Where or When

by Anita Shreve

Book Overview

What would you do if out of the blue, you received a letter from your first love? Si n Richards sees no reason why she can't write back to Charles Callahan. After all, it's been thirty years and they are both married with families. But when they decide to meet again, an innocent correspondence becomes a dangerous intimacy. Swept up in the past and consumed by an obsessive love, Charles and Si n risk everything to be together. A heart-wrenching, suspenseful...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156031272
• ISBN13: 9780156031271
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Incredibly Real-Can't put this book down!

can't say enough about this book! love this author but was hesitant in purchasing it due to some of the lackluster reviews. However, i found this book to be a rarity for me....couldn't put it down! read half of it one night and then couldn't wait to finish it! really gets your mind thinking......what would you give up to be with your first love? what would you risk? funny to read this because you realize that many people in affairs really get caught up in the moment...forgetting all else...almost like an addiction. the way she writes this book, you feel the emotions of these two lovers......feel their pain, their desire..... i can really relate to this book....some of us always wonder what if....... this is a must read! best anita shreve book yet! better than the pilot's wife!

All-consuming, selfish love?

'Where or When' is not for the fainthearted, not for people with strong morals, not for people who have never experienced all-consuming love, which makes you selfish, makes you forget everything else around you, your commitments to others, which lets you hurt the ones you thought you loved, which focuses only on you and your selfish emotions. These people will disapprove of Charles and Sian. But then - what do we know about emotions we have not experienced ourselves? Who are we to judge Charles and Sian? Sometimes fate hands us a card we are not able to handle. And we hurt people we don't want to hurt. This is neither a happy nor a depressing book - it is both. Sian and Charles have happiness, but have to pay a high price for it. Like the ones around them. Anita Shreve gives each of them, Sian and Charles, different voices, a different prose. The prose of the overall book is, as always with her, expressive,'clean', no big words but simple, effortless, often matter-of-fact writing, which suits this story so well. I found it un-put-downable and it left me with much food for thought about life, love, fate, selfishness, happiness.

Where or When - a review

Where or When, What starts off a simple love story, soon involves the reader, to such an extent that every thought and invovlment shared by the two principal characters, in the story, are built upon layer by layer until when, at the very last page and on the very last line of the novel the reader is left as shattered and bereft as Sin Richards is left sitting alone on the stone bench surrounded by a snow covered feld. The ending of this novel, stayed with me for days after I had finished it. The flashbacks, to when the couple first met were, for me, the highlights of this novel. Even now, I can re capture my own moments in time, (times passed) upon the chance hearing of a song. So too, in Where or When, the theme of the novel, the very essence of the passion that is shared between Charles and Sifn, is mirrored in the Words of the Song, Where or When. I thought the book was beautifully written and became thoroghly engrossed in what was going to happen, to the two lovers. The ending though.......well, that is something else.!!!!

Where or When

Help! I've run out of Anita Shreve books to read. Where or When was one of her best. The ending was very depressing. Wish it would have ended differently but somehow knew this would be how they ended up. Anyone out there know if Anita Shreve has a fan club?

haunting .........

I read this book many many months ago and yet I still can't get it out of my mind. I loved the book so much while reading it ... actually a measure of how much I love a book is when I slow down in the reading of it ... you see, I don't want it to end.So this small paperback became a book that took me weeks to read. I thought the characters were very well drawn w/the exception of their respective spouses ... I agree with the NY Times review in that they seemed at times to be parodies. And yet ... I was captivated by this book.Sian and Charles were very vividly drawn ... and yes, I was hoping against hope for them. But as life usually turns out unfortunately ... things don't always work out as you'd like them to.You may not like the ending of this book ... you may throw it away when you finish it and curse the time and emotions that you invested in it ... but I guarantee you ... you won't be able to get it out of your mind.