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The Weight of Water

3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 · rating details · 13,876 ratings · 991 reviews

When a photographer researches a legendary crime that took place a century earlier, she immerses herself in the details of the case--and finds herself caught in the grip of an uncontrollable emotion.

Paperback, 288 pages

Published January 7th 1998 by Back Bay Books (first published June 5th 1997)

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Aug 20, 2007 Sherry rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2006-2010

22. "On a small island off the New Hampshire coast in 1873, two women were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. A third woman survived the attack, hiding in a sea cave until dawn. More than a century later, a photographer, Jean, comes to the island to shoot a photo-essay about the legendary crime. Immersing herself in accounts of the lives of the fishermen's wives who were its victims, she becomes obsessed with the barrenness of these women's days: the ardor-killing labor, the long stretch...more

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Apr 21, 2010 Tory rated it 4 of 5 stars

“I learned that night that love is never as ferocious as when you think it is going to leave you. We are not always allowed this knowledge, and so our love sometimes becomes retrospective.”

Anita Shreve has such a somber but beautiful voice. Her stories are incredibly emotional.

The plot was somewhat scattered and none of the characters were developed enough for me to love them. However, that didn’t take away from this book for me, as it usually would. Some writers, good characters are all they h...more

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Jan 15, 2008 Gail rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: ladies looking for a beach read; romantic teenagers

Anita Shreve could be described as a guilty pleasure...like potato chips. I thought this was one of her better efforts, with interwoven plots, some great characterization, and a very sure hand with the New England background. Even though I saw the present-day plot twist coming from about page 10, the book still held my interest...I mentally screamed, "Look out! Disaster ahead!" several times. I enjoyed this book very much, but most of her others, notably "The Pilot's Wife" (gee, how could the re...more

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Mar 10, 2008 Michelle Powers rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of those novels that is 2 stories in one. A contemporary story of a woman, her husband and daughter, sailing with his brother and the brother's girlfriend off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine so she can photograph the scene of a murder that took place 150 years earlier. The tension of the people on the boat is revealed right away.

And then through trial transcripts and a memoir that has never been found before, the story of Norwegian immigrants who settled on this islands off the coast....more

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Aug 08, 2011 Yumiko Hansen added it

Anita Shreve wrote two tragic tales, separated by more than 100 years, and coiled them seamlessly into one compelling narrative.

In the novel, a photojournalist named Jean gets an assignment to do a photo essay on a 100-year-old double -murder that happened on the isles of Shoals, a tiny group of islands off the coast of New Hampshire. Jean brings along her poet husband, her five-years-old daughter, her brother-in-low and his new girlfriend.

Shreve skillfully got me involved in the soap opera whe...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Kirsty Darbyshire added it

After reading the hefty and only half good Fortune's Rocks I wanted to read some more of Shreve so I picked the slimmest volume in the bookshop hoping that she could write more consistently compellingly in a shorter work. And I got what I wanted - this book would have been unputdownable if I hadn't have had so much to do. I woke up before my alarm this morning and before I got a chance to decide whether I really ought to try and get a little more sleep my head had decided I needed to finish this

...more

There are two stories intertwined here. There is a modern day story told in the first person by a photographer visiting the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. She is photographing the islands where a double murder took place in 1873 and is staying on a boat with her husband, her young daughter, her brother-in-law and his girlfriend and we see the often tetchy interaction between them in the close quarters. The second story is told in the first person by the only survivor of the nineteenth century double murder. This is in the form of a lost manuscript that the photographer finds during her research.

Shreve does a decent job of writing suspense here though the technique of switching stories and including a disjointed fragment of the older story at every point of tension in the modern day story began to get wearing after a while. The more measured voice of the nineteenth century woman does counter the sometimes hysterical tone of the modern day woman and the hysterical tone isn't a bad thing, it's a very good portrayal of someone who isn't quite certain what's going on around her and sometimes can't cope with her own thoughts.

