Reminds Me of Phil Collins' Lyrics The First Time, The Last Time We Ever Met

So far, this book, The Last Time They Met, by Anita Shreve, is the best book on the 2011 list. It is solid contemporary literature, Shreve an O. Henry prize winner. What construction! If not for the fantastic love story, I would extol it for the way she unveils the plot, in reverse chronology.

Thomas and Linda fell in love senior year in high school. Paz' element of breaking societal norms clearly evident, as he is Boston blue blood, she from Roxbury. But they have a love of Romantic writers and especially poetry. She is a bit of a rebel, making her all the more attractive and extraordinary. The story begins at age 52 when Thomas, a successful poet who has been reclusive for almost thirty years after his daughter drowns, participates in a literary conference where he has managed to have Linda appear. Both are married, although Linda's husband has died; she nevertheless is trying to cope with an alcoholic son and a daughter in medical school with little time for her mother. Their reunion overcomes her distractions and they renew their passion for one brief night. He reprises their earlier love, asking her why she didn't contact him after the accident.

The second, longer section of the book, when they are 26 years old, is set in Kenya (where Shreve herself spent three years as a journalist). Thomas is there with his wife Regina who has a federal grant to study children's health; Linda is there working for the Peace Corps, also married to an English financier. They accidentally meet in a market and resume the most passionate, appealing part of their affair, breaking it off brutally when Thomas' wife becomes pregnant and learns about their fated love. "And knew himself to be in love. If, indeed, he'd ever not been. Not since a day in 1966 when a girl in a gray skirt and a white blouse had crossed the threshold of a schoolroom. It was as if he'd merely been distracted all these years, or had grown weary of loving only memories. And had, against all odds, been returned to a rightful state. Not reminded, but restored. As a sightless man who once had sight will learn to live with his condition, adjust to his darkened universe, and then, years later, when astonishingly he can see again, will know how glorious his world once was. And ll this on nothing but an unlikely meeting and the exchange of a dozen sentences."

Finally, the last section, at 17, is the root of their karma. By this point, the book is a page turner as the reader is desperate to discover the details of the accident and why this obviously star-crossed pair separated in the first instance. I was crying at the end ... but that might be because I am off my hormone treatments and my feminine side is reemerging as my chin hairs are going away.

I feel as though I have to add to Paz list or at least reemphasize certain markers of a great passion: 1. there must be hardships to overcome; 2. there must be forced separations and hungry physical reunions and 3. a love of literature or the romantic tradition itself provides the perfect backdrop. Thomas writes all his adult poetry with Linda as his muse and subject. Despite marrying others and seemingly becoming "a normal wedded family member," both recognize the loss of not just first love, but everlasting love. Wow what a book.