Customer Reviews

The Shape of Sand

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While I have enjoyed Marjorie Eccles' Gil Mayo mystery novels -- they're carefully and well executed police procedurals -- I was not expecting anything quite so enthralling and tantalising as "The Shape of Sand." A historical novel that moves between events that took place in 1910 and (currently) 1946, "The Shape of Sand" is the kind of book that I'd advise having a couple of hours at one's disposal to sit down and enjoy without interruptions. Believe me, you'll not want to put down this book until you've finished it!

The war's over and although the Jardines have not lived in their family estate, Charnley, since it was sold before WWI, Harriet Jardine finds herself walking down the ancestral corridors once more when she comes to collect a box full of old photographs and memobrilia found during some renovation work. The box awakens memories of what happened that fateful summer in 1910 when Harriet's beautiful mother, Beatrice, suddenly disappeared during a house party. Everyone had assumed that Beatrice had run off with the handsome Egyptian archaeologist, Valery Iskander, when it was discovered that he too had hurriedly left the estate on the same night. It is a mystery that has haunted the Jardine siblings, Harriet, Vita, Daisy and their older brother, Matthew, and it is one that Harriet is determined to solve. And she rather hopes that this box may hold some key to what happened all those years ago. But things take an unexpected and horrific turn when the workers at Charnley make a very grisly find...

As I have already noted, "The Shape of Sand" is the kind of elegant and haunting novel that requires uninterrupted reading so that one can truly savour all the many quiet nuances that the novel offers as well as appreciate Marjorie Eccles' brilliant character portrayals. Each character, whether primary or secondary, is carefully realised as such becomes truly memorable -- like the three very different and unique Jardine sisters, and the lady at the heart of this mystery, Beatrice Jardine. Beautiful and seemingly in control of her life and emotions, we get to see another Beatrice as the book progresses, and Marjorie Eccles does a fantastic job of gradually allowing for the real Beatrice to emerge, the different impressions that everyone had of her, and the revelations of certain facts. Also nicely done was how the author managed to capture the mood and feel of both the different time periods that this novel is set in: the opulent and elegant post-Edwardian age of 1910, when everyone who was of the upper classes were still gay and carefree; and the austere and more modern post WWII year of 1946 with its food and housing shortages. Vivid and evocative and written in a beautiful and lyrical prose style, "The Shape of Sand" was a very absorbing and haunting read. Certain plot devices, it was true, were fairly apparent, but the author still managed to maintain an aura of mild suspense and to keep things humming. I was ensnared from beginning to end and was glued to my seat reading on till the book ended and the last secret was revealed. All in all, an excellent read!

It is the year 1910, King Edward has just died, and George has just been proclaimed the new King of England. Whilst the nation steadily adjusts to a changing monarch, Beatrice Jardine, the exquisitely beautiful mistress of the stately Charnley Manor is about to celebrate her forty-fourth birthday. Put on by Amory, her wealthy, loyal, and conspicuously devoted husband, the party includes a guest list that is an absolute smorgasbord of rich aristocracy. No expense is to be spared in providing a celebration for his beloved wife, and it is hoped Beatrice and her friends will remember the evening for many a year to come.

Unfortunately the party will have disastrous consequences for all, for next morning it is discovered that Beatrice has mysteriously gone missing. Her dearly loved four children Marcus, Harriet, Vita, and Daisy are fraught with worry, fearful not just for their darling mother's well-being, but also for the survival of their insular and carefully constructed world of privilege and opportunity, now in serious danger of crashing down around them.

A search of the house and grounds ensures; there are frantic calls to friends and relatives; and contact is made with several guests from the party the night before, but Beatrice remains undiscovered, her disappearance enigmatic and strangely disturbing. Soon the scandalous whiff of betrayal begins hover; she was seen flirting with the simmering and impatient Kit, a much younger man who was obviously enamored of her, and the next morning, Valery Iskander, Beatrice's archaeologist friend from Egypt, hurriedly left the Estate, neglecting to give a formal goodbye.