Something I have a bit of a problem with is that the nineteenth century murder is a real crime. Two Norwegian immigrant women really did die by the axe on Smutty Nose Island and Louis Wagner was hanged for the crime. Maren Hondvedt who narrates the story was a real person. Shreve weaves her fictional story through the real court testimony and comes up with a different interpretation of events. I find this all a bit chilling. Not really knowing where the line between reality and fiction is drawn leaves me a bit ambivalent about the book. It's an excellent story but I wish, somewhat ridiculously, that it all came from the author's imagination.

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Jan 24, 2009 Nancy Oakes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The Weight of Water is a book I just read for my book group. Anita Shreve's books aren't normally ones I would pick to read, so this was a bit of a challenge.

I have to say that I didn't really care too much for the modern-day people and their woes. I just couldn't relate to the female characters here (either Jean or Adaline) as real people with real problems. However, I did enjoy the story about the Norwegian immigrants who came to Smuttynose Island. They had some serious issues to deal with, e...more

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Dec 31, 2008 Antof9 rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2006-read, unfulfilling, depressing

It's very rare that a book -- especially a standard-issue novel -- sends me to the dictionary. This one did not once, but twice, and early in the book. Although I've heard both words many times, and knew in general what they meant, I felt compelled to look up their real meanings, given the sentences they fell in. The sentences, with the words in italics below:
"The island is not barren, but it is sere and bleak."
"The Isles of Shoals, an archipelago, lie in the Atlantic, ten miles southeast off th...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Ugh. This book intertwines two stories. One is the murder of two women and happens in a previous century. The other is about a photographer sent to where the women were killed to take pictures for a magazine assignment. The older story works well and I even liked the weird way the author intertwines the two stories where one flows into the next with only a paragraph break. The problem is that the more contemporary story falls completely apart at the end. There's a build up full of the photograph...more Ugh. This book intertwines two stories. One is the murder of two women and happens in a previous century. The other is about a photographer sent to where the women were killed to take pictures for a magazine assignment. The older story works well and I even liked the weird way the author intertwines the two stories where one flows into the next with only a paragraph break. The problem is that the more contemporary story falls completely apart at the end. There's a build up full of the photographer's regrets and if only's but I don't see how anything she did caused what happened in the end.

*Spoiler* The photographer, her husband, her 5-year old daughter, her brother-in-law and his girlfriend are on a sailboat and a storm comes up before they can move to a safer harbor. The daughter has been strapped into a life jacket and has been sent to stay in one of the cabins with the girlfriend who is feeling ill. The photographer is holding on to the steering wheel trying to keep the boat pointed towards the waves. Her husband and brother-in-law are trying to control the sails and batten things down. The girlfriend comes up on deck without a life jacket so she can be sick over the side of the bed. The photographer thinks this is a very dangerous thing to do and tries to yell to the girlfriend. Just as the girlfriend lifts her head, the sail swings over and knocks her overboard. Her husband rescues the girlfriend (I have no idea how). Meanwhile the little girl has disappeared. So somehow, the photographer thinks she's responsible for her daughter's death because she suspected her husband of having an affair with the girlfriend(?). I can see she'd think herself responsible for her daughter's death because she didn't save her daughter or even realize her daughter was in danger but none of that has anything to do with whether her husband was having an affair. I can't see how she could expect herself to have acted differently toward the girlfriend if she didn't think there was an affair going on. Would she have left the girlfriend to be washed overboard by a wave or tipped off the boat as it rocks sideways if she thought only pure things about the girlfriend? Would she have abandoned the wheel to go find her daughter leaving everyone in danger of being capsized because the boat would have been in line with the waves? And if she's so illogical as to be full of regrets for thinkiong of the affair and truly feels responsible, then how is she living a productive life? How is she not completely overwhelmed with depression and self-loathing? How could she later meet the woman she thought was her husband's lover and try to be pleasant and casual? (less)

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Dec 31, 2012 Catherine Gordon rated it 3 of 5 stars

I actually liked this book more than I thought I would. The modern day character Jean is rather annoying however I did like the descriptions of her role as a photographer as they felt genuine. The landscape is well written and you can feel the isolation and the cold that is described. I like the style of writing very much. However the characters in this time period are shallow. Jean isn't likeable and her actions don't make sense. The murder story is real and I don't know how comfortable I feel...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Mircalla64 (free Liu Xiaobo) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller

