Body Surfing (Shreve)

Body Surfing 
Anita Shreve, 2007
Little, Brown & Co.
289 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316067331


Summary
At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage.

But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt for herself is threatened.

With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an author at one with her metier" (Miami Herald), Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage that it takes to love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Raised—Dedham, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A. Tufts University
• Awards—PEN/L.L. Winship Award; O. Henry Prize
• Currently—lives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts


Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of nearly 20 books—including two works of nonfiction and 17 of fiction. Her novels include, most recently, Stella Bain (2013), as well as The Weight of Water (1997), a finalist for England's Orange prize; The Pilot's Wife (1998), a selection of Oprah's Book Club; All He Even Wanted (2003), Body Surfing (2007); Testimony (2008); A Change in Altitude (2010). She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)

More
For many readers, the appeal of Anita Shreve’s novels is their ability to combine all of the escapist elements of a good beach read with the kind of thoughtful complexity not generally associated with romantic fiction. Shreve’s books are loaded with enough adultery, eroticism, and passion to make anyone keep flipping the pages, but the writer whom People magazine once dubbed a “master storyteller” is also concerned with the complexities of her characters’ motivations, relationships, and lives.

Shreve’s novels draw on her diverse experiences as a teacher and journalist: she began writing fiction while teaching high school, and was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975 for her story, "Past the Island, Drifting." She then spent several years working as a journalist in Africa, and later returned to the States to raise her children. In the 1980s, she wrote about women’s issues, which resulted in two nonfiction books—Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone—before breaking into mainstream fiction with Eden Close in 1989.

This interest in women’s lives—their struggles and success, families and friendships—informs all of Shreve’s fiction. The combination of her journalist’s eye for detail and her literary ear for the telling turn of phrase mean that Shreve can spin a story that is dense, atmospheric, and believable. Shreve incorporates the pull of the sea—the inexorable tides, the unpredictable surf—into her characters’ lives the way Willa Cather worked the beauty and wildness of the Midwestern plains into her fiction. In Fortune’s Rocks and The Weight of Water, the sea becomes a character itself, evocative and ultimately consuming. In Sea Glass, Shreve takes the metaphor as far as she can, where characters are tested again and again, only to emerge stronger by surviving the ravages of life.

A domestic sensualist, Shreve makes use of the emblems of household life to a high degree, letting a home tell its stories just as much as its inhabitants do, and even recycling the same house through different books and periods of time, giving it a sort of palimpsest effect, in which old stories burn through the newer ones, creating a historical montage. "A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell," she says. "I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house."

Shreve’s work is sometimes categorized as "women’s fiction," because of her focus on women’s sensibilties and plights. But her evocative and precise language and imagery take her beyond category fiction, and moderate the vein of sentimen-tality which threads through her books. Moreover, her kaleidoscopic view of history, her iron grip on the details and detritus of 19th-century life (which she sometimes inter-sperses with a 20th-century story), and her uncanny ability to replicate 19th-century dialogue without sounding fusty or fussy, make for novels that that are always absorbing and often riveting. If she has a flaw, it is that her imagery is sometimes too cinematic, but one can hardly fault her for that: after all, the call of Hollywood is surely as strong as the call of the sea for a writer as talented as Shreve. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Deceptive love and stark betrayal form the icy core of this dark 12th novel from Oprah-anointed (The Pilot's Wife), Orange Prize finalist (The Weight of Water) Shreve. Set adrift at 29 by the sudden death of her second husband (her first divorced her), smart, underemployed Sydney (no last name) signs on for a quiet New England oceanfront summer of tutoring 18-year-old Julie, the intellectually slow but artistically talented and strikingly beautiful daughter of the fractious Edwards clan. The family includes Julie's brothers—35-year-old Boston corporate real estate man Ben and 31-year-old M.I.T. poli-sci professor Jeff—and the three children's parents. Sydney is half-Jewish, and Mrs. Edwards is anti-Semitic. Family tensions escalate when Julie disappears, then resurfaces in Montreal as the lesbian lover of 25-year-old Helene (a body surfer who frequented the beach near the Edwardses' home). Jeff and Sydney bond during their search for Julie, nights of passion leading to plans for a joyous wedding, which get very complicated when the couple returns to Edwards central. Shreve's devastating depiction of the family's dissolution—the culmination of sublimated jealousies suddenly exploding into the open—is wrenching. Shreve's omniscience is asserted with such ease that it often feels like she's toying with her characters, but her control is masterful, particularly in the sure-handed and compassionate aftermath.
Publishers Weekly


