Body Surfing

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve drops the reader into calm waters with violent waves waiting just below the surface to create turmoil. As Sydney recovers from personal loss she becomes entangled in the tidal pool that is the Edwards family. Sydney has been hired to tutor the youngest Edward child, Julie, to prepare her for a future no one has asked her if she wants. When the two Edward sons,Jeff and Ben, arrive, Sydney ends up in the middle of a lifelong competition that results in much confusion and chaos. Smack in the middle of family dysfunction built around family secrets and heartache, Sydney is pulled between the family members as she navigates her place in the family. Shreve writes characters that feel as if they could step off the show more page at any moment. In a story that feels like it should end before it does, the reader is glad it doesn't when the end finally comes. Body Surfing stays with the reader long after reading the final page with its hauntingly realistic look at pain, loss, and family life. show less

between 3.5 and 4. this is the best shreve that i've read in a while. i feel like i always like her writing but i'm not always sold on the story; this one is satisfying in both realms. it's a bit odd, actually, because the writing is a bit removed, the characters feel a bit cold, and yet it works. for a character-driven story, i wouldn't have thought that would be true. maybe it's because all of the characters are a bit removed from themselves (with the possible exceptions of julie and mr edwards, but then they don't feel as cold, either). i also, of course, really like the unreliable-narrator nature of sydney's understanding of the situation.

a personal exploration, a sibling exploration, a family exploration. there aren't huge shifts, show more but there is gained understanding and growth at the end. and really good writing. it makes me excited to keep reading her. show less

I'm not sure why this one got some poor reviews. I love how Anita Shreve combines a literary tone and eye for detail with soapy plots...a fun, plot-driven read that won't rot your brain.

The book is written in a spare, poetic style. Though some people complained about the present tense, I didn't even notice. Many novels are written in the present tense these days! The story is set, interestingly, in a New Hampshire house that has appeared in 3 other Shreve novels (Fortune's Rocks, The Pilot's Wife, and Sea Glass). I thought this was a fun detail that added a sense of history/continuity and made the novel feel more "real."

I thoroughly enjoyed the twisty (dare I say it--trashy! in a fun way) plot that focuses on a love triangle with one show more treacherous member. show less

Obviously, there are a lot of widely divergent viewpoints about this novel, but personally, I loved it. I loved it precisely because it is a most unusual novel. The novel is written entirely in the present tense—a structure I found wholly unique, stimulating, and ultimately thought-provoking. Throughout the novel it made me feel like I was vicariously there beside—or in the mind of—the main character. I love books that keep me thinking about them long after I’ve finished. I love books that don’t have a neat ending, but make the reader participate in the story, dream up possible back stories, try to figure out what is happening…just like real life.

Reading a whole book in the present tense takes some getting used to—at show more times, especially in the beginning, the style seemed jerky and off-putting. But this is exactly the point: life is jerky, strange, and confusing while it is happening in the moment. As a result, it is a very different type of novel. Just like in real life, there are many unanswered questions and unresolved issues. The author leaves it to the reader to try to figure out why events happened the way they did. We are left to ponder the motivation behind important deeds. We are introduced to complex characters and are left with little to help us ferret out the puzzles these characters create in our mind.

With this book, we get to live real life in the moment and inside the mind of Sydney Sklar, the main character. There is little or no detailed character development for the other people in this book because we get to know these people, always in the moment, from the Sydney’s point of view.

Sydney is a fairly typical educated American woman on the verge of becoming 30. She has had a difficult and tragic past. She was briefly married to an air racer who she realized was too unstable to be the father of any future children they might have together, so she divorced him. She then married a physician, but ironically, this husband died of a brain aneurism within a year of their marriage. At the point the novel opens, Sydney is recovering from the death of her second husband and is a recent college graduate with a specialty in adolescent development.

She has taken a summer job living in a New Hampshire seaside cottage as a live-in tutor for Julie, the family’s 18-year-old learning-disabled daughter. Her job is to try to prepare the girl for next year’s college entrance exams. She lives in the house half as a family member and half as an employee. There is plenty of time for body surfing, relaxing, and observing the family. The mother, Mrs. Edwards, is openly anti-Semitic, and obviously dislikes Sydney, who is half Jewish. Mrs. Edwards appears distant and cool toward everyone in her family, but Sydney discovers layers of hidden loving complexity within this strange woman. Mr. Edwards is an architect who spends his summers at the beach house tending his rose garden. Sydney is deeply attracted to this surrogate father figure and Mr. Edwards finds in Sydney the brilliant older daughter he wish he’d had.

