Sea Glass

In addition to spinning one of her most absorbing narratives, Shreve here rewards readers with the third volume in a trilogy set in the large house on the New Hampshire coast that figured in The Pilot's Wife and Fortune's Rocks. This time the inhabitants are a newly married couple, Sexton and Honora Beecher, both of humble origins, who rent the now derelict house. In a burst of overconfidence, slick typewriter salesman Sexton lies about his finances and arranges a loan to buy the property. When the 1929 stock market crash occurs soon afterward, Sexton loses his job and finds menial work in the nearby mills. There, he joins a group of desperate mill hands who have endured draconian working conditions for years, and now, facing show more extortionate production quotas and reduced pay, want to form a union. The lives of the Beechers become entwined with the strikers, particularly a principled 20-year-old loom fixer named McDermott and Francis, the 11-year-old fatherless boy he takes under his wing. A fifth major character is spoiled, dissolute socialite Vivian Burton, who is transformed by her friendship with Honora. As Honora becomes aware that Sexton is untrustworthy, she is drawn to McDermott, who tries to hide his love for her. The plot moves forward via kaleidoscopic vignettes from each character's point of view, building emotional tension until the violent, rather melodramatic climax when the mill owners' minions confront the strikers. Shreve is skilled at interpolating historical background, and her descriptions of the different social strata the millworkers, the lower-middle-class Sextons, the idle rich enhance a touching story about loyalty and betrayal, responsibility and dishonor. show less

This book took me a while to get into. At first, I didn't like some of the characters but then the more I kept reading, the more involved I got into their lives. Of course, it really got interesting when they all found each other and were involved in what was happening at that time in history. This really opened my eyes to the textile mills and unions. I had no idea that back in 1930, people were massacred because they chose to strike or help those that were striking. This was in America! This book became fascinating.

In a small beach town in 1929, a young wife and husband, Honora and Sexton, move into a fixer upper. A young rich woman named Vivian suffers a bit of ennui. A mill worker, McDermott, gets involved with starting a union and looks out for eleven-year-old Alphonse. Each of these characters are so different, yet we see parts of the story of that one year from each point of view as they intersect and weave in and out of each other's lives.

Though I'm familiar with Anita Shreve's name and some of her bestselling titles, I've never read any of her works so I have nothing to compare this particular piece of historical fiction to. From what I've read, the house on Fortune's Rocks comes up in a couple of her titles. It's set in a fictional town show more but based on a real place, and details of the seaside, hints of the Depression, and the reality of mill work were rendered well. But I think the best part of this story, for me, was that Shreve takes fallible characters and makes their ordinary lives epic. You feel so deeply for them as they get pounded by the surf of life, yet come out on the other side much like the sea glass Honora collects. show less

I loved that Honora loves sea glass, but her new husband thinks it is trash. To Honora they were broken shards of colored glass that were discarded but the sea had made it strong and beautiful.

Vivian, a friend that Honora met on the beach was smart, sassy and wise. Vivian can see a way to the future and she valued friendship as it should be.

Sexton sees everything as money or potential money. He is a typewriter salesman, smooth talker but not completely honest. Sexton does not how to adapt with adversity. He is only for himself not for others. When he lost his sales job he finally gets another one at the textile mill. He never accepted the change in his after the stock market crash.

McDermott cared about people and when the little mill show more boy, Francis' mother dies, he takes him under his wing. He is very caring and I kept wishing that Honora and he were married instead.

My heart went for Francis, his mother was to my father's. In the Great Depression, families were divided up between the relatives.

I loved this and the only thing that was difficult was introduction of so many characters all at once at the beginning. But I took notes and it all fit together. I would have liked a longer ending too. Just make sure that the characters were all settled down! show less

Sea Glass is a cinematic story in with its beautiful descriptions and the way the mood builds and carries from scene (chapter) to scene. The book starts innocently enough as a perfect homage to the types of novels written at the time of the story (1929-30) but with the start of the Great Depression the novel takes on a much darker and frantic tone ending with each and every character marked and changed. Shreve's style of writing mimics well authors of the time: Kelland, Lincoln (who also wrote about a fictional coastal town), Fizgerald and Steinbeck making the novel all the more engaging and believable.

I quite liked the plot of this book, and loved Shreve's characters, as usual. But I admit that I tire of swearing in novels, most especially when it seems anachronistic. I'm so tired of finding the f-bomb riddled throughout novels set in the 1910s and 20s. It's only been in my generation that I find people feel the freedom to use it unapologetically in their speech, so it irritates me to find it used so constantly in the speech of, for lack of a better word, 'historical' characters.

So, because I'm uncomfortable with it both from a literary and an ethical standpoint, my enjoyment of this book was tainted a bit.

On the other hand, I'd like Vivian and Honora and McDermott and Alphonse to all move in down the street from me, please.

Sea Glass begins in June 1929, when 20-year-old Honora Willard Beecher and her new husband, 24-year-old traveling salesman Sexton.  They are moving into an old dilapidated house on the New Hampshire coast just outside a mill town, fixing it up in lieu of rent.  When the house is put up for sale, Sexton finagles a way to buy it.  Then October comes, and the stock market crashes.

The reader learns more about the five main characters in chapters told from their points of view.  Honora has had a rough life, losing her father and her youngest brother in the Halifax explosion.  Sexton is an amazingly good salesman - maybe too good.  McDermott is a 20-year-old Irish immigrant working in the mills, losing his hearing from the noise, show more helping to support his orphaned siblings, and meeting with other men considering forming a union.  He befriends 11-year-old Francis (named Alphonse in a hardbound edition), a French immigrant also working in the mills and contributing to his family's income.  Vivian is a 28-year-old wealthy, bored, decadent socialite who comes to the coast for the summers.

In the early chapters, these people's lives start to intersect subtly, building to the chapters where they (and a few more minor characters) all come together to provide support for an upcoming strike at the mill.  There's both romance and tragedy in the story.  It was interesting to learn more about the labor movement in this period of American history, particularly as it affected the workers who went on strike, and the violence sometimes associated with it.

The title of the novel comes from the sea glass that Honora collects.  Sea glass has its sharp edges smoothed by the action of the waves and sand, and that serves as a metaphor for what happens in the book.

Actress Kyra Sedgwick does an awesome job reading this audiobook, with just that right emotion and nuances at all the right times.

I picked up this audiobook at my local public library because it was historical fiction and because it was short - I can listen to one audiobook CD a day during my commute and I had five days available before the start of my vacation.  I did not look that closely at the cover and was surprised to discover afterwards that it was an abridgment.  The abridgment (not by the author) was well done in that the novel flowed well, but it makes me wonder what I might have missed (apparently something about the house being a former convent, for one thing). I'm tempted to read the print book now!

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn, in the introduction by Anita Shreve, that this was her third book set in a certain old New England beach house (modeled after a real one), just in a different era.  I'm familiar with The Pilot's Wife, set in contemporary times, but I'm very curious to read Fortune's Rocks, set in 1899.

© Amanda Pape - 2014

[The audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my local public library. This review also appears on Bookin' It.] show less