The Last Time They Met

Anita Shreve

From Shelf: The books we read in 2001

Anita Shreve's eighth novel is a brilliantly written contemporary novel of love and forgiveness - and a life not lived.

When Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes meet at a writers' festival in Toronto, it is the first time they have seen each other for twenty-six years. Theirs is a story bound by the irresistible pull of true passion -- a love which begins in Massachusetts in the early 1960s, is rekindled in Kenya in the mid 1970s and which is about to play out its astonishing final episode . . . Written with reverse chronology, Anita Shreve's new novel is a haunting story of mesmerising beauty, with a strong narrative pull that inescapably draws the reader in, and leaves its most stunning revelation until the very last pages. Brilliantly ambitious and powerfully written, THE LAST TIME THEY MET is a tale not so much of life, but of a life not lived.