Fortune's Rocks

It is apparent by the other reviews I have read of this book that I am in the minority, but I truly did not like this book. I constantly had to tell myself that this was a work of fiction as tried desperatly not to throw it across the room.

My main problem with this book is the "love" between 15 year old Olympia and 41 year old John. This relationship is based purely on sex. There was nothing written to make the reader believe otherwise. It bothered me quite a bit that I was supposed to find both of these characters sympathetic and buy into their feelings for each other.

Another aspect of the story that bothered me was the fact that Olympia continued to have her father's wealth to support her even during her self-imposed exile. She never had to work for anything, which I think detracted from the story.

Shreve has always been a "hit or miss" author for me and this one was definetly a miss.

Anita Shreve is pushing an agenda, but not necessarily a moral one. Yes, Fortune Rocks contains many truthes...teenaged mothers shouldn't be ostracized from society, and are still people worthy of love, but ultimately the book tries to make adultery acceptable. This book depressed me. Not only because Shreve never admits that most of the suffering could've been averted by different (and wiser) choices, but because her amoral thinking is cleverly couched between truthes and half-truthes. I also hate reading books that make hot, infatuation sex the highest possible endeavor in life, and that all else (especially a good marriage and children) should be sacrificed for it.

I had only read one book by Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife) prior to picking up Fortune's Rocks, so I wasn't really expecting anything phenomenal, just a good, decent story. Was I ever pleasantly surprised! Fortune's Rocks was way more than your average book -- the historical setting by itself was enough to keep me reading.
Fortune's Rocks tells the story of 15-year-old Olympia Biddeford and the summer that changed her life. While vacationing with her family in Fortune's Rocks, New Hampshire, Olympia notices something different about herself. She does not feel like a little kid anymore, but more of a woman, aware of her surroundings and the looks she receives from the boys on the beach. But it isn't just boys who find themselves drawn to Olympia -- at a dinner gathering, Olympia's father's guest, John Haskell, a 40-something doctor and writer, feels himself drawn as well. Soon, Olympia and John embark on a love affair despite their age difference -- and despite the fact that John is married and the father of four small children. And this affair, although true love for Olympia and John, only proves to be disasterous for all involved.
Set in 1899, the historical era of the novel is its best asset. I love historical fiction, and I believe this aspect is what made the story so involving and good. Anita Shreve's writing is very complementary to the time frame -- I really felt I was dropped in the midst of 1899 while reading. Fortune's Rocks was less predictable than Pilot's Wife, and I was actually surprised a few times at the direction the story was taking. I highly recommend this novel -- especially to those who love historical fiction.

The only reason I finished this book was for a reading group. Blech. The whole premise is the affair between a 15 year old girl and a 41 year old married man. She is selfish, and he lacks self-control, reminding me of a perpetrator at times. I could not stand this book all the way through, found the author's style of writing too flowery, and the book was just really distasteful. Of course, it all works out to a happy, if unrealistic, ending. I feel insulted after reading this- it's like a Jerry Springer show!

"Fortune's Rocks," an upscale, rocky beach community reminiscent of Newport and Maine, is the setting for the shocking love affair of 15 year old Olympia Biddesford and John Haskell, forty-ish. The two are drawn to each other over the great divide of their ages by an almost mystical pull, which quickly turns into a torrid love affair. The setting makes the book--I loved the descriptions of the sea, beach, rocks and sky in all moods and seasons, Olympia's joy in shedding boots to walk in the sand, the shock of the icy New England water. Shreve also does a fine job of recreating the golden years before WWI, the sheltered upbringing of young women, the iron-clad rules of propriety. Inevitably the lovers are found out, in a scene at Olympia's 16th birthday party which would shock even today.

Olympia is dragged away and cloistered in her Boston home, only to be met with a further shock--she and Haskell conceived a child, who is also taken away from her. Away from the sea, the story oddly lags, and Shreve keeps this part mercifully brief. These seemingly doomed lovers who have lost everything re-emerge to try to claim their lives and the child, but Shreve is known for surprise endings, and the child seems lost forever. Read the book to see how it all works out.

I only wish Shreve had made our heroine just a bit older--I couldn't help be bothered that no matter how compelling the passion, how mystical the bond, how passionate Olympia was in pursuing her lover, even today in a society whose mores have utterly changed, Haskell would have been thought to have done something terribly wrong, even criminal. But otherwise this is a fine summer book--well written, beautifuly conceived, but not too heavy.

The author's style displays more determination than grace, and you can see every join and rivet in her machine-like plot.

From the title on, this book is contrived and illogical. The setting is a fictional seaside burg on a rocky New England coast called "Fortune's Rocks” - a poorly articulated concept. Rocks in the sea already exist and one moves to avoid being tossed upon them. The injuries in this story are willfully and unrepentedly inflicted by the “heroine” Olympia.

The young lady is an intelligent, disciplined and gently reared 15 year old child, who suddenly and absurdly is compelled to seduce a middle aged family man. He himself is swept away with need for her unto self destruction and the destruction of all those he loves. This is supposed to be a 'great love' but there is virtually no dialogue between the two excepting their desire for each other. The girl instigates the affair, pursuing him until she has her way with him, and it doesn't take much. This is a child who has never before TOUCHED a man other than her father, unless it were a handshake under his very watchful eye. She is moved to this wanton behavior on the very day she first realizes a man may want her sexually, outlined in a scene on the beach where she is ogled by sunbathing men.
A large part of the story is how this innocent child instantly becomes a skilled, shameless liar in order to hide her affair and it is not portrayed as being at all far-fetched or regrettable.

