Fortune's Rocks: A Novel Rating :
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #385031 in Books
- Published on: 2001-01-02
- Released on: 2001-01-02
- Original language:
English - Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x
1.25" w x
5.50" l,
.94 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 480 pages
Product Description
Hester Prynne never had it so good! The year is 1899, and Olympia Biddeford, the headstrong daughter of a Boston Brahmin family, has decided to test the limits of her cloistered world. Spending the summer at her father's New Hampshire estate, the teenage heroine of Fortune's Rocks is entranced with the visiting salon of artists, writers, and lawyers. She's especially captivated, however, by John Haskell, a charismatic physician who ministers to the blue-collar community in the nearby mill towns. This middle-aged Good Samaritan hires Olympia to assist him as a nurse, and their collaboration soon evolves into a fiery love affair. Alas, it's only a matter of weeks before this passionate exercise in managed care is exposed--with disastrous consequences for the young, impregnated heroine. Even her adoring father now considers her "an overplump sixteen-year-old girl whose judgment can no longer be trusted," and insists that she break off her relationship:"There is nothing more to be said on this subject," he says. She bites her lip to keep from crying out further. She holds the arms of her chair so tightly she later will have cramps in her fingers. She will refuse to obey him, she thinks. She will accept his implied challenge and set off on her own. But in the next moment, she asks herself: How will she be able to do that? Without her father's support, she cannot hope to survive. And if she herself does not survive, then a child cannot live."In the end, Anita Shreve's seventh novel is a polished, supremely entertaining variation on Wuthering Heights, with Olympia and Haskell sitting in for Catherine and Heathcliff. The author did some meticulous research for her New England background, which gives this study of one particular wayward woman some extra historical heft. Some readers may find the plot twists a bit pat. And despite Olympia's efforts to be an independent woman, she overcomes her trials largely as a result of her family's wealth and station, which takes the edge off Shreve's feminist message. Still, Fortune's Rocks is a romance in the classic sense of the word, and should be enjoyed as such, unless the reader is absolutely allergic to happy endings.--Ted Leventhal
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
38 of 42 people found the following review helpful.
When Good People Do Bad Things
By A Customer
As I began Anita Shreve's Fortune's Rocks, only to find that the novel's premise was the development and consequences of a turn of the century affair between a 41-year old man and a 15-year old girl, I thought "here we go again", a chick book filled with despicable male characters. After finishing The Pilot's Wife, Shreve's previous work, in which the pilot is found to have lived a secret life in another country, complete with second wife and family, my reaction was that the depth of such evil and deceit, while plausible in the plot of a novel, was a little fantastic for most to consider. And now in Fortune's Rocks, we face another quite improbable scenario.
But I kept reading, almost helpless to stop. Anita Shreve is a fine storyteller and as a native of the New Hampshire coast, I am a sucker for novels set there. I think she does a fine job of getting it right. It was also easy to picture the fictitious textile mill town and its immigrant population just miles from the coast that plays a major role in the story.
It was more than the landscape of Fortune's Rocks, however, that kept me hooked. A novel centered on an inappropriate and tragic affair is populated with very likable, even normal characters (save one, almost comically obsequious dweeb). And when these likable people step off the edge with disastrous consequences, readers, at least this one, ponder their own edges walked each day...maybe a secret friendship hidden from a spouse, or power exerted over an employee or family member that goes a little beyond appropriate, or a deceitful business relationship, or...? What is it that keeps most of us on the safe side of the edge? And how safe is that safe side?
In Fortune's Rocks, Anita Shreve moves freely into this reader's discomfort zone, yet this move seems somehow non-intrusive. There seems to be a way out. Her characters seem to do all the right things after the catastrophic event. And should any of us fall off that edge, it may be too much to expect that almost everything turn out so right at the end. For life is not a novel.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
a passionate story of love conquering all
By Jen
I absolutely loved Fortune's Rocks and I think it's one of Anita Shreve's best! However, every novel of hers that I've read thus far could be considered her best. I've read the Pilot's Wife, the Weight of Water, Strange Fits of Passion, and now Fortune's Rocks (in that order) and every story is so beautiful and every character so real that I find when I'm reading one of her novels, everything else is no longer a priority. I don't want to give anything away for anyone who is about to read this book so I'll just say that, as always, Anita Shreve has developed her characters so well that when I was finished with this book I was so sad that I could no longer be a part of their lives. I reccomend this book to any fans of Anita Shreve.
36 of 42 people found the following review helpful.KEPT MY INTEREST THROUGHOUT
By Lawyer Gal
This book is my third Anita Shreve novel. The first two were the Pilot's Wife - which I wasn't that crazy about - and The Weight of Water - which I enjoyed very much. As a matter of fact, it was the Weight of Water which caused me to give Anita Shreve another try. And I am very glad that I did.
I found Fortune's Rocks to be touching and a real page-turner. Olympia and Haskell were not all that sympathetic, of course. They were selfish and self-centered, and did some truly terrible things. Yet there is something about all that passion that is very intoxicating!
This book reminded me very much of a book called Emmeline by Judith Rosner. In Emmeline, a girl goes to work in some type of factory (I forget what kind) and falls in love with an older married man. Emmeline ends up getting pregnant by this man, and he betrays her. I thoroughly recommend that book as well, by the way. It has one of the most shocking endings I have ever read.
I am now reading my fourth Anita Shreve novel - Eden Close - and am enjoying that one as well. I'm glad I discovered this very entertaining, talented writer and I'm glad I didn't give up on her after the mediocre Pilot's Wife.
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