Shell Seekers (Pilcher)

The Shell Seekers 
Rosamunde Pilcher, 1987
Random House
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312961329


Summary 
Set in London and Cornwall from World War II to present, The Shell Seekers tells the story of the Keeling family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. The family centers around Penelope, and it is her love, courage, and sense of values that determine the course of all their lives, Deftly shifting back and forth in time, each chapter centers on one of the principal players in the family's history.

The unifying thread is an oil painting entitled "The Shell Seekers," done by Penelope's father. It is this painting that symbolizes to Penelope the ties between the generations. But it is the fate of this painting that just may tear the family apart. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Aka—Jane Fraser
• Birth—September 22, 1924
• Where—Lelant, Cornwall, England, UK
• Education—Miss Kerr-Sanders Secretarial College
• Currently—Invergowrie by Dundee, Scotland, UK

Prior to the phenomenal success of The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a novelist and short-story writer, but it was with this novel that she found herself embraced by readers around the globe. She is now internationally recognized as one of the most-loved storytellers of our time and has gone on to write the celebrated bestselling novels Coming Home and September. She lives with her husband Graham and their dog Daisy in Perthshire, Scotland. (From the publisher.)

More
Rosamunde Pilcher was born in Lelant, Cornwall on September 22, 1924. She attended St. Clare's Polwithen and Howell's School Llandaff before going on to Miss Kerr-Sanders' Secretarial College. She began writing for herself when she was seven, and published her first short story when she was only 18.

From 1943 through 1946, Pilcher served with the Women's Naval Service. On December 7, 1946 she married Graham Hope Pilcher. They moved to Dundee, Scotland, where she still lives today. Besides being a housewife and mother of four children, she wrote short stories and love stories for women's magazines at her kitchen table using the pen name Jane Fraser.

In 1949, Pilcher's first book, a romance novel, was published by Mills and Boon, under the pseudonym Jane Fraser. She published an additional ten novels under that name. In 1955 she also began writing under her real name with Secret to Tell. By 1965 she had dropped the pseudonym and was signing her own name to all of her novels.

At the beginning writing was a refuge from her daily life. She claims that writing saved her marriage. The real breakthrough in Pilcher's career came in 1987, when she wrote the family saga, The Shell Seekers. Since then her books have made her one of the more successful contemporary female authors.

One of her most famous works, The Shell Seekers, focusses on Penelope Stern Keeling, an elderly British woman who relives her life in flashbacks, and on her relationship with her adult children. Keeling's life was not extraordinary, but it spans "a time of huge importance and change in the world." The novel describes the everyday details of what life during World War II was like for some of those who lived in Britain. The Shell Seekers sold more than five million copies worldwide and was adapted for the stage by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham.

Extras
• Her books are especially popular in Germany due to the fact that the national TV station ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) has produced more than 70 of her stories for TV. These TV films are some of the most popular programmes on ZDF. Both Pilcher and ZDF programme director Dr. Claus Beling were awarded the British Tourism Award in 2002 for the positive effect the books and the TV versions had on tourism.

• Pilcher retired from writing in 2000. Two years later she was created an Officer of the British Empire (OBE)

• She has four children and fourteen grandchildren. Her son, Robin Pilcher, is also a novelist. (Bio from Wikipedia.)

For more information visit the author's website.

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Book Reviews 
[Flashbacks] are done with the ease and charm of a kindly friend showing you a photograph album: not a mammoth session to glaze the eyes, but a gentle journey telling you these longed-for facts about people you already know.... It is a measure of this story's strength and success that a reader can be carried for more than 500 pages in total involvement with Penelope, her children, her past and the painting that hangs in her country cottage. The Shell Seekers is a deeply satisfying story, written with love and confidence.
Maeve Binchy - New York Times

Beautifully done.... A book about families.... When the reader closes the book, it is with a sense of regret—regret that there is no more.
Boston Herald

A lovely story, the best, really absorbing book I've read in a long time, the kind you hate to put down and especially hate to finish.
Atlanta Journal Constitution

On the heels of a hasty wartime marriage, Penelope Keeling is left to repent at leisure in the English seaside town of Porthkerris, where her artist father and her French mother are spending the duration of World War II. Safe in the embracing arms of that warm household, Penelope forgets her sour husband and takes a lover, and in that relationship, too, she weathers the war's privations and its hardest blows. In a beautifully detailed family saga that shifts effortlessly back and forth in time, Pilcher (Under Gemini) recounts Penelope's story and that of her three children. When their grandfather's work suddenly comes into vogue, Nancy, obsessed over status, and sleek Noel, adept at getting the most and giving the least, join in urging their mother to sell The Shell Seekers, a painting that gives her great joy. Only Olivia, a cool and collected magazine editor, refuses to be party to their barely concealed avarice. Pilcher's 13th book is a satisfying and savory family novel, in which rich layers of description and engagingly flawed characters more than make up for the occasional cliche.
Publishers Weekly

As this absorbing saga of a modern English family opens, 64-year-old Penelope Keeling is returning to her country house following a heart attack, and her three adult children have varying reactions to the news. The narrative is actually a series of deftly interwoven vignettes that shift back and forth in time; each chapter centers on one of the principal players in the family's history. The unifying thread is an oil painting entitled "The Shell Seekers," done by Penelope's father. Pilcher's characters are well-drawn, real, and engrossing people. A thoroughly charming book for most fiction collections. Troll Book Club main selection. —Maria A. Perez-Stable, Western Michigan Univ. Libs., Kalamazoo
Library Journal

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Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Shell Seekers:

1. How would you describe Penelope Keeling as a character? What traits you would you ascribe to her? Maeve Binchy has said that Penelope's ordinariness is what makes her character so likable...and also what gives her strength. Is she ordinary, and if so, is Binchy correct?

2. What makes Noel and Nancy so unlikable? (Honestly, does Nancy have to be overweight?) Does Pilcher develop them fully as emotionally complex characters ... or as shallow, one-dimensional characters?

3. What about Olivia? Is she too good to be true? She clearly has her mother's favor: how might this affect the behavior of Noel and Nancy? Why doesn't Penelope tell Olivia about Richard? Do you wish she had?

4. Talk about the incident of the red dress. What was your reaction when it was found in the closet?

5. How did Penelope's own upbringing, by her Bohemian artist parents, prepare her—or not—for her later life? What values and ideals did she take away from her growing-up years?

6. How does the prospect of an inheritance affect family dynamics, both in this story and in life? Is Pilcher's account of Penelope's family realistic?

7. What does Penelope learn as she journeys, literally and figurativelly, back into her past? How does it change her?

8. Talk about the book's World War II years. In what way does Pilcher bring that era alive?

9. What is the symbolic significance of the novel's title and its reference to the Shell Seekers painting?

10. Why does Penelope want to keep The Shell Seekers? What does it mean to her? Were you held in suspense wondering how Penelope would eventually dispense with the painting? Where you satisfied with the outcome?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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