The Shell Seekers ~ Rosamunde Pilcher

 

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher is the story of one of those girls in the painting, Penelope Kelling, the daughter of the artist Sir Laurence Stern and sophie, who, when the novel opens, has discharged herself from hospital after a minor heat attack, and is heading back to Podmore’s Thatch, her deliciously named Cotswold cottage. This health scare suddenly fills her with a ‘sort of reasonless happiness she had not experienced for years. It is because I am alive….Living now, had become not simple existence that one took for granted, but a bonus, a gift. ‘When her three children – snobbish, overbearing Nancy, who addressed Penelope as Mother, steely but terrifically likeable magazine editor Olivia who addressed Nancy as Mumma, and rather reptilian manabout-town Noel  address her as Ma – hear their mother has been ill, and that the shock of it has impelled her to not just start to reflect on the past but to live life anew, they react in very different ways.  

She wanted to go to Cornwall and Carn Cottage and thought children would be interested in seeing where it all began, but none of them were interested.  Shifting in time, the novel tells the story of Penelope Keeling, the daughter of unconventional parents (an artist father and his much-younger French wife), examining her past and her relationships with her adult children. Penelope's life from young womanhood to the present is revealed in pieces, from her own point of view and those of her children. A painting called The Shell Seekers, given to Penelope as a wedding present.

Earlier going to Cornwall was a tough task, going from Portsmouth to Bath, Bath to Bristol, Bristol to Exeter and from Exeter to Cornwall.

Her children wanted to have some one for company for her, and it was Antonia, daughter of Cosmo who passed away, and looking who was more than Happy to come and stay with her.  She also employed a gardener.  Danus.

Better to have loved and lost, she told herself, than never to have loved at all.

Like Penelope’s dreadful mother-in-law Dolly Keeling, Nancy is a true Little Englander, rigid in her adherence to the old ways of class. Novel teaches us to live a life of openness and love and searching for the best in every day. It is why, when you finish it, you may be in tears, but you will also have a smile on your face.

‘Elizabeth and her German Garden’, Sophie keep reading, as it comforts and soothes. It reminds of a world that existed and will exist again when the war is finished.

‘What happy woman I am. Living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so easily.’

There is death one after the other, parents, love, and finally self.

Surreptitiously,

Luxury, I think is the total fulfilment of al five senses at once. Luxury is now. I feel warm; and if I wish, I can reach out and touch your hand. I smell the sea and as well, somebody inside the hotel is fying onions. Delicious. …..’

MacNeice’s Autumn Journal:

Sleep to the noise of running water

Tomorrow will be crossed, however deep;

There is no river of the dead or Lethe

Tonigh we sleep

On the banks of the Rubicon – the die is cast

There will be time to audit

The accounts later, there will be sunlight later

And the equation will come out at last.

Men never think of anyone but themselves.

Life wasn’t worth living unless you had something to look forward to.

Is’nt misunderstanding the most horrible thing in the world? It creates disorder.

First it was Parents life, then ours, then our children, and then their children. A strange progression.

The house, bereft of its owner, was a dead house, the shell of a body, its heartbeat stopped. Desolate, strangely silent, it seemed to wait. The quiet was a physical thing, inescapable, pressing like a weight. No footstep, no voice, no rattling saucepans from the kitchen…..Doors closed, stayed closed. ….No person, just the door.

Penelope could go and meet Doris, go back to her childhood place.

…….and wish I were with you, sharing the laughter and domestic doings of what I have come to think of as my second home. All of it was good, in every sense of the word. And in this life, nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of  a person, become part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours for ever. My Love, My darling. 

                                                                                      Richard.