Already once divorced and now recently widowed, 29-year-old Sydney Sklar looks at a tutoring job at a New Hampshire beach house as the perfect escape from pain and grief. But the Edwardses offer more—and less—than she would have hoped for, in this latest from Shreve. Helping 18-year-old Julie Edwards prepare for the SATs becomes a complex undertaking as Sydney realizes that Julie is slow and, as hard as she tries, will never be accepted at the prestigious colleges Mrs. Edwards prefers. Mr. Edwards loves his garden and his daughter, and he makes Sydney yearn to be part of a family. With the arrival of Julie's much older brothers, Ben and Jeff, the path for Sydney becomes as precarious as the shoreline where she revels in body surfing. An activity Sydney finds both distracting and exhilarating, body surfing requires precision timing that means the difference between a perfect ride and getting slammed. When both brothers show an interest in her, Sydney finds herself caught up in a giant—and unpredictable—wave that has devastating consequences. Shreve's beautifully drawn tale of family and connection will leave readers feeling a bit slammed themselves: against the vagaries of life and the rocky shoals of love. A winner; highly recommended.
Bette-Lee Fox - Library Journal


The cottage on the New Hampshire coast that housed the protagonists of The Pilot's Wife (1998) and Sea Glass (2002) makes a poignant setting for Shreve's tale of a young widow thrown into a fraught family drama. At 29, Sydney Sklar has already been married twice. She's well aware of the irony that she divorced a pilot because of his dangerous profession, only to have her second husband, a brand-new doctor, drop dead of a brain aneurysm after eight months of marriage. Bad twists of fate lurk in Shreve's dark narrative, full of glancing references to car accidents and old tragedies the cottage has seen. Sydney is there for the summer to tutor Julie, the sweet but "slow" late-life child of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards (rarely referred to by their first names). Sydney is fond of the girl and her father; she and Mrs. Edwards share a mutual dislike. The tension ratchets up with the arrival of Julie's much older brothers: 35-year-old Ben, a corporate-real-estate agent, and 31-year-old MIT professor Jeff. Sydney doesn't care for Ben, whom she thinks groped her when the brothers took her body surfing at night, and she's disturbingly attracted to Jeff, who has a gorgeous girlfriend. The two make an emotional connection looking for Julie one night when she's late coming home; they make love for the first time (Jeff's dumped the girlfriend) on the evening Julie runs off to Montreal to live with a lesbian lover no one knew she had. Ben reacts to Sydney and Jeff's engagement with outrage that seems excessive until the novel's shocking denouement, which leaves Sydney to remake her life for the third time. Seen exclusively through her eyes, the other characters are vivid but ultimately opaque, so the novel seems somewhat solipsistic. As a portrait of a woman belatedly coming of age after being buffeted by fate, however, it's well drawn and will satisfy Shreve's fans. Not one of this crowd-pleasing author's best, but a solid, workmanlike B-plus effort.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. How does the act of body surfing serve as a metaphor for the events that occur in Sydney's life?

2. Jeff tells Sydney, "We were always encouraged to believe that Julie was not an accident.... It's part of the family mythology" (page 41). What other stories are part of the Edwards family mythology? What kind of family does Mrs. Edwards, in particular, wish to believe she has? How does this compare to the way Sydney sees the Edwardses?

3. Discuss the relationship between Sydney and Mr. Edwards. Why does she feel such a strong connection to him? How is he different from Sydney's own father?

4. Body Surfing explores marriage and all that can surround it: engagement, divorce, widowhood, even a longlasting marriage that may or may not be a happy one. Does the novel, ultimately, present a positive or negative take on the institution of marriage? What are your own feelings
about marriage?

5. Despite the rivalry between Ben and Jeff, the brothers also share moments of closeness and collusion. Do you think there is hope for eventual reconciliation between them? How is the bond between siblings different from that between parents and children, or between spouses?

6. As a tutor in the Edwards household, Sydney set certain limits for herself, refusing to do "the dishes more than once a day. It is a private rule she never breaks, even under dire circumstances" (page 51). Why is it important to Sydney that she assert herself in this way? In what other ways does the issue of class come up in the novel? Discuss how different members of the Edwards family respond to and treat Sydney.

7. Sydney wonders, on page 246, whether any moment she had with Jeff was genuine, or whether instead he knowingly deceived her throughout their relationship. What is your opinion?

8. How did you interpret the novel's ending? Do you think Sydney will repair her connection to the Edwards family and should she do so? Or should she seek to make a clean break from her involvement with them?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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