TakingTime reviewed on 9/12/2013 + 1072 more book reviews

On a three day train trip to attend his sisters funeral Professor Nicholas Van Tassel pens his memoir, covering his life from the first time he saw the woman who would later become his wife until her death, some 33 years later. All the trials and tribulations, anxiety, betrayals and unexpected events that Van Tassel experienced takes place in the early 1900's, in a college town of some considerable wealth.

This book was written from a mans perspective. Shreve did a good job of this, to the point of my forgetting who the author really was. The plot was pretty straight forward, without a lot of twists and turns, but a book that I found myself fully enveloped in. Written as a memoir, you often forget that and felt it was being lived in the moment. My only criticism is of Shreves writting style - of which I was fully aware before starting this book. Shreve tended to write run-on sentences - a magnitude of run-on sentences - taking 35 to 40 words to tell something she could have easily stated in 10 words or less. However with that said, the flow of the story and her writing style, never changing, allowed the novel to move along at a managaeble pace.

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