The Last Time They Met
by Anita Shreve.

Little, Brown and Co. hardback, 313 pages. 2001.
Contemporary. Africa/Massachusetts/?.


they first meet and fall in love when teenagers, then are parted.

  

"What time is it? 

I don't know. 

He kissed her. Are you . . . ? He paused, uncharacteristically lost for words. 

She smiled. Thomas needing to be reassured, like any man. I feel wonderful. 

And reassured, he stretched his body along her own. There are more experiences in life than you'd think for which there are no words, he said. 

I know. 

They lay face-to-face, their eyes open. 

I won't ask you what you're thinking about, she said. 

You can ask me anything. 

Well, I was wondering about the day we sat on a hill overlooking the water, she said. 

That was the first time I ever saw you cry, he said. 

It was? 

You were crying from the beauty of it, like children do. 

She laughed. I can't feel that anymore. So much of the immediacy of beauty is gone. Muffled. 

Actually, I was thinking about that night on the pier when you jumped in  the water in your slip. 

My God, I didn't even know you. 

I loved it."
 

They are 52 when they meet again, this time both are unmarried. The occasion is a Poetry Festival. Both have some measure of success in this field. They come together once more, loving one another as they have too few times in the past. Then they promise to not lose touch this time and take their separate flights home. 

When they are both 26, they accidently meet in Africa where both are there with their spouses. It is no small thing for them to meet alone, secretly, but they manage a few times. Eventually, this ends in scandal and shame. 

They first met when in their senior year of high school. There are whispers about her being sent away by her aunt and why. (She had been caught having sex with the aunts' 40-some-year-old boyfriend.) The two become close and have just had sex when, traveling home afterwards, they have a car accident and are parted after that.

This is an impossibly confusing story, but just when you finally get comfortable with it and the writer's style, it has an ending that comes out of nowhere. I was prepared to give it a favorable rating until that ending, which I hated, and it changed everything for me. However, to be fair, some may think that was a very artistic ending. Shreve writes depressing stories and this does it for me - no more Shreve books. If you enjoy being depressed and confused, then be my guest. But this ending spoiled it completely for me and I cannot accept it. Sorry. My third X rating in over 13 years of reviewing.

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