The lovers are betrayed and publicly outed when they are caught DOING IT at Olympia's own lavish society 16th birthday gala. The following story line has her behaving with the self control of a 60 year old headmistress as she copes with losing her illegitimate child, her lover, her & her family's ruin in high society, the devastation of her lover's family, and being sent to a Dickensian type girls seminary, and subsequently out to work. If only she'd had such composure when she had a crush on her Dad's friend!

Finally she runs back to the parents boarded up beach house (ah but now it's lonely, cold winter – see the symbolysm?) abandoning her job and school and lives off her father's money. She determines to sue the adoptive parents for the now 3 year old child – again with her Father's money, and of course her lawyer falls for her (and her previously uber-controlling Dad comes crawling back to support our redoubtable heroine). She wins the case, but instantaneously sees that she can't take the child from the only parents it has ever known. GAWD. Her lover comes back to her, they marry and open a home for unwed mother's at the family beach house. Sickeningly, they only accept girls who will not give up their illegitimate children for adoption. The last pages have the lost child returned to the lovers upon the deaths of both adoptive parents. Cue self satisfaction of the girl.

I laughed out loud when I read the author interview at the back where she compares herself to Edith Wharton. I wish, like Wharton, she stuck to what she knew. It isn't turn of the century social drama.

One would think that with the delicate subject matter at hand there would be many provocative themes and scenes explored. Not so. Shreve's writing is uninspired and particularly strained in the first part of the novel where she tries to imitate the rigid style of the period. It is contrary to her usual style and I applaud her effort to be, as a reviewer said, "Austen-like," but her characters are way too poorly rendered to support the sophisticated language, which became irksome and tedious after a while. I tried very hard to sympathize with Olympia's plight, but whatever tenderness I may have felt for her was really not due to any of Shreve's storytelling but due to the fact that I could personally imagine the circumstances as being very traumatic for a girl not very much younger than myself. I think the main problem was that I could not understand the intensity of the passion between Olympia and John. Shreve simply resorted to elusive references about fate and soulmates and such to explain their "connection," which I thought was cheap, since that should have been one of the most arresting aspects of the story (for those who are not morally allergic to such love affairs, anyway). Perhaps I felt it to be lacking all the more keenly because I had just finished "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving, which also happens to focus (though hardly exclusively) on an affair between a teenager and a middle-aged person (though the sexes are reversed in his case, it is a 16-year-old boy with a 39-year-old woman) and he had dealt with it much more convincingly and powerfully than Shreve.
Overall though, I must say, Shreve is one of the better bestselling authors out there currently and the book, even if often insipid, is entertaining and even endearing. I recommend it if you are not looking for strenuous literature but just a good ol' romance.

I was apprehensive about this book because of the affair between a 40 year-old and a 15 year old. (I beleive another reader said the same thing.) However, while you delve into this book you can understand why it happened. The girl was educated at home by her father and he made sure she was well-read and intelligent enough to carry on conversations with adults. He was a well-respected and wealthy man who needed his daughter to pocess these skills. I beleive since her mother was often sickly he was sort of using his daughter has a surragate wife without any sexual overtones. It all made sense that she would pick an older man to love. She was mature way beyond her years, the time was the 1800's and she was smart. Now you would think at a time like that it was especially scandulous. It was but it also made the relationship more beleivable. I have always gotten the feeling that women were a bit more sophisticated during that time out of need more than anything else. In order to find a husband you did have to learn the "duties" of being a good wife. Especially if you were poor and wanted to find a rich husband. These duties included things like a good conversationlist, a good mother, a women who is able to run a household in genral, and be subservant to her husband. The modern woman of today would mostly scolf at some of these things. This is no Mary Kay Louretourno ( pardon my spelling) story. It is full of romance, heartache, lies, and emotional intrigue. A very good read.

The opening paragraph of Anita Shreve's story is sublime and inspired. I was so impressed by it that I read it aloud to my husband. The story follows in vivid detail, and the reader is fluently transported back to the moody New England oceanside during the forgotten era between Alexander Graham Bell and World War I. The unlikely love affair between a 15-year-old girl and a 41-year-old man happens abruptly, but their love for each other is convincing - romantic and strong but in no way smarmy.
I find the characters entirely realistic, yet this is a neat literary trick, because they are all terribly typical of their appointed role in the story. The characters are not multi-faceted, not quirky nor profound. Faltering scenes of dialogue aggravate this flatness. The conversations throughout the book are painfully contrived and unnatural. They obscure the feelings behind a situation rather than enhance. Too often, a poorly placed or uncomfortably phrased spoken word from a character abruptly halts the otherwise captivating narrative flow.
Furthermore, though the love affair is credible, as are the scenarios that follow its discovery, the plot line is simplistic and unimaginative. Worse, the story offers only superficial moral implications. The too-good-to-be-true ending is a disappointment... despite my unexplainable sympathy towards the characters.
Still, I was deeply absorbed by this story. Less than halfway through, I threw the book to the floor and vowed to read no more...not because the story was simple or the dialogue grating, but because of emotional distress caused by my attachment to the main character. Later, I found myself crying at a scene in the book that an objective viewer might not find particularly sad.
Anita Shreve persists as an undeniably gifted storyteller, despite her evident flaws.