Anita Shreve's eighth novel is a brilliantly written contemporary novel of love and forgiveness - and a life not lived.
When Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes meet at a writers' festival in Toronto, it is the first time they have seen each other for twenty-six years. Theirs is a story bound by the irresistible pull of true passion -- a love which begins in Massachusetts in the early 1960s, is rekindled in Kenya in the mid 1970s and which is about to play out its astonishing final episode . . .
Written with reverse chronology, Anita Shreve's new novel is a haunting story of mesmerising beauty, with a strong narrative pull that inescapably draws the reader in, and leaves its most stunning revelation until the very last pages. Brilliantly ambitious and powerfully written, THE LAST TIME THEY MET is a tale not so much of life, but of a life not lived.
A luminous combination of stylistic simplicity and emotional complexity... - The TIMES
Anita Shreve teaches writing at Amherst College and divides her time between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She began writing as a high school teacher. One of her first published stories was awarded an O Henry Prize in 1975. She became a journalist, spending three years in Kenya. Back in the US, she wrote the non-fiction books Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone and began her first novel Eden Close. In 1989, she turned to fiction full time. She is the author of many acclaimed novels and the international number-one bestsellers The Pilot's Wife, Fortune's Rocks and Sea Glass.