Il peso dell’acqua in realtà grava sul mistero del cuore umano. Un cuore di donna che, attraverso i secoli continua a battere nel cuore di un’altra donna, la quale ne segue le tracce in vecchi e polverosi archivi. Due coppie intraprendono un viaggio in barca per visitare il luogo di un antico omicidio, due coppie tra loro indissolubilmente legate, che vivono una vita doppia, da una parte il mistero di un assassinio e dall’altra quello di un presunto tradimento, mai rivelato e per questo mai smen...more Il peso dell’acqua in realtà grava sul mistero del cuore umano. Un cuore di donna che, attraverso i secoli continua a battere nel cuore di un’altra donna, la quale ne segue le tracce in vecchi e polverosi archivi. Due coppie intraprendono un viaggio in barca per visitare il luogo di un antico omicidio, due coppie tra loro indissolubilmente legate, che vivono una vita doppia, da una parte il mistero di un assassinio e dall’altra quello di un presunto tradimento, mai rivelato e per questo mai smentito.
Il mistero si dipana parallelo, i protagonisti sembrano seguire un copione scritto da altri, nulla è come appare, nella più classica delle tradizioni del giallo, nulla potrà mai essere come prima una volta che si accetta di sollevare il sottile velo che nasconde la verità.
Nello corso del racconto si rimane avvinti dalle memorie di Maren, la protagonista ed unica superstite del fatto accaduto un secolo prima, in cui Jean, la narratrice dei fatti del presente, si imbatte per caso.
Tra un accenno a fatti innominabili del passato ed una sottile allusione a cose che è meglio non approfondire del presente, il racconto scorre avvincente. Nulla è lasciato al caso, ogni piccolo particolare trova la sua collocazione fino al doppio ed inquietante finale che motiva ed accomuna il dolore delle due donne ad un secolo di distanza.
Anita Shreve, già autrice di La Moglie del pilota ci porta con maestria attraverso i meandri di un secolo che nulla aveva da dare alle donne, silenziose compagne di pallidi esploratori di un universo tutto da scoprire quale era l’America alla fine dell’Ottocento.
Ad una prima lettura sembra un romanzo sulla capacità di resistenza al dolore delle donne, in realtà si tratta di una dolente riflessione sulla insensibilità del mondo di fronte ad un dolore tanto immotivato quanto inevitabile. Le protagoniste vivono, ad un secolo di distanza, il destino che accomuna da sempre le persone sensibili in situazioni di difficoltà: l’indifferenza e la solitudine. Ma la fierezza con la quale esse affrontano il loro destino le rende straordinariamente vive ai nostri occhi, una vita che travalica la finzione letteraria per radicarsi nel ricordo del lettore anche molto dopo aver terminato la lettura.

Anna Maria Pelella.

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Jun 04, 2012 Sharon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, historical-fiction

This novel is really two stories in one. First there is the story of Norwegian immigrants coming to America, and secondly we have the contemporary story of a photographer going to the island where the immigrants lived to photograph and research a 100 year old murder.

A murder of two women took place over 100 years ago on the island of Smutty Nose in the Isles of Shoals. Maren Hanvent moves to this very remote, sparse island with her fisherman husband. They are followed by her sister and brother...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Nereia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Una scrittura sofferta, quella della Shreve. Avvalendosi di un linguaggio complesso e a volte anche frammentato, l'autrice trasmette al lettore immagini nitide e dettagliate della vita di Maren, la donna sopravvissuta al massacro consumatosi nel 1873 a Smuttynose, e di Jean, una giovane fotoreporter impegnata nella realizzazione di un servizio fotografico sulle isole Shoals. Anita Shreve ci accompagna così in un viaggio intenso e faticoso dalla Norvegia alle isole Shoals, situate tra lo Stato de...more Una scrittura sofferta, quella della Shreve. Avvalendosi di un linguaggio complesso e a volte anche frammentato, l'autrice trasmette al lettore immagini nitide e dettagliate della vita di Maren, la donna sopravvissuta al massacro consumatosi nel 1873 a Smuttynose, e di Jean, una giovane fotoreporter impegnata nella realizzazione di un servizio fotografico sulle isole Shoals. Anita Shreve ci accompagna così in un viaggio intenso e faticoso dalla Norvegia alle isole Shoals, situate tra lo Stato del New Hampshire e quello del Maine, caratterizzate da un ambiente difficile e da un clima ostile all'uomo per gran parte dell'anno.

