The Bottom Line
Webster is raising his teenage daughter as a single parent; his wife and the daughter's mother left years ago when she couldn't conquer her alcoholism. Anita Shreve's new novel, Rescue, explores the story of how Webster and his wife met, when he was an EMT and she the victim of a drunk driver -- herself. Rescue is an interesting and delicate novel from perennial best-selling author Anita Shreve.
Pros
- What happens in 'Rescue' is an interesting, unique story.
Cons
- In some ways Shreve's novel, and the character of Rowan, seem unfinished and not wholly believable.
Description
- 'Rescue' by Anita Shreve was published in November 2010
- Publisher: Little, Brown
- 288 Pages
Guide Review - 'Rescue' by Anita Shreve - Book Review
Webster is a young EMT who finds himself drawn to the pretty victim of an accident whose life he helped save. He's a young man, in his early twenties, still living at home with ambitious plans for his life. The car accident ends up throwing his life off course, and when the novel opens he is a single parent to a teenage daughter.
Anita Shreve's novels are known for their probing of tragedy, the events leading up to it and the recovery from it, in a domestic and undramatic fashion. Because Webster is an EMT, however, Rescue spends a fair amount of time detailing the specifics of traumatic accidents and the clinical, rather than emotional responses. It's two sides of the same coin, which seems to be what Shreve is getting at in Rescue.
Rowan is Webster's high school daughter, and she seems not fully fleshed out despite being the main force behind Webster's reexamination of the past. This doesn't make Rescue a less enjoyable read, though.
