On the Road Again

The Shell Seekers
Rosamunde Pilcher
St. Martin's Press

Last Wednesday marked the first day of my "official" summer vacation. It was a bit of a rocky start -- my flight to Calgary got turned back over the Ontario/Manitoba border and the delay cost me my connection to Whitehorse. Six hours after my originally scheduled flight, I was put on a plane to Vancouver and eventually rolled into the Yukon a mere seven or so hours late. The downside to the ordeal was that I think I will soon be enrolling in some anger management classes. The upside was that it gave me the opportunity to read a couple of books.

The Shell Seekers is a lovely story set in the early to mid-eighties about a Englishwoman, Penelope Keeling, and her three grown children, Nancy, Olivia and Noel. The novel opens with Penelope returning to her home after a brief stint in the hospital following a heart attack. As most people do after a traumatic event, she takes stock of her life and reminisces over things past.

What I enjoyed most about this novel was how Pilcher uses beautiful language to paint vivid portraits of the main characters. Penelope and her children weren't always likeable, but they were so real that they could have stepped off the pages and sat down at my kitchen table for a cup of tea. Like most family chronologies, (think The Thornbirds) there was a lot of melodrama within the pages. There was also, however, enough of a story to keep me hooked and awake on a trans-Canada flight. Two point five stars out of five.