I numerosi flashback, all'inizio un po' fuorvianti, con lo snodarsi della trama si amalgamano perfettamente alle scene vissute nel presente da Jean, sulla barca nella quale si trova con il marito Thomas, uno scrittore alcolista dal passato traumatico, Billie, la loro figlioletta, l'intrigante cognato Rich e la sua nuova e bellissima fidanzata Adeline. Anita Shreve riesce, con il suo talento, a stimolare la curiosità del lettore, interrompendo la narrazione di questa o quell'altra vicenda sempre sul più bello, costringendo quindi chi sta leggendo a divorare le pagine successive nella speranza di poter arrivare il più in fretta possibile a scoprire come andrà a finire. Questa, però, non si rivela una caratteristica irritante del romanzo poiché Anita interrompe la vicenda interessante con un'altra vicenda che, qualche pagina dopo, si trasformerà in una vicenda interessante anch'essa, creando così una sorta di spirale che tiene il lettore incollato alle pagine.
Un romanzo che, nonostante parli di emozioni molto forti quali la passione, l'amore e la disperazione, e le descriva in modo quasi didascalico e maniacale, è caratterizzato da uno stile di narrazione che rimane sempre freddo, austero. Questo, forse, è il motivo per il quale ho trovato difficoltoso, all'inizio, riuscire ad entrare appieno nella storia e, più volte, ho pensato di abbandonare la lettura. Sono felice, però, di non averlo fatto perché proseguendo nella lettura, anche se inizialmente parecchio lentamente, la storia acquista corpo e i continui cambi di scenari e argomenti, che dapprincipio destabilizzano un po', si trasformano in una caratteristica affascinante. Gli elementi della trama non possono purtroppo essere considerati originali e parte del finale si intuisce facilmente più o meno verso la metà della storia. Nonostante ciò la lettura non mi ha annoiata affatto. La ricchezza di dettagli e il senso di claustrofobia di cui è intriso il romanzo mi hanno affascinata tantissimo e convinta a dare un'altra opportunità a questa scrittrice di cui, ad esclusione di questo romanzo, non avevo mai letto nulla fino ad ora.

Recensione presente sul mio blog: Recensione de "Il peso dell'acqua"
http://www.librangoloacuto.blogspot.i...(less)

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Dec 20, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Shelves: chick-lit, contemporary, crime, fiction, historical-fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, novels, popular-fiction, ultimate-reading-list

I couldn't warm to this book. I think it tries too hard, it feels affected, insincere. It's mostly told from the perspective of Jean. She's a photographer sent to get photographs of Smuttynose, Maine, part of the Shoal Islands near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1873, it was the setting of a gruesome double murder, so she visits the island accompanied by her husband, five-year-old daughter and her brother-in-law and his girlfriend. The novel is mostly written in a first person present voice that...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Renee rated it 3 of 5 stars

Having lived in so many areas of the country, I have always enjoyed reading works of fiction by authors who are local to the area where I am currently living. It is interesting to get a regional historical perspective through the intertwining of real places, people and events in order to understand the backdrop for an author’s story.

Anita Shreve is a masterful author from New England who has taken a real event—a horrific double murder of two Norwegian women in the Isle of Shoals in the late 180...more Having lived in so many areas of the country, I have always enjoyed reading works of fiction by authors who are local to the area where I am currently living. It is interesting to get a regional historical perspective through the intertwining of real places, people and events in order to understand the backdrop for an author’s story.

Anita Shreve is a masterful author from New England who has taken a real event—a horrific double murder of two Norwegian women in the Isle of Shoals in the late 1800’s, and married it with the story of a modern-day photojournalist who is investigating this “crime of the century” murder. The story is set off the coast of Maine on the island of Smuttynose, where Jean is researching the details of the bloody axe-murder. Jean and her poet-husband Thomas set out on a weekend boat trip with their 9-year-old daughter Billie, on a sailboat captained by Thomas’ brother Rich, along with Rich’s latest, and very flirtatious girlfriend, Adeline. Adeline seems to have a very specific knowledge of Thomas’ poetry, which she continues to quote back and forth with Thomas during the boat trip, to the point where Jean becomes suspicious of Adeline’s familiarity with her husband. Meanwhile, Jean uses some old letters and a diary of Maren’s to shed light on what might have happened to cause the infamous axe-murder on this small island off the coast of Maine.