In her first few weeks on the job, Sydney is content tutoring Julie, body surfing in her spare time, and enjoying learning all she can about this interesting family. But then the two grown sons come to spend time at the summer home. Ben is a 35-year-old Boston corporate real estate executive, and Jeff is a 31-year-old M.I.T. professor of political science. It is obvious from the beginning that these two brothers have a major ongoing competition. It is also obvious that they both have eyes for Sydney.

Soon after they arrive, the two men take Sydney out body surfing at night. It’s fun, exhilarating, dangerous, and exciting. But something occurs that night that causes Sydney to turn against Ben, and toward Jeff. What happens next is the plot that makes up the core of this novel.

It strikes me that this work is an experiment in writing a novel completely in the present tense. This must have been a very difficult feat to pull off. Certainly, there are countless short stories written entirely in the present tense; but not to my mind an entire novel—at least none I can remember. Obviously, Shreve felt she was working in new territory. In the Acknowledgments, Shreve thanks no less than nine editors, “some professionals, all of them friends.” That’s an unusually long list of editors! The reader has to ask why Shreve chose to write this book in this unusual fashion.

Personally, I think it is because of the house. There is something very special to Anita Shreve about this fictional beach house on the New Hampshire coast. She has written four novels so far that deal with characters who have lived there: Fortune’s Rocks, set around 1900; Sea Glass, set in the Great Depression; The Pilot’s Wife, set in the mid-1990s; and now Body Surfing, set in the present day.

At the end of Body Surfing, Mr. Edwards leaves Sydney a box of archival papers that he has lovingly collected concerning the long history of the house and its inhabitants. To me, this is a clue that Sydney, and her box of house history will one day reappear in some future Shreve novel that will once again deal lovingly with this beautiful seacoast cottage. Will the next New-Hampshire-sea-cottage-centered book be set in the near future…perhaps during a time of dangerous rising coastal waters? I don’t know if I can imagine Anita Shreve doing a sci-fi book set in a near future. But that would be intriguing—and Shreve might love the challenge. Past, present, or future—whatever it is—I’d bet that Shreve will write another book about this house, and I know I’ll read it! show less

Sydney is 30 years old, twice married, one ending in divorce and the other leaving her a widow. Still grieving and at loose ends, she takes a tutoring job with the Edwards family who are staying at their beach house in New Hampshire for the summer. Mrs. Edwards is hoping Sydney can assist their daughter Julie in increasing her SAT scores. There is a mini soap opera surrounding the young Julie, but the bigger soap opera involves Julie's two older brothers, Ben and Jeff, and Sydney. Shreve is an excellent writer, but this is not her best effort. The characters of Ben and Jeff are underdeveloped for the important part they play in the book, and there are a number of far-fetched plot points.

Summer on the New Hampshire coast.
I originally read this book back in 2010 and only gave it 3 stars. Then a friend recently gave me an abridged audio version and so I decided to give it another go. The shortened version was more enjoyable and I gave it 4 stars this time around, maybe I was just in the mood for it - or maybe the full version lost my attention somehow.

Sydney is only 29, but has already been divorced from one husband and bereaved from a second. While she reassess her life, she takes on the job of coaching Julie, the not-so-academic daughter of Mark and Anna Edwards. They are spending their summer at the beach house - quite a mansion to be just a summer home - and Julie needs help to get her through her final year at show more school.
Everything seems fine until Julie's two older brothers, Ben and Jeff, join the family for their summer vacation. Jeff is involved with Victoria, a local girl he's known from childhood, and an announcement is expected. Ben is single. The presence of Sydney rather upturns the apple-cart and events proceed from there.

As others have commented, there was rather too much description of what characters are wearing, which doesn't really add anything for me and starts to irritate after a while. Otherwise, the characters were well drawn, even in the abridged version, and I'd completely forgotten the ending, which helped.

I didn't purposely set out to read all four books in the Fortune's Rocks quartet, in fact, I didn't originally realise that they were connected. I did, however, start to wonder whether the house on the New Hampshire coast that each of the novels revolved around was in some way connected; it seemed it was sharing its history with us through each of the novels. I love the reappearance of characters or features from previous works, so this was a bonus for me.

Fortunes Rocks Quartet (my ratings)
Fortune's Rocks (5 stars)
The Pilot's Wife (5 stars)
Sea Glass (5 stars)
Body Surfing (3, 4 stars) show less

As always, a wonderful Shreve novel. I absolutely love her writing. I think she is saying good-bye to the house on the beach in New Hampshire. It made me want to write her.