets outside. Amid the smoke and chaos of that night she is glimpsed, standing under a streetlight, by a man who was dining in the same room...a man who is so overwhelmed by the sight of her that he rebuilds his life around a single goal: to marry Etna Bliss

Excellent book!

Posting this for my wife. She cannot get enough of Anita Shreve and this one holds up to the rest.

Very interesting and well written...sure to grab the reader and hold on until the last page.

The story is set in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Nicholas is a very unlikeable character. This is a story of a man who will lie, twist facts, and manipulate anyone willing (but ignorant) to get what he wants. He manipulates Etna, who he met by chance during a hotel fire, into marriage, uses his daughter to destroy a perceived rival's reputation and ultimately destroys his marriage and his family. Etna's character speaks few words and she is often a mystery -- is she a victim of the times she lives in, unable to resolve her feelings over a lost love, or is she at times depressed? You're just never really quite sure. If you enjoy books set in this era, you'll probably enjoy this one as well. This book has the same writing style and similar heartbreak evident in Fortune's Rock.

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This book left a bitter taste in my mouth after reading.... Maybe the intention by one of my favorite authors? Although there usually is heartbreak and hardship associated with most the characters in her novels, the main character in this book is ridiculous, ugly and just plain depressing. Can someone like this really exist? Even in those times? I can't imagine anyone being that stupid. Anyway, not worth reading. Sorry I used a good credit in requesting this book.

I was honestly bored, I finished the book I liked the way it was written and the idea behind the way it was written the book however...was boring. :(

From: Amazon.com
Anita Shreve's All He Ever Wanted reads like Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own told from the perspective of the husband. The wife gains a measure of freedom, but how does the repressive, abandoned husband feel about that freedom? Set in the early 1900s in the fictional New England college town of Thrupp, and narrated by the pompous Nicholas Van Tassel, All He Ever Wanted is at once an academic satire, a period novel, and a tale of suspense. Shreve's ability to nimbly hop through genres brings a liveliness to this story of love gone depressingly wrong. Van Tassel is an undistinguished professor of rhetoric at Thrupp College and a confirmed bachelor when he meets--in no less flamy a scenario than a hotel fire--the arresting Miss Etna Bliss. Immediately smitten, he woos and wins her. At least, he persuades her to become his wife. But Van Tassel hasn't really won her. Etna keeps her secrets and her feelings to herself. The extent of her withholding only becomes clear after a couple of kids and a decade or so of marriage. Then we find out that she's been creating a secret haven for herself all along. Van Tassel is in turn revealed--through his own priggish, puffed-up sentences--as something of a monster. The book is cleverly done; watching Etna through Van Tassel's eyes is like looking at beautiful bird from a hungry cat's point of view. But Van Tassel's voice might be too well written; he's pedantic and dull and snarky all at once, and by the end we find that we, like Etna, can't bear his company a minute longer. --Claire Dederer

Incredible book, incredible writer! Shreve at the best!

from Publisher's Weekly:
Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy.

Anita Shreve is a great contemporary writer who understands the human heart and its foibles.

Typically good Anita Shreeve.

****

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