Also missing is Beatrice's leather valise, a silver hairbrush, a walking costume, and some delicately embroidered silk underclothing. Almost at once, the conclusion is reached - the propensity for shame rocking the very foundations of the Jardine family - that Beatrice has been having a surreptitious affair with Valery Iskander and they have, together, eloped to Egypt. Everyone assumes Beatrice had been harboring some "very unladylike desires," the long held perceptions of an untroubled and happy life at Charnley totally wrong, her life falling apart for some time.

It isn't until forty-four years later, that Harriet; Beatrice's eldest daughter is given the clues to complete the puzzle of her mother's disappearance. The Second World War is over and an insurance firm has now acquired Charnley as its head office. Alterations and renovations had turned to house into a different place, the spirit of the old Charnley gone forever, the memories pushed away over the years, though the shocking events have always left an indelible stain in the air that have saddened and depressed Harriet.

When a few old photos, some scraps of old papers, and Beatrice's diary, recounting a summer trip to Egypt come into her possession, Harriet, for the first time, has a realistic hope of finding out the truth of what happened in that summer of 1910. Her hope of solving the mystery, however, is thrown into chaos when a body is found, hidden within the walls of Charnley - the body is that of a woman.

Harriet has always maintained that her mother, the lady of the house acted too precipitately in contravention of her normal rules and that she would never have consciously flouted convention and willingly chose ostracism; she treasured propriety too much, and always lived surrounded by people whose high opinion was paramount to her. But Beatrice's diaries gradually divulge an inexplicable longing that seemed to assail her in her decorous life at Charnley; an urge to break free from the strictures of her world; beneath her marble cool exterior "there beat a longing for something wild and free, something dangerous trying to escape."

Author Marjorie Eccles, in this stylish and sophisticated whodunit, gives a distinctive voice to each character and plants many questions in the mind of the reader as to what became of Beatrice. Covering two world wars and the rise of the suffragette movement, the author intensely brings to life two very different time periods: The post-war austerity rule of run-down Britain, a country that is gradually picking itself up, life still bound by restriction and shortages of nearly everything; and the golden era before the First World War, a world of rich elegance, where "willowy ladies wore long dresses with sweeping trains and enormous, elaborately-trimmed hats perched on their equally complicated coiffures," - all set against a background of "smooth lawns and terraces and country houses." The world of Charnley had once been a "civilized home," where well bought up people were kind to each other, and good humored; and where real anger rarely surfaced.

Eccles manages to capture the opulent nature of the Edwardian era in all its self-congratulatory grandeur; people were always at their ease, simply talking, chatting, or passing time in a life devoted to the undiluted pursuit of pleasure. The diary entries of Beatrice grow more grow more agitated as the plot thickens, her trip to Egypt - the hot sand, burning skies, pyramids, temples and ruins - almost overwhelming her, the weight and memory of old ghosts oppressing her.

Time has mostly stood still for Beatrice amongst the grey stone of Charnley and the flawed splendor of its painted rooms; this spoilt, tragic, and misunderstood woman has unfortunately spent most her life caught and trapped in an engulfing sense of despair not of her own making. Mike Leonard February 06.

After seeing the Gil Mayo Mysteries on BBC America (please, please bring those back, BBC!) I picked up this book. There weren't many books by Eccles available and that's a real shame. I was floored by this book and have even been trying to get my husband to read it.

The characters and sense of time/place are so vivid in this book, you get a true sense of what England must have been like in that brief, golden flash of time before the World Wars brought such a civilized, extraordinarily luxuriant lifestyle to an end. You get such a wonderful glimpse of the Edwardian ladies with their corsets, long dresses, rolls of thick hair and large hats... And the characterizations are brilliant.

Since buying this book, I've gone out and bought every other Eccles book I could find. What a gifted author.