Nothing Pierces the Heart Like the Spear of Regret Anita Shreve's Vein of Gold (Julia Cameron's quote for what a writer's best genre is) is romantic regret. A wedding in December brings back old friends whose shared memories of youth only open old wounds about a path not taken. From California to Boston to Toronto to New England, the sorrow of lost loves who haunt still is the epicenter of the emotional romantic storm in this latest Shreve novel.
Not her best Shreve is one of my most favorite authors. I have read everything she's ever written and this was just "eh." The book is good, but not great. Don't decide if you will ever read another Shreve book based on THIS one.
Try "Weight of Water" or "Pilot's Wife"This book feels like a parody of Anita Shreve's better work All of the elements that make "The Weight of Water," "The Pilot's Wife" and "The Last Time They Met" compelling are there: the sense of longing, of what might have been, haunting memories, sensuality, unresolved and unrequited first loves. But perhaps because so many of the characters are experiencing these same feelings at once, there's a feeling of overkill and emptiness to it all. "Wedding," in fact, almost reads like a caricature of the Shreve we know and love. It was interesting, theoretically, to observe the parallels in this book, the same formula for a relationship repeating itself again and again. But the characters felt hollow, perhaps because they were all asked to share the same basic conflict and plot. Harrison in particular annoyed me...I thought he was shallow and self-indulgent.
