@Expectations

by Kit Reed

Book Overview

@expectations is a fabulous work of women's fiction by a writer who has made a career of delving deep into women's hearts and finding the truth of their feelings and their lives. Reed's fiction has... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312874863
• ISBN13: 9780312874865
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Life and love on the internet

Sometimes love is more powerful when you can't see your beloved. This smart novel about an online love affair is intense!

Cyber-love???

This is a wonderful escape from the typical romance novel. Jenny Wilder reinvents herself in a mystical chat room as Zan. Her allegiance to the other anonymous members in her cyber-world begin to supercede her real world, which includes a husband, stepchildren, and a career. The book is a deep, thought-provoking journey which probes the reader to ask if the virtual world offers more than the real one. Reed weaves a well-written and thought provoking tale!!

Virtual Reality?

What was I expecting from this book? To be honest, I expected a modern romance about two people falling in love in cyberspace. It turns out that @expectations isn't what I, well, expected. This irresistibly dark novel explores the strange and vague world of chat rooms. In this virtual world, people fall in love, betray each other, destroy lives, reinvent themselves. Which makes me wonder: isn't the term "virtual reality" contradictory?Kit Reed illustrates just how surreal life on the Internet can be. Reed introduces Jenny, a wife and stepmother whose life becomes unbearable. In order to please her husband-to-be, Jenny moves from New York City to a suburban area in South Carolina. Depressed, she finds comfort in an online community known as StElene. Jenny, the unsatisfied wife, becomes Zan, a virtual princess who finds her knight in shining armor. No sooner does she enter this world than she meets Reverdy. They embark on a relationship that becomes more meaningful than her marriage. Soon Jenny and Zan's lives collide. Will she able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality? This is one of the most original novels that I have ever read. I marvel at Reed's attention to detail. @expectations is not a sugarcoated love story. It is thought provoking and intense. You will certainly think twice about romance in cyberspace.

For Anyone Who thought love existed in Cyberspace

This book blew me away. Jenny is leading a double life, one as a not so well adjusted pyschotherapist, stepmom, and wife. The other as Zan, a woman in love with her dream man in the Cyberworld. She walks a numbing tightrope between the two lives and soon finds them meshed into one. This book will put anyone back in reality who finds themselves lost in the cyber love pool.

Internet users are going to have fun with this one

Jenny knows she loves her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Wilder, but has problems relating with his two children, Rusty and Patsy, from his first marriage. Worse, on the Manhattan mind of Jenny is being marooned in Brevert, South Carolina where her patients bore her with their southern tales of woe. More and more Jenny feels hopeless and trapped. She wonders if this is all there is too life? Her deep melancholy always surfaces when her marine spouse is deployed or on an exercise. Jenny escapes into the chat room where she becomes the wild and free Zan. Relishing life to the fullest at the offshore island of StElene, each evening Zan meets her online lover, Reverby, who makes her soul sing. Over time the line between her life with Charlie and her "affair" with Reverby blurs. She struggles to separate the two and begins to lean more towards disappearing into the virtual world where life is enjoyable and fun instead of the mundane reality of responsibility. Needing a warning label that chat room lovers beware the intrusion of reality, @EXPECTATIONS is a great modernization of the love triangle. The third party being an online figure turns the relationships into a combination of real and virtual. The story line centers on Jenny's two lives converging, with the sad refrain that she believes the virtual is better than the real. Think Supertramp's Logical Song and you have Jenny trying to recapture what she feels she lost. The plot works because the talented Kit Reed makes Jenny's descent seem genuine and plausible.Harriet Klausner