Shreve concurrently weaves in the storyline of the Norwegian wife, Maren, who is married at a young age to a fisherman from Norway who becomes obsessed over moving to America, where much wealth is to be made in the fishing business. She ends up isolated on a bleak, cold island, where she has very little contact with other people, until her older sister Karen arrives and imposes herself into the already small, dreary space that Maren and her husband share. Another lodger, Louis Wagner becomes entrenched as a tenant in the already-cramped duplex house, and he eventually becomes accused of the bloody murder that takes place. The problem becomes, however, that most of the circumstantial evidence pointing to Wagner’s guilt is questionable, despite leading the reader to the plausibility that he is responsible.

Shreve alternates the story between Jean’s existence on a small watercraft with her family and an unknown, mysterious woman who flirts with her husband, and Maren’s existence in a cramped house with her family and tenant. The storylines, feelings and emotions begin to blur and boil over in such a suspenseful manner, and we see that Jean can no longer separate herself emotionally from her investigation of the Smuttynose murders. As Jean discovers more and more about Maren’s life, she begins to question her own life, and what consequences might arise from taking certain matters into her own hands as the tension builds during a storm later during the boat trip.

Shreve has a way vividly describing the landscape and pulling you right into the scenes on the boat and in the freezing landscape of the Isle of Shoals. This was a fairly easy read that kept you guessing and wondering about what really happened, and the story had a shocking ending that makes this book worthy of its title.(less)

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Oct 14, 2010 Nadine Doolittle rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was surprised when I finished this book to discover I kind of liked it when there are so many reasons not to.

1)The long and largely irrelevant passages about Maren's life in Norway.
2) The unexplained hostility between the two sisters (Maren and Karen--yikes--imagination where art thou?)
3)The past story of the murders and the present tale of jealousy went off the rails at the critical moment. Frankly, the whole narrative from the past didn't hang together very well.
4)The cliched moody drunk p...more

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Sep 27, 2010 David Abrams rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anita Shreve (author of the much-touted "The Pilot’s Wife") has done the near-impossible in "The Weight of Water." She has written two tragic tales, separated by more than 100 years, and coiled them seamlessly into one compelling narrative. This is one of the most emotional, provocative and exciting novels I’ve read in a long time. For those who dismissed "The Pilot’s Wife" with a shrug, this is THE Shreve novel to search out at the local bookstore. "The Weight of Water" is a much better crafted...more Anita Shreve (author of the much-touted "The Pilot’s Wife") has done the near-impossible in "The Weight of Water." She has written two tragic tales, separated by more than 100 years, and coiled them seamlessly into one compelling narrative. This is one of the most emotional, provocative and exciting novels I’ve read in a long time. For those who dismissed "The Pilot’s Wife" with a shrug, this is THE Shreve novel to search out at the local bookstore. "The Weight of Water" is a much better crafted work than the more recent Oprah pick.

In the novel, a photojournalist named Jean gets an assignment to do a photo essay on a 100-year-old double-murder that happened on the Isles of Shoals, a tiny group of islands off the coast of New Hampshire. Jean brings along her poet husband, her five-year-old daughter, her brother-in-law and his new girlfriend. They all climb aboard an old sailboat and head out for the barren islands. Turmoil brews as quick as afternoon storm clouds. Jean and her husband Thomas have a strained marriage, full of jealousy and stony silences; Rich, Thomas’ brother, has a physically passionate relationship with his girlfriend, but their relationship also shows signs of trouble when she starts to flirt with Thomas; then there’s the volatile relationship between Thomas and Rich. Let's just say, it’s a far cry from the Love Boat.

Shreve skillfully gets the reader involved in the soap opera when, in the first few pages, Jean and Rich take a trip onto the island to photograph the murder scene. The attraction and tension between them is as palpable as the briny sea air.

