Finished Sa 11/2/19
This is a trade paperback that Janny loaned me. Shreve is an author that wrote 'THE PILOT'S WIFE', and was a part of Oprah's book club.
I loved this novel! It's a real page turner, but not plot driven. Just well written characters that collide in the surf of life....hence the title.
Sydney Sklar- a woman of 29 who is drifting through life. She is once divorced and once widowed. The test pilot lived and the doctor died of a heart attack in his forties.
Mr. and Mrs. Edwards have a beach house on the New Hampshire coast.
Sydney has been hired to help their eighteen year old daughter, Julie, study for college boards. Julie is mentally challenged but Sydney learns that she tremendous artistic abilities.
Mrs. Edwards takes an instant dislike to Sydney. She resents the fact that Sydney has fallen for her son, Jeff, and that Sydney is part Jewish. Mrs. Edwards is always cold to Sydney.
Mr. Edwards is very warm to Sydney. He shares the history of the house with her. The house was a nunnery, a home for unwed mothers, the home of a famous female writer, and the home where three sons were lost to WWII.
Ben is a wealthy real estate developer. Jeff is a Harvard political science professor.
Jeff becomes attracted to Sydney and he asks her to marry him.
******He is only doing this because he feels that his older brother, Ben, is attracted to Sydney. He continues to deceive Sydney and goes all the way through the courtship and right up until the morning of the wedding before he admits that the love affair was just a game to beat Ben.
Two years later Sydney comes back to the beach home because she was attending a conference in the area, and learns that Mr. Edwards has died, and Mrs. Edwards has put the home on the market.
Sydney had no contact with any of the family members even though all (except Mrs. Edwards) had written to her.
Ben finds Sydney asleep on the beach and tells her the news. And, it seems that a love affair might begin again.
*****Sydney was turned off to Ben on the first day that she met the boys. They were body surfing and she thought that she was groped by Ben, but it was Jeff that did it.
Sydney has a final dinner with the family and Mrs. Edwards admits that she has always disliked Sydney and never apologizes.
Ben takes Sydney to a small island near the house that he has purchased a small cabin that he will use as a summer home.
Ben and Sydney body surf for the last time that the Edwards will own the home.
Mr. Edwards leaves Sydney a box of paperwork about the history of the house. Mrs. Edwards gives this box to Sydney and did not even look to see what the box contained. She disdains anything dealing with Sydney even though she is aware of her dead husband's affection for Sydney.
I loved the book and will ask Janny for more by this author, and I will probably see what's for sale at Amazon.
From the author's page at Amazon:
"At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage.
But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt for herself is threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an author at one with her métier" (Miami Herald), Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage that it takes to love."
The author's page at wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Shreve
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