The Last Time They Met

The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve Traces the
extraordinary resonance a single choice even a single word
can have over the course of a lifetime. Seen through the
eyes of young Linda Fallon and the young man who loves
her. Anita Shreve the bestselling author of The Pilots
Wife returns with a dazzling new novel about love
forgiveness and paths not followed. Linda Fallon
encounters her former lover Thomas Janes at a literary
festival where both have been invited to give readings
from their work. It has been years since their paths
crossed and in that time Thomas has become a kind of
literary legend. His renown is enhanced by his
elusiveness; for most of the past decade he has remained
in seclusion following a devastating loss. This is no
chance meeting. Thomas learned that Linda was reading at
the festival and chose this moment to reestablish contact
with a woman he passionately pursued years earlier. Their
affair was disastrous and a turning point in both their
lives. Neither the intensity of their relationship nor the
damage it did has ever been far from his memory. From the
moment they speak The Last Time They Met unfolds the story
of Linda and Thomas in an extraordinary way: it travels
back into their past bypassing layers of memory and
interpretation to present their earlier encounters with
unshakable immediacy. In Africa when Linda and Thomas were
twenty-seven and in Massachusetts when they were in high
school the novel re-creates love at its exhilarating
pinnacle – the kind of intense connection that becomes the
true north against which all relationships are measured.
Moving backward through time The Last Time They Met traces
the extraordinary resonance a single choice even a single
word can have over the course of a lifetime. At the same
time the novel creates an almost unbearable mystery a
mystery that can only be understood fully in the novels
final pages in the eyes of young Linda Fallon and the
young man who loves her. With a masters control of phrase
observation emotion and character Anita Shreve has written
a beautiful and unforgettable exploration of intimacy loss
and lifelong desire.