Interwoven with the modern story is the saga of what happened on the island in 1873 when two women were brutally murdered with an ax. This part of the novel, told in a memoir by another woman who hid in a cave after the murders, is even more intense than Jean’s marital woes. I don’t want to spoil any of the delicious narrative surprises Shreve has in store, so I’ll just say that there’s insanity, jealousy and incest at work on the island in 1873—problems that continue to resonate and haunt characters 100 years later.

As she proved in "The Pilot’s Wife," Shreve has a sure touch when it comes to accurate, detailed descriptions. With an admirable economy of words, she gets us right under the skin of the characters. Here’s Jean’s lament from the opening pages of the novel: "Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times."

Fortunately for us, we are given the story and all of its pain and passion.

(As an aside, Shreve’s descriptions of Smuttynose Island and the rest of the Isles of Shoals were so graphic and interesting, that I immediately searched the Internet for photos of the area. I found one site [though there may be more] that had a collection of beautiful images: http://www.perpublisher.com/shoals.html)
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May 30, 2010 Leah rated it 2 of 5 stars

A tale of love and jealousy. A tale of what happens when these are the emotions that rule one's life. This is Anita Shreeve's The Weight of Water. It is told through recollections and journals of recollections. It is a novel set in two time periods, one hundred years apart. The main device in the novel, as one may guess is water. But a secondary device used to a better purpose is a fisherman's net. The fisherman's net serves to connect the stories of these disparate women a century apart. It ser...more A tale of love and jealousy. A tale of what happens when these are the emotions that rule one's life. This is Anita Shreeve's The Weight of Water. It is told through recollections and journals of recollections. It is a novel set in two time periods, one hundred years apart. The main device in the novel, as one may guess is water. But a secondary device used to a better purpose is a fisherman's net. The fisherman's net serves to connect the stories of these disparate women a century apart. It serves to show the bonds of human relationship that connect people's lives to one another. And it shows the frailty of human emotion; how all that one holds dear can unravel in the time it takes to prepare a cup of coffee. This is best portrayed by this statement:

We have done this thing, and then that thing, and then that thing, and I have come to think of our years together as a tightly knotted fisherman's net; not perfectly made perhaps, but so well knit I would have said it could never have been unraveled

All that said, I did not really enjoy reading The Weight of Water. I found it disjointed, the transitions from one story to the next jarring. I also thought it odd that these women would write a narrative in the same way, even though they are in different time periods, different cultures, even different languages. I understand that Shreeve wanted to show a connection between the present day and the past, but I found it unnerving. The book ends up like listening to a long-winded story-teller who has grown a little rusty in the telling. There are digressions galore, backstory of backstory. And all I wanted was to get to the end.

Also, I don't believe Shreeve left much to the imagination of the reader narratively. Within the first 70 pages, I thought I knew exactly what had happened and exactly what would happen. At the end of the book, I was right. Does that make me smarter than others? No, I think it means Shreeve didn't hide her hand. I felt much like one of the narrators: "I have sometimes though that there are moments when you can see it all - and if not the future, then all that has gone before." She did attempt to make you think you weren't getting the whole story with the inclusion of the line: "No one can know a story's precise reality." This isn't as compelling a red herring when you read it in context.
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Oct 25, 2009 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars

A gripping and hauntng tale that weaves the past into the present with brilliant subtlety. Jean is on assignment to photograph the sight of a long ago murder on Smuttynose Island off the coast of New Hampshire. She along with her husband and five year old daughter decide to turn the assignment into a vacation with her brother in law and his new girlfriend on their sailboat.
Jean discovers a lost archive in Portsmouth's library including a narrative from the sole survivor of the murders. As the re...more

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Oct 12, 2009 Barbara Poore rated it 2 of 5 stars

My friend lent this to me while traveling in Spain since my other books were stolen. I doubt that I would have picked it up on my own. The double story of a woman who travels to an island off Portsmouth NH (Smuttynose--there is a present day brewery of that name in Portsmouth--who knew?) to research the 19c murder of two women on the island, interspersed with the story of the murders by one of the survivors. The present day story seems poorly grounded....what magazine would pay a photographer to...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: women-lit

This is a book of two tales. In the present day tale, we follow Jean, who is photographing the scene, on a island, of an old crime. She, her husband Thomas, her husband’s brother and his girlfriend, as well as Jean and Thomas’ daughter Billie, are on a small boat of the coast of New Hampshire. The old crime she is connected to is the murder of two Norwegian immigrant women on the island of Smuttynose in the 19th century.

