Book Review-Body Surfing

Here's another book I found on our Overdrive site.  I've read other books by Anita Shreve, so I don't know how I missed Body Surfing. Shreve has written a series of books that all take place in the same house on the New Hampshire coast.  Body Surfing takes place in the present, while the other books were all set in the past. The book is about Sydney, 29 years old, divorced once and widowed once.  She is not sure where she is going with her life, so she takes a job of tutoring a high school junior, Julie, during the summer.   Julie's family owns a seaside house in New Hampshire where they summer.  Her brothers, Ben and Jeff, are grown, but visit their parents often.  Sydney realizes that Julie is not a stellar student, and struggles with getting her ready to take the SAT's until she finds out that Julie is very artistic. When Sydney meets Jeff and Ben they seem to have some rivalry between them, but there is more going on.  Jeff sweeps her off her feet and Ben pulls away. The book is an interesting examination of a family with some issues.  Sydney's presence affects the family in different ways.

Body Surfing By Shreve, Anita 2007-04 - Little Brown and Company 9780316118774 Check Our Catalog At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing, she has signed on 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 Edwardses' two grown sons arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and …More

Other books by the same author.

Fortune's Rocks By Shreve, Anita Editor Pietsch, Michael 2004-05 - Back Bay Books 9780316781015 Check Our Catalog In a summer community on the coast of New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a girl is drawn into a passionate affair with a married man nearly three times her age. Olympia Biddeford is privileged, well educated, and mature beyond her years--and her affair is with John Haskell, a physician, essayist, and champion of mill workers. Drawn inexorably together on the night of the summer …More

Sea Glass By Shreve, Anita 2002-04 - Little Brown and Company 9780316733731 Check Our Catalog With all the narrative power and emotional immediacy that have made her novels acclaimed international bestsellers, Anita Shreve unfolds a richly engaging tale of marriage, money, and troubled times-the story of a pair of young newlyweds who, setting out to build a life together in a derelict beach house on the Atlantic coast, soon discover how threatening the world outside their front door can …More

The Pilot's Wife By Shreve, Anita 1998-05 - Little Brown and Company 9780316789080 Check Our Catalog Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening of time. As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to …More

Complimentary Reads

Home Safe By Berg, Elizabeth 2009-04 - Random House (NY) 9781400065110 Check Our Catalog The bestselling author of "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted" and "The Year of Pleasure" returns with a wonderful novel about a woman, a daughter, and a surprising change in life. …More

The Mermaid Chair By Kidd, Sue Monk 2005-04 - Viking 9780670033942 Check Our Catalog Awards: Iowa High School Book Award (2007), Quill Awards (2005) Reviewed by BookPage Kidd's stunning debut, "The Secret Life of Bees," spent 77 weeks on "The New York Times" bestseller list. Now, in her much-anticipated new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans and cement her reputation as one of the most remarkable writers at work today. HPL …More