A man escaping from a hotel fire sees a woman standing beneath a tree. He approaches her and sets in motion a series of events that will change his life forever. Years later, travelling from New England to Florida by train, he reflects back on his obsession with this unknown and ultimately unknowable woman - his courtship of her, his marriage to her, and the unforgivable act that ripped their family apart. Spanning three decades from 1899 to 1933,All He Ever Wanted gives us a tale of marriage, betrayal and the search for redemption. It has the unmatched attention to details of character, place and emotion that have made Anita Shreve one of the world's best-loved and bestselling novelists.
This is a bit of a strange tale. It’s the story of a man and the woman he wants to, and eventually does, make his wife, but it’s more complicated than that. We meet Nicholas in his later years, and we quickly learn that his wife Etna is gone. He is feeling compelled to tell us the story of their marriage, so we get the entire tale through his eyes. What we find out is that Nicholas is not a very likeable guy. He’s obsessive, over emotional, exceedingly stubborn, and often blinded to the truth of things. He is convinced that Etna is the woman for him, though she never shows him much in the way of real affection. Heck, she runs away when he asks her to marry him! Yet, she must be his, so he makes it be.
This book sparked several interesting discussions in my book club, ranging from the biological urges involved in attraction and obsession to gender roles to gender stereotypes. And I had to leave early, so who knows what they talked about after I left!
The beginning of the book is pretty slow, so I’m not entirely sure I would have finished it if I wasn’t reading it for my book club. Thankfully, it does pick up after a time. Overall, All He Ever Wanted is a disturbing story, and Nicholas is a creepy guy. Even worse, he still doesn’t realize how wrong he is in the end.
