All He Ever Wanted: Summary and book reviews of All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve, plus links to an excerpt from All He Ever Wanted and a biography of Anita Shreve.

What is a woman's price? Etna Bliss has just moved to the New England town where her uncle teaches college when her life is transformed in a single stroke. She is dining in a hotel downtown when a fire forces her to escape to the snowy streets outside. Amid the smoke and chaos of that night she is glimpsed, standing under a streetlight, by a man who was dining in the same room-a man who is so overwhelmed by the sight of her that he rebuilds his life around a single goal: to marry Etna Bliss. That man is Nicholas Van Tassel, and All He Ever Wanted is his account of how two lives changed from that tumultuous night forward. A proud and orderly man, Van Tassel is ill equipped to deal with the ferocity of love. But he is determined to have Etna no matter what the cost. Riding a train south many years later, he unwinds his memories of the years that followed and struggles to understand the mystery his life became on that night. This is no ordinary tale of obsession. It is a story about different kinds of love, different ideas of what love is, and how lives can be strained to breaking over those differences. It is a powerful exploration of the music and silences of family life, the unhinging forces of desire, the wrenching power of secrets unrevealed, and the bewildering territories of betrayal and loss. Written with the maturity, beauty, intelligence, and grace that are Anita Shreve's hallmarks, this is a story that powerfully conjures another time and place-peopled by unforgettable characters as real as the emotions that bring them together.

Media Reviews

USA Today Shreve is a master at depicting passion's ferocious grip....there's something addictive about her literary tales of lust and love.   Publishers Weekly Shreve has revealed an impeccably sharp eye and a generous emotional sensitivity in describing the moment when a man and a woman become infatuated with each other. She is less successful this time out...   Kirkus Reviews Full-bodied storytelling with an unflinching moral backbone one of Shreve's best.   Booklist - Joanne Wilkinson Boldly plotted and inventively told, Shreve's latest novel is further proof that she is a natural-born storyteller with a shrewd sense of how to shape her material to best appeal to the commercial market.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by John Taylor
I found "All He Ever Wanted" one of the best novels I have read for many years.
Her skilful plot with its almost endless suspense is outstanding.
Her use of language reminds me of Iris Murdoch with touches of Poe , Hawthorne and Thomas...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Maureen
This is the second book by Anita Shreve I've read--The Pilot's Wife, the first. This was a very different read, but truly amazing! I couldn't put it down. I found it haunting and compelling. My emotions were on a roller coaster with my...   Read More

Rated of 5 by hilary
I have just finished reading "All He Ever Wanted" by Anita Shreve. I have enjoyed several of her novels and feel that this one matches all of the others in the quality of the writing and the depiction of character and emotion. I too would like...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Richard
It has a very dramatic opening that snags the reader, then it drags for about 100 pages, all of which is setup for a dramatic, page-turner ending. Once you start the last 100 pages, it is difficult to put down. In the end the reader is left with...   Read More

Rated of 5 by hanh
This is my first time reading any of Anita Shreve's book, and this story isn't half bad. I liked how she held back her plot.

Rated of 5 by Peter Alexander
"Weight of Water," "Strange Fits of Passion," and "Where or When" are wonderful, uniquely brilliant. "All He Ever Wanted" is a major disappointment - a #3, just because Anita's a great and unusual writer. But as Pat said, Etna's story would have...   Read More

...4 More Reader Reviews

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