Seacoast History Blog #12
November 21, 2008

Bestselling author Anita Shreve was signing books like a house afire. Seated behind a folding table in the rough hewn “green room” behind the stage at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, she talked as she signed box after box of her new novel “Testimony”. Half an hour later she spoke candidly with 800 loyal fans. There was barely a drop of testosterone in the crowd. (Continued)

 
The Weight of Water Never Dies

Anita Shreve, it is apparent, writes for women. She writes dark fiction drawn from her love of New England. She is the Hawthorne of modern fiction where people do dangerous things for passionate reasons, and are frequently punished for their carnal sins.

VISIT our SMUTTYNOSE MURDER section  

You can hear that whole interview with Laura Knoy on the NH Public Radio web site. It’s part of the incredibly successful Writers on the New England Stage program of which this web site is a media sponsor. As an author, I’m thrilled to discover that even in this digital day, that many people will drive, park, and pay to sit in an audience just to watch two people talk about books.

But back to the Green Room where Anita had finished a take-out meal of what appeared to be fettuccini alfredo and was chatting with two friends as she autographed books as fast as the crew from Riverrun could flip open the covers. “How do you sign so quickly?” I asked  “You just drift off at the end,” Anita said, completing another two-second signature with a flourish.

My wife Maryellen and I met Anita on the Isles of Shoals in 1998 just after the publication of her novel Weight of Water (1997) that borrows heavily from the actual trial of Louis Wagner. Wagner murdered two Norwegian women on Smuttynose Island in March of 1873. Maryellen and I have been “stewards” on that island every summer since. Visitors who find their way there, we told Anita, inevitably ask us to recount the murder story, which we’ve done hundreds of times. Most of them, having read Weight of Water cannot parse the facts from fiction. We spend a goodly portion of our time “on island” trying to lay out the facts, but for most, it is too late. They cannot give up the fantasy that Maren Hontvet, the surviving woman, was the murderer. Anita may have moved on, we told her, through nine more novels (14 in all so far), but this region is still fixated on her treatment of the Smuttynose Murders.

“Did you know?” we told her, “That the two highest grossing film presentations here at the Music Hall were for the movie version of  “Weight of Water’? Anita did not know. She is still friendly, she says, with director Kathryn Bigelow, but the film, like the novel, has been pushed deep into the past. Despite the presence of Sean Penn and a nude Elizabeth Hurley, the movie tanked, choked in its cradle by nervous distributors who released it briefly in only a couple dozen theatres. Only here in this theatre was Weight of Water a box office smash.

The 2002 TV-movie version of her novel Pilot’s Wife faired slightly better. Again the producer’s left the film in the can, fearful that the crash of a commercial airline could not be shown too soon after the tragedy of 9/11. Although most of her novels have been optioned for film, none are in production, Anita says. She does not write with the cinema in mind, but thinks Testimony would make a good film. “Hope springs eternal,” she says.  

Anita was on location during the cold and rainy filming of “Weight” in Nova Scotia. It was, she told us, “the least glamorous thing I’ve ever done.” There Bigelow faithfully reconstructed Smuttynose Island and the Hontvet house in 1873. The real one here, ravaged by Victorian souvenir hunters, burned down a century ago. The reconstructed building, Anita says, was purchased by a member of the film crew and is still standing. It seems not so long ago that the filmmaker’s research crew, discovering this web site, called for historical details while designing the costumes and sets. Having just been hired to do a little research for another Hollywood film, I attempted to get on the payroll. No one ever called back. Around here, as the movie languished on the producer’s shelf, we spent a couple of years nervously awaiting its release, fearful it would attract hordes of tourists to the private and fragile little island (no electricity, no water, no plumbing, no roads). The hordes never came, but the novel – still a book club favorite -- has had an indelible effect on this infamous local event. At each appearance in Portsmouth, Anita is required to explain that – although her fictional character stole some fictional documents from the Portsmouth Athenaeum, she did not. 

Anita’s next two novels, Pilot’s Wife (2001) and Fortune’s Rocks (2002) hovered around the Portsmouth area. Then she moved along her beloved New England coast and, with Testimony, has moved inland to a Vermont private school.

Following a boost from Oprah, the female fiction fans have been kind to Anita Shreve, a former teacher, journalist, short story and nonfiction author. I couldn’t determine how many millions of books she has sold – or signed – but it’s plenty. Her Portsmouth gig was the last in a grueling two-month book tour. She is moving this week to a condo in Boston with valet parking after a lifetime of raising her children in the suburbs. We found her as gracious, energetic and endlessly curious as ever. Although Anita has rarely returned to historical fiction, her next novel, she says, is “historical, sort of”. The ghost of Maren Hontvet may never forgive Anita for transforming her from victim to murderer, but we do. 
 
© 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.  on SeacoastNH.com

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