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The Shell Seekers
by Rosamunde Pilcher
Recommended by Sylvia Askew (Lady SylviaA)
Genre: General Fiction: Contemporary Family Saga
 Penelope Keeling arrives home after discharging herself from hospital after suffering a heart attack. She is sixty four, fiercely independent and determined to make the most of her remaining years. As the daughter of the late Lawrence Stern – a renowned Pre-Raphaelite artist – she had a Bohemian childhood; raised in London and Cornwall, had an unhappy wartime marriage, resulting in three very different children, and a lost love.
As Penelope ponders her past life and looks forward to her old age, she discovers one of her father’s paintings – titled The Shell Seekers – has now become very valuable. Now she must make some important decisions, which will affect herself and her family, for good or bad.
The book is what I call a "gentle book". It tells a very good story of a family, a subject – art – that is close to my heart, and takes place chiefly in an area where I spent many happy holidays – Cornwall. To me there is no real high drama or heart-stopping tension in the book, but that does not mean it doesn’t hold the reader’s interest. On the contrary, you want to keep turning the page.
Other Characters
Nancy Chamberlain – Penelope’s oldest child, who is an out and out snob. Married to a solicitor and living among the ‘county’ set in rural Gloucestershire, Nancy has ambitions. More like delusions of grandeur!! Nancy has her children in fee-paying schools, which she can ill afford. She sits on various committees and is more interested in one-upmanship and how to live beyond her means. She also feels, as she’s the eldest, she has to take responsibility for her ageing mother and become a martyr in doing so. She feels her mother never gave her the attention she deserved, which makes her a bitter woman.
Olivia Keeling – A very successful businesswoman, Olivia loves her mother dearly, but lives so far away in London. Nancy is fiercely jealous of her sophisticated sister; her seemingly glamorous lifestyle and cosmopolitan friends. But Olivia is a dark horse. She had a lover in Ibiza and lived with him for a year.
Noel – Penelope’s tall, good looking son who flits from woman to woman. He likes to think he’s one of the jet-set ….Gucci shoes, flashy car, dancing with debutantes. All very well, but now he feels fed up. He finds out his late grandfather’s paintings are much sought after, so maybe he should go down to Podmore Thatch, his mother’s house in Cornwall, and find out what his chances are with regard to getting some money from a sale. For all his glamorous upper crust girlfriend, Noel’s first love is money, and how to get his hands on it with the least amount of trouble or work.
Antonia Hamilton – the daughter of Olivia’s lover, Cosmo. Even though the relationship is over, Olivia still thinks fondly of Cosmo and Antonia. So, it comes as a great shock when Antonia phones Olivia to tell her Cosmo has died suddenly and could she come to London and stay with her for a few days?
Danus – Penelope’s gardener, who is attracted to Antonia when she visits Penelope. A very attractive young man who has no money and a secret, which prevents him taking their relationship further.
This is a book about relationships. And consequences. Penelope, in her autumn years, looks back at her unconventional youth; at the idyllic days in Cornwall watching her father paint, her marriage of obligation to Ambrose just before WWll, her lover Richard. If things had been different…but now she is content. She loves when her children visit, which can be infrequent at the best of times.
Of course, living so far from her grown up children distances Penelope from them, but she has her life – they have theirs. However far away she is, she finds her life and her children’s become entangled through her father’s artistic gift.
I love this book and have read it several times. The reader feels sorry for Penelope to start with. Here’s a 64 year old woman, on her own, who is ill and her family don’t seem to care. But Penelope is strong and a survivor. Her family DO care – in their own ways. Six very different people with a common interest. Bitterness, avarice, jealousy and love all come into this story of an artist’s daughter and a painting – The Shell Seekers.
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