Someone wrote in a comment that she used this book as “comfort food”, not too challenging, but comfortable and easy reading. I hate to disagree with any of my esteemed readers, but I found it not comforting, but disturbing.
The Shell Seekers is set in about the time it was published, 1987, with flashbacks to WW2 and its aftermath. The story takes place in England. The central character is Penelope Keeling, an elderly widow who has just been released from the hospital after a near-heart attack. Her two daughters and her son are worried to varying degrees about how she will take care of herself and whether she will continue to be able to live alone. Actually, the oldest daughter, Nancy, and the son, Noel, are more concerned about how Penelope will be able to take care of her financial assets, which include a painting by her famous artist father called The Shell Seekers.
The plot of the novel, such as it is, wanders about, changing its point of view, always coming back to Penelope. The characters are meant to be sympathetic, especially daughter Olivia and Penelope herself, and they would be, I suppose, if I could believe in them. However, they are both really selfish people interested mostly in their own comfort and their own independence, and they both engage in extra-marital affairs without any emotional or physical consequences. The bohemian, selfish life is presented as the ideal, no lasting commitments, and no guilt or regrets. Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life, but I just find it difficult to believe that people actually live this way. For example, Olivia meets a man while she is on vacation, moves in with him, and plans to stay for just one year, a sort of sabbatical from her high-pressure career in magazine publishing. At the end of the year, she returns to her career and never looks back. Can real people, not paper dolls in books, have such an uncomplicated, yet, of course, deeply loving, relationship?
The moral of the story, if it can be called that, is: grab life while you can, be generous, and follow your feelings. Happiness consists of listening to your own desires and keeping yourself independent. Oh, and you can have it all: independence and true love, especially if your lover is accommodating enough to die young before your husband returns from the war and finds out about the affair.
Oscar Wilde once wrote: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.” In this book the bad end, as they began, unhappily, and the not-so-moral-either end happily, and the whole book just doesn’t ring True. It’s a good story, irreparably flawed by its moral outlook, and that is not what I’m looking for in fiction.
*blush* That would be me.
Perhaps “comfort food” is not the best description of this particular book of hers. Some of her earlier novels would qualify as such. All her books are easy reads, though, which is nice sometimes.
I’ve written on my own blog about my hesitancy to recommend The Shell Seekers to others, because the characters do engage in immoral behavior.
But I looked at it a bit differently than you.
I read it as how each choice sets off a chain of events that has consequences for generations. Ambrose got involved with Penelope because he saw a picture of her father’s car and thought she was rich. Penelope was homesick and alone and got involved with the first charming man that looked her way, and as a result ended up with a man who never loved her – and three children who are as materialistic as their father. Olivia was so selfish that she couldn’t commit to the Cosmo, and was, in fact, so materialistic that once she found out he wasn’t as rich as he thought he was, the relationship was over. And Nancy is so self-centered that she doesn’t grieve over her mother’s death, but instead grieves because she believes it was her mother’s fault she’s so unhappy.
Penelope realizes that leaving money to people as selfish as her children would only lead to further heartbreak, so instead leaves it to others, in hopes of finally making right all the mistakes she has made.
But perhaps I’m trying too hard to look at it sympathetically because I love her storytelling ability so much.
Not that you’re likely to want to read any more of her books, but do stay away from Winter Solstice. There really wasn’t anything redeeming about that one, and the story was pretty weak, as well.
I enjoyed reading your opinion, though, as always.
Hey, I wasn’t trying to insult or put anyone down for their opinion. On another day, at another time in my life, I might have a different opinion. I think you have a point. I did see the book as awfully sad, an attempt to glorify an irresponsible lifestyle, but even in the attempt, Penelope reaps what she has sown in the characters of her children. I guess the book hit too close to home in some ways. Some of my children are about grown, and I sincerely hope for their sakes and for mine (selfishly) that they don’t turn out like the Keeling trio.
Oh, no. I wasn’t insulted. I like to hear other opinions, especially dissenting ones, as it makes me think.
I have a big soft spot for the family sagas that were all the rage in the eighties.
I have also, at times, recommended Rosamunde Pilcher, though have felt the same hesitations as both of you express. I find many of her characters sympathetic, I’d love to inhabit her settings and her worldview is mostly traditional (though the church is there more as an institution than the means to a relationship with God). I would certainly agree with Staci about “Winter Solstice.” Some of my favorite writings by her are short stories like the collection in ‘The Blue Bedroom.’
I actually named one of my daughter’s after a Pilcher character. I read a short version of one of her books in a woman’s magazine when I was pregnant and I loved the story and the name so much that is my daughter’s middle name. I couldn’t remember the author of title, and I always wondered about the rest of the story.
Just a couple years ago I read the entire book when a friend told my where my daughter’s name came from. I was disturbed, to say the least. It wasn’t the shell-seekers, but I saw the same problems you mention- the characters lack heart. They seem to be emotionally untouched and unchaged by what they endure and what they do.
The character of Penelope Keeling herself was, in my opinion, pretty selfish and self-centered. I actually felt sorry for Nancy in the book. This book was written beautifully deceptive. But I’m not one to be brainwashed. It attempted to make the selfish characters Penelope and Olivia look like the heroines. But I wasn’t fooled. I was somewhat sympathetic toward Penelope. But her daughter, Olivia, I simply could not stand. What a cold, calculating robot! Nancy, herself seemed much more human. Sorry.
This story completely clashed with my moral beliefs. And I have never, EVER met anyone in real life that was close to resembling that character Olivia , without having an intense dislike for them. Out of all the characters in the book, I despised her the most. The son, Noel was a close second. Nancy was actually the one character in the whole book I actually felt sorry for and liked the most — and I didn’t particularly like her character either!
This book was nothing more than the author’s attempt to weave her deluded moral view into a beautiful story and make her ideals seem honorable. When really, they aren’t.
If you’re looking for fairytale perfect people who always do what is expected of them and live up to the moral standards imposed upon them by the critical norms of convention, Pilcher is not the author for you.
Personally I appreciate a more complex character study of the honest ways people get through their lives in search of happiness, love, and purpose. Far be it from me to judge where others find joy and their definitions of what those things mean.