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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2002, 384 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2002, 400 pages
An unforgettable story of trust and betrayal, marriage and attraction, set in the 1920s.
It is a house on the beach. Honora doesn't mind renting--despite its age and all its flaws, the old house is the perfect place for a new marriage. She and Sexton throw themselves into fixing it up, just as they throw themselves into their new life together. Each morning, Honora collects sea glass washed up on the shore, each piece carrying a different story in its muted hues.
Sexton finds a way to buy the house, but his timing is perfectly wrong. The economy takes a sickening crash, and as financial pressures mount, Honora begins to see how little she knows this man she has married--and to realize just how threatening the world outside her front door can be.
Like those translucent shards that Honora finds on the beach, Sea Glass is layered with the textures, colors, and voices of another time. There is Vivian, an irreverent Boston socialite who becomes Honora's closest friend even as she rejects every form of convention. McDermott, a man who works in a nearby mill, presses Honora's deepest notions of trust--even as he embroils her in a dangerous dispute. And there's Francis, a boy whose openness becomes the bond that holds these people together as their world is flying apart.
Reviewers and readers everywhere have admired Anita Shreve's ability to create a "literary novel of the caliber and craft of Edith Wharton or Henry James" (Baltimore Sun). Sea Glass is an unforgettable story of trust and betrayal, marriage and attraction, from one of the most persuasive, farseeing, and deeply engaging writers of our time.
Honora
Honora sets the cardboard suitcase on the slab of granite. The door is mackereled, paint-chipped--green or black, it is hard to tell. Above the knocker, there are panes of glass, some broken and others opaque with age. Overhead is a portico of weathered shingles and beyond that a milk-and-water sky. Honora pinches the lapels of her suit together and holds her hat against the wind. She peers at the letter B carved into the knocker and thinks, This is the place where it all begins.
The year is 1929. A June day. A wedding day. Honora is just twenty, and Sexton is twenty-four.
The clapboards of the house are worn from white to flesh. The screens at the windows are ripped and flapping. On the second story, dormers stand like sentries keeping watch over the sea, and from the house a thicket sharp with thorns advances across the lawn. The doorsill is splintered, and she thinks it might give way with her weight. She wants to try the pitted knob, though Sexton has told her not...
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