The beach house in New Hampshire which figured in Anita ShrevesThe Pilots Wife Fortunes Rocks and Sea Glass is once again featured in Body SurfingThis time it is the summer home of the Edwards family Anna and Mark and daughter JulieMrs Edwards has great hopes for Julie who is slow so she hires Sydney to tutor her in preparation for her senior yearThere are two older brothers Jeff and Ben whose arrival changes the household dynamic considerablyOnce again Shreve revisits the minefield of love and betrayal that she has explored so well in her best novelsSydney is twice married once divorced and once a widowShe is floundering not sure she wants to go back to school accepting whatever job comes along and then moving onShe answers the ad for a tutor and finds herself in the Edwards household where she discovers that Julie has undiscovered artistic talentMrs Edwards dislikes her instantly is dismissive and treats her like a servantMr Edwards befriends her shows her his roses and talks to her about the history of the house giving the reader a rundown of the role the house has played in prior novelsSydney Jeff and Ben go body surfing late one night and Sydney is sure that Ben has tried to grope her underwaterShe takes immediate umbrage at this and treats him coldly thereafterShreves other work has a steady narrative flow but this novel is episodic and disjointedThere is the the arrival of Jeffs girlfriend her departure an evening when Julie comes home drunk and wont talk about it and a liaison between Sydney and Jeff which leads to the complications that eventually define the novelThere is a twist at the end involving the brothers that is divisive destructive and rather hard to believe While this is not Shreves best effort because the characters are not well-defined it is worth reading her take on what happens to people when they compete for love--Valerie Ryan.
