Where Or When

By: Anita Shreve

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Synopsis: Shreve, who mixed up such a potent brew of love and tragedy in her earlier Eden Close (1989) and Strange Fits of Passion (1991), serves us something else here--slightly sweeter but also thinner, something that for all its fizz feels flat by the end. Charles Callahan, a 44-year-old Rhode Island insurance broker, is a man who has deep feelings but finds himself emotionally thwarted in the life he leads. He loves his three children, but his marriage to Harriet is passionless. He also knows too many sad, painful secrets about friends and acquaintances, and he's powerless to help. When he chances upon a photograph of poet Sin Richardsin the Sunday newspaper, his life changes. Sin was his first love, 31 years ago at summer camp. Now, at Charles's instigation, the two childhood sweethearts begin corresponding and, before long, resume their old romance. Sin, married to melancholy, reserved Stephen, has suffered the loss of a child, and, aftersome hesitation, she allows herself to turn to Charles with the same urgency he feels for her. Shreve evokes this emotional buildup deftly, complete with stirring old songs and flashbacks to teenaged love, unforgettable in its combination of innocence and intensity.