Every year I select one book that I designate as the best book
that I read that year. While this year is not over yet, Fortune’s
Rocks: A Novel by Anita Shreve is to date the uncontested
winner. It has strong character development, detailed description
of setting, and is emotionally evocative. It tackles challenging
social issues and attempts to grapple with the conflicted views
and gut-wrenching emotions often found among the many parties
involved in controversial situations.

Fortune’s Rocks is set at an exclusive beachside resort
area of New Hampshire. It is 1899 and the Gilded Age is in full
swing. The rich and famous from Boston’s Beacon Hill flock to
the seashore to see and be seen. The Biddefords are no exception.
Phillip Biddeford is the president of the Atlantic Literary Club
and the editor of the "Bay Quarterly" Boston’s premiere
literary magazine. During the summer, his commodious beach house
becomes the elite salon for the intelligentsia of the moment.
During the Summer of 1899, his coterie include Dr. John Haskell,
a medical doctor, essayist, and social critic on the conditions
of mill life in local Ely Falls, Zachariah Cote, a Quincy poet
of popular romantic poesy, and Rufus Philbrick, a prominent local
businessman with vested interest in the Ely Falls mills and their
boardinghouses. Also present is the main character of this novel,
Olympia Biddeford, Phillip’s only child. Olympia is intellectually
curious, emotionally intense, and at fifteen precariously straddles
the fence between childhood innocence and womanly sensuality.
While her parents are oblivious to her sexual ripening, it does
not go unnoticed by Phillip Biddeford’s intellectual sparring
partners. Thus it is little surprise when John Haskell casually
caresses Olympia’s face during a photographic session and Olympia’s
youthful curiousity and imagination propels her body into a relationship
with the much older and married John Haskell. The affair leads
to predictable biological complications. The resulting scandal
destroys the relationships within both households as well as underminds
their individual social reputations. Social protocol for the era
dictates what must be done to deal with Olympia and her "little
indelicacy" and being a wise and obedient daughter, Olympia
docilely submits to the dictums of her elders. While Olympia endeavors
to live the traditional role established for a "ruined"
daughter of wealth and society, her father had also taught her
to think for herself and think she does. It is at this point that
the story takes some interesting twists and turns.

Anita Shreve brings to this her seventh novel the fine honed expertise
that has earned her the PEN/Winship Award, the coveted New England
Book Award, and brought her international notoriety when her previous
novel, The Pilot’s Wife, also set at Fortune’s Rock became
an Oprah Book Selection. Unlike many modern novels, Shreve draws
Olympia not as modern independent woman from our era miscast and
kicking at the goads of archaic manners and mores from an earlier
age. Olympia is very much a woman of her own era who knows and
accepts the societal norms, constraints, and taboos of her society.
Keeping within the restrictions of her mindset and her socially
structured and repressive culture, Olympia struggles to work out
solutions to her "situation" that are acceptable to
her society yet also conscionable for herself.

Shreve pays wonderful attention to details in describing life
at the turn of the century. This includes not only the illusionary
beauty of the lives of the wealthy but also the harsh realities
of servants and the working class poor. The lived acceptance of
each character’s reality as structured by the expected norms and
roles set forth by society for that individual are an important
part of this novel. This created reality is contrasted to common
biological reality that all individuals, rich and poor, must endure
as part of their animal kingdom heritage.

Fortune’s Rocks is an exquisite novel. Olympia’s
joys and sorrows are captured with all the poignant longings of
youthful innocence and all the complex pathos of a mature womanhood.
Olympia’s plight will break your heart. This is definitely an
old-fashion tear-jerker of the "three hanky" variety.
I would compare it favorable to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the
D’Urbervilles. This will probably be my pick for best book
I read this year…perhaps it will be yours also.

© 2001 Suzanne Garrison-Terry

Suzanne Garrison-Terry


Education: B.A. in History from Sacred Heart University, M.L.S.
in Library Science from Southern Connecticut State College, M.R.S.
in Religious Studies/Pastoral Counseling from Fairfield University,
and a M.Div. in Professional Ministry from New Brunswick Theological
Seminary. She is currently completing a Certificate in Spirituality/Spiritual
Direction from Sacred Heart University (July 2001). She is a Licensed
Minister of the United Church of Christ and an Assistant Professor
in Library Science at Dowling College, Long Island, NY.

Interests in Mental Health: I am interested in the interplay between
psychology and spirituality. My current research focuses on the
role of hormonal fluctuation during puberty, pregnancy, and peri-menopause
as a stimuli for mystical experiences. Through the study of autobiographical
accounts of the mystical experiences of “historically accepted”
female Christian mystics and additional biographical information,
I am analyzing the connection between the onset of mystical experiences
and biological data/symptomology for the potential existence of
hormonal fluctuation or irregularity. If this sounds like an unusual
topic, nota bene how many medieval female mystics began having
“vision” on or about the age of 40!

Categories: Fiction