The Last Time They Met: Summary and book reviews of The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve, plus links to an excerpt from The Last Time They Met and a biography of Anita Shreve.

Anita Shreve, the bestselling author of The Pilot's Wife, returns with a dazzling new novel about love, forgiveness, and paths not followed. Linda Fallon encounters her former lover, Thomas Janes, at a literary festival where both have been invited to give readings from their work. It has been years since their paths crossed, and in that time Thomas has become a kind of literary legend. His renown is enhanced by his elusiveness; for most of the past decade, he has remained in seclusion following a devastating loss. This is no chance meeting. Thomas learned that Linda was reading at the festival and chose this moment to reestablish contact with a woman he passionately pursued years earlier. Their affair was disastrous, and a turning point in both their lives. Neither the intensity of their relationship nor the damage it did has ever been far from his memory. From the moment they speak, The Last Time They Met unfolds the story of Linda and Thomas in an extraordinary way: it travels back into their past, bypassing layers of memory and interpretation to present their earlier encounters with unshakable immediacy. In Africa, when Linda and Thomas were twenty-seven, and in Massachusetts, when they were in high school, the novel re-creates love at its exhilarating pinnacle - the kind of intense connection that becomes the true north against which all relationships are measured. Moving backward through time, The Last Time They Met traces the extraordinary resonance a single choice, even a single word, can have over the course of a lifetime. At the same time, the novel creates an almost unbearable mystery, a mystery that can only be understood fully in the novel's final pages, in the eyes of young Linda Fallon and the young man who loves her. With a master's control of phrase, observation, emotion, and character, Anita Shreve has written a beautiful and unforgettable exploration of intimacy, loss, and lifelong desire.

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews The shock ending and pretentious elements, such as Linda's unconvincing struggle with her faith, can't disguise the fact that the author is very short of fresh ideas here.   Publishers Weekly Her fluid narrative perfectly mirrors her protagonists' evolving temperaments and viewpoints, while her overall restraint serves to intensify the novel's devastating conclusion.   Library Journal Shreve is one of those rare novelists whose prose is just as remarkable as her storytelling..... While the backwards progression is confusing at times and can necessitate some rereading, it is time well spent. The tragic relationship of these two connected souls will stick with you for days. Oprah-pick Shreve does it again with this achingly emotional novel.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Connie
The Last Time They Met
Will someone PLEASE tell me if Linda Fallon is dead or not. Was the first part of the book a figment of Thomas' imagination? I liked the complexity of the relationships, but the book left me confused. What happened to Regina and Peter? Good...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Lauren
The Last Time They Met
You won't find any clues leading to what happens in the end...at least not in this book. However, in "The Weight of Water," Jean says that Thomas killed a girl once, in a car crash when he had been drinking, as a teenager.

Rated of 5 by marles
ending
I thought this book was very good reading... however, the ending was STUPID!

Rated of 5 by Rachel
Amazing book but puzzling
I absolutely loved this book but was astonished and left agasp by the ending. I'm still not totally sure what happened. I was so caught up in these characters lives that I feel almost lost after reading the ending. Was the beginning of the book...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Karen
Fresh out of ideas
Shreeve admits that she wrote the early years first. The book seems to have two separate stories. Oh yeah, I get it. She wants to talk about a life unlived and the power of unresolved guilt. But it seemed to me that the two stories never really...   Read More

Rated of 5 by liezle
WOW!
After reading this book in less than 24 hours, I was still wondering about the ending. My brain is in denial, really! The ending just can't be literally true! I keep going back to the Weight of Water (which i read first haven't finished coz i just...   Read More

...52 More Reader Reviews

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Books with similar themes

• Novels
  
• Love Stories
  
• Africa 
  
• USA 
  
• 20th Century (multiple decades)