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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Bayport Public Library | FICTION SHREVE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION SHR | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A tale of impossible love in Nazi-occupied Belgium, where forbidden passions have catastrophic consequences.
Claire Daussois, the wife of a Belgian resistance worker, shelters a wounded American bomber pilot in a secret attic hideaway. As she nurses him back to health, Claire is drawn into an affair that seems strong enough to conquer all--until the brutal realities of war intrude, shattering every idea she ever had about love, trust, and betrayal.
Resistance is a tender but tragic love story, told with the same narrative grace and keen eye for human emotion that have distinguished all of Anita Shreve's cherished bestsellers .
Author Notes
Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English from Tufts University, she taught high school English for five years before becoming a full-time author. She worked for an English-language magazine in Nairobi and wrote for everything from Cosmopolitan magazine to The New York Times. Her nonfiction books included Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone. Her novels included Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Fortune's Rocks, Rescue, Stella Bain, and The Stars are Fire. Several of her books were made into movies including The Pilot's Wife, Resistance, and The Weight of Water. She died from cancer on March 29, 2018 at the age of 71.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
As in her earlier novels, Shreve (Eden Close) affectingly explores themes of love and loss with piercing clarity, once again capturing the fragile emotions of those in pain. Here, however, she moves from her customary domestic, contemporary milieu to WWII Europeto the Belgian village of Delahaut, where young Claire Daussois and her husband, Henri, are members of an underground resistance movement. When a British plane goes down outside the town in December 1943, the plucky 10-year-old Jean Benoit finds a survivor, Ted Brice, hides him in his father's barn and then summons the aid of Mme. Daussois. As she has done with other refugees, Claire shelters the 22-year-old captain in her attic. When it becomes necessary for Henri to go into hiding, Claire and Ted embark on a brief affair, a passionate liaison made more poignant by its simultaneous inevitability and futility. With deceptive simplicity and superb control, Shreve evokes the impersonal horrors of wartime and its heartbreaking personal tragediesoften combining those elements to almost overwhelming effect, as when Jean witnesses the execution of several townspeople as reprisal for their resistance activities. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
This story of impossible love was perhaps easy for Shreve to outline, but a challenge to fill out in detail. That she carries it through successfully retains her extant fans (e.g., Where or When, 1993), and snags as well readers piqued by novels featuring Nazi hellhounds. They're after Ted Brice, a downed B-17 pilot who finds succor and more from an unhappily married Belgian woman, Claire, who furnishes a safe house for the resistance. After hesitant preliminaries, the lovers love in Shreve's tender rendering, but their idyll shatters with Brice's inevitable attempt to escape the hounds milling about. He is betrayed to the Gestapo, but the mystery of how hangs until 50 years later, when Shreve brings together the lovechild of the liaison with an elderly Claire, who reveals the secret of her husband's betrayal of the American. Shreve's strength is constructing the mood and texture of little intimacies, and, set against the huge context of Nazi occupation, they seem all the more worthwhile, however fleeting. A touching tome from a skilled pen. --Gilbert Taylor
School Library Journal Review
YAIn December 1943, an American fighter plane is downed near a small village in Belgium. The pilot, Lt. Ted Brice, is rescued by a member of the local resistance movement. As he is hidden in the small attic at the home of Claire Daussois, he becomes acutely aware of the danger to himself as well as his hostess and her husband. A bond develops between Claire and Ted during his 20-day stay that changes both of their lives forever. Through this fast-paced novel, YAs will gain insight into the unthinkable horrors of World War II-German retribution, village collaborators, and local resistance workers. Shreve describes the landscape and the local residents in such detail that readers will quickly become involved in the lives of the characters.Roberta Lisker, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Resistance , by Anita Shreve, read by Francine Brody (six hours abridged, Orion, pounds 12.95 cassette only) Despite its macho second world war setting, I don't see many men listening to this atmospherically charged story about a wounded American pilot and the wife of a member of the Maquis. Shreve's usual territory is turn-of-the-19th-century New England, but her penchant for blending emotional analysis with details of housewifery easily transfers to the simple stone-built farmhouse where Ted and Clare fleetingly enjoy the love of their lives. Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again" would have been the cherry on the cake. Caption: article-audio22.4 Shreve's usual territory is turn-of-the-19th-century New England, but her penchant for blending emotional analysis with details of housewifery easily transfers to the simple stone-built farmhouse where Ted and Clare fleetingly... - Sue Arnold.
Kirkus Review
Shreve's fifth novel--another bittersweet trip down memory lane (after Where or When, 1993, etc.)--tells a story of love and betrayal in wartime Belgium. The starting point is familiar: A crew of brave young Americans out on a dangerous bombing mission to destroy Nazi targets is brought down by enemy fire in occupied Belgium; two airmen die, others are captured, and the wounded hero is rescued by the local Resistance. Midwestern boy Ted Brice, who thinks he may be in love with Sheila back home, is hidden in the attic of Henri and Claire's farmhouse. A Resistance nurse binds his wounds; Claire sees to his other needs. She is a beautiful woman who reads poetry in English and married Henri because she'd known him all her life- -``she adored his face'' but did not love him. Ted's wounds heal slowly, and he's still not strong enough to leave when three German soldiers are killed by a member of the Resistance. The local Gestapo makes immediate reprisals, summarily hanging villagers in the town square; Resistance members are betrayed; and Henri must flee, leaving Claire to cope alone, which she does very well, despite an unsuccessful raid by the Gestapo and the difficulties of keeping Ted hidden. The Frenchwoman and the American embark on a passionate affair that ends only when Henri comes back for Ted, who is to be taken to France by the Resistance. The lovers are separated, betrayed to the enemy, and never meet again, but a wrap- up chapter--in which Ted and Sheila's son comes back for the 1993 inauguration of a monument memorializing his father and the rest of the plane crew--agreeably fills us in on the years in between. Lively writing, but an awfully familiar reprise of countless WW II novels, books, and movies.