The second story, interwoven with Jean’s story, is the first hand story of t...more

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Dec 24, 2007 Sheryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an interesting book as it is two simultaneous and interwoven stories, one set in current day and one back in time. Anita seamlessly switches between the stories and keeps the reader engaged. Set in New England, you can feel the cold winters and the storms as the present day heroine, a newspaper photographer, learns more about herself in the search for the truth of a historic double axe murder. The story line is haunting and it pulls at your emotions. Definitely worth reading.

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Feb 06, 2011 bluishlights rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Aug 08, 2012 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book

Somewhere around 2005, I picked up this book while browsing at a Border's store. I thumbed through it and ultimately put it back on the shelf but the name Maren (one of the central characters) stuck with me and several years later, I named my daughter Maren. Now that my daughter is nearly 3, I thought it high time I actually read the book from which I got her name.

The novel is actually two stories that Shreve tries to intertwine though more than 100 years separates them. In modern day, the stor...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookcrossed-or-otherwise-set-free, 2006

"I wonder this: If you take a woman and push her to the edge, how will she behave?" The question is posed by Jean, a photographer, who in 1995 arrives on Smuttynose Island, off the coast of Maine, to research a century-old crime. As she immerses herself in the details of the case -- an outburst of passion that resulted in the deaths of two women -- Jean herself enters precarious emotional territory. The suspicion that her husband is having an affair burgeons into jealousy and distrust, and ultim...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Katie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I chose this book because I had enjoyed The Pilot's Wife, which resonated strongly with me, I suppose in part because it was about the loss of love and how little we may really know of those we love.

I had also read and enjoyed The Last Time They Met, which was a follow-up of sorts to The Weight of Water.

I must admit I was somewhat disappointed with this book. I'm not a big fan of true crime novels - unless you are Truman Capote it is hard to carry off - and I thought that the weakest part of The...more

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May 30, 2011 J.D. Field rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've read four or five Anita Shreve books, and I feel that this one belongs lower down the heap. The problems are that from the beginning you know that things are going to 'come to a climax' and with that in mind there are only a couple of ways it can go, making it a bit predictable.
Telling two stories in parallel, with the story from the past filtered through a character in the present, is a nice structure, and one Shreve has used successfully in the past.
On the upside, the setting is very inte...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Caley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Definitely an evocative novel, the grimness of the Northeastern Atlantic was all there and the fated relationship between the main couple was clear from Shreve's nuanced description of their day-to-day interactions. Unfortunately, that's really the only strong point of this novel. Minus these poignant descriptions, the rest of the plot was unnecessarily drawn out to supposedly create some sort of suspense that falls terribly flat. This is not a "whodunnit" tale and only a inattentive reader coul...more

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Jul 25, 2011 CJ rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

This wasn't a bad book. I enjoyed the parallels between the lives of the survivor of the murders on the island of Smuttynose and the modern-day woman delving into the history of the tragedy. I also enjoyed pondering the question raised near the end: what does someone who suffers a tragedy need to leave behind in order to go on with her life?

The style of the book was a little tedious and confusing at times, though. Shreve jumped back and forth from a fictional confessional about the 19th Century...more

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Apr 06, 2009 Cheri rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book may be best summed up as a summer read, chick lit guiltily knotted into historical fiction. Anita Shreve binds together the gristly 19th c. murders at Smuttynose, a small island off the coast of New Hampshire, with the slow keening of a contemporary marriage.

As a child I grew up sailing and anchoring off the Isles of Shoals, listening to tales of the pirate Bluebeard, treasure and murder; swimming in the deep black waters; and exploring Smuttynose and the Haley house (of which I'm a d...more

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About Anita Shreve

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). A...more 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 12 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, and Body Surfing.

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.(less)

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“Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times.” — 15 people liked it

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