Shreve's 'Last Time' is a sequel with a twist

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Anita Shreve was in Seattle earlier this year to promote the paperback edition of last year's captivating "Fortune's Rocks." During the question-and-answer period after her reading, she let it drop that her next book, "The Last Time They Met," would be both a "prequel and a sequel" to an earlier novel, "The Weight of Water."

"The Last Time They Met" by Anita Shreve
Little, Brown, $24.95
That admission poses an intriguing dilemma for readers and reviewers of the highly inventive "The Last Time They Met." Does the reader need to read or revisit the previous book? Should the reviewer reveal information learned from the predecessor?

The answers depend on how well you remember certain facts from "The Weight of Water" or whether you care if you read novels out of sequence.

You won't miss anything if you read "The Last Time They Met" first. It stands alone as a solid exploration of the ongoing challenges of love and romance.

Shreve provides all the necessary background information from the antecedent novel. There is, however, a twist that might send you back to "The Weight of Water."

Shreve juggles the usual narrative time sequence, starting "The Last Time They Met" when her main characters are age 52 and going backward to when they were 27 and then 17 - when the reader last knew them. There's the rub. Poet Thomas Janes was a key figure in "The Weight of Water"; Linda Fallon, the poet in this prequel/sequel, was briefly referred to in the first book.

Together again after an unexpected encounter at a literary festival (probably in Toronto), Thomas and Linda mostly play catch-up and wonder what their lives might have been like if they had stayed together beyond their adolescent romance.

The second and longest section of the novel, when the characters are 27 years old, is set in Africa during the 1960s.

Another "chance meeting" severely tests their ties. They find themselves embroiled in government violence over the treatment of a poet who becomes a political prisoner.

At the same time, they become involved in an adulterous affair that triggers memories of the "weight of history" that burdens them from a long-ago accident when they were 17.

That eerie accident is the substance of the last portion of the book.

Their boldness and impetuousness leaves Thomas with a scar that runs the "length of his cheek" and shatters both their lives. The young lovers are stuck forever in time like flies in amber.

Shreve has a penchant for saving the best for last. She did it in "The Pilot's Wife," "The Weight of Water" and "Fortune's Rocks."

The shocking revelation that closes "The Last Time They Met" will send readers back to the beginning of the novel and most likely out to pick up a copy of "The Weight of Water." It's well worth the cost.