Body Surfing. Finished 1-7-25, 4/5 stars, fiction, 291 pages, 2007

“Sydney discovers that she minds the loss of her mourning. When she grieved, she felt herself to be intimately connected to Daniel. But with each passing day, he floats away from her. When she thinks about him now, it is more as a lost possibility than as a man. She has forgotten his breath, his musculature.”

Sydney is a widow and divorcee by the time she’s 29 years old. She’s taking a tutoring job with a family at a New Hampshire beach house (this is the 4th this same beach house has appeared in her books as part of the Fortune’s Rocks series). As she works with the daughter and enjoys a good relationship with the father, the mother is less than thrilled that a half Jewish woman has ingratiated herself with the family. And that’s before her son’s arrivals and their interest in Sydney becomes evident.

Anita Shreve’s writing speaks to me, it’s the way she puts her words together and it’s just as much of what she doesn’t say as what she does. There is a multitude said in her pauses, her silences. They always feel like they are happening to people I could know. Sydney is not my favorite character, her willingness to go with the flow frustrated me at times. It’s through her relationships with the daughter and father I was able to see her in a more favorable light.