Customer Reviews

The Shell House

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you can get past the first 50 pages of this book, you will find that it starts to grow on you. I put the book away, came back after a week, plowed on--and then I finished the last 3/4 of it in a flurry, needing to know what happened next.

As you read, the characters become more alive and rounded, and their interests and experiences more developed, nuanced, and believable. The novel also has an ending that keeps you kind of guessing as to what eventually Greg tells himself about his own sexual identity. It is not a foregone conclusion that he will "come out" to himself or continue to think of himself as "definitely not" gay. The author has created in Greg a teenager who is still able to be quite turned on, physically, by girls, but who hasn't yet discerned whether his attraction to Jordan is something more than just aesthetic (he's a truly beautiful swimmer for Greg to watch and photograph) and platonic (he's a low-key but deeply-thinking friend).

About the novel's language: I am an American, and this book is thoroughly British, so I have no idea whether the dialogue is appropriately realistic. Do people say "yobs" and "gits"? I didn't care, because as I read, I became more convinced that I could see it happening.

The novel tries to weave together some big themes besides sexual identity, including the value of religion (trust in God vs. trust in the physical world, including sex), the tragic fighting of World War I, and, underlying both of those issues, the meaning/meaninglessness of suffering. I was skeptical that all this could be pulled off, but the author succeeded. Only occasionally are there too text-book-like phrases (such as the "3 questions of theodicy" put into the mouths of "normal" teenagers--but hey, I kind of like that "too-smart-for-real-teens" kind of talk once in a while, too. Think Dawson's Creek).

As I reflect on the book, some of the minor characters stand out most brightly. Greg's crude friend Gizzard is completely imaginable, as is Dean, the punk who causes him problems, and Dean's selfish mother. Their brief appearances deserve notice. Even more brightly drawn, but given too small a part, is Tanya. Tanya at first repulses Greg with her blatant sexual desire; she later proves to be a refuge for him (the most descriptive language about sex I've read in a teen novel occurs in Tanya's and Greg's encounter); finally, near the end, she appears in Greg's wet dream, her body blending (as in a dream) with the body of Jordan, the swimmer. I may go out on a limb here and state that Newbery seems able to create more believable "bad" characters than "good" ones. But it's said that it's harder to write good characters than bad.

Finally, as someone who did some "bargaining with God" in my own teen years, I can say that I found believable this novel's recurrent issues of wanting to believe in God, asking God for a sign (especially when something tragic occurs), and yet still basically thinking that God probably doesn't exist. The answers to the novel's questions are left hanging in the air--literally!--at the novel's conclusion, the meaning of which will be well debated by those who have read the book.

i got this book for boxing day and i wasnt seen until the next day!!, i sat down and enjoyed this book so much, it ties in romance, teenage problems and history, the teenage conflicts are so sad at some points i was in tears. id recomend this to anyone with a heart.

Linda Newbery doesn't seem to be well known in the US ---she's written a great many books, but precious few of them appear to have been reviewed on the American Amazon site. It's a pity, because this is the second book I've read written by this author, and both have been excellent.

This book really took me back a few years, to that half-forgotten period of my late teens. Do any of you remember hanging out with your friends and chatting up a storm back when everything was so new, and your whole life just waiting to be explored? I haven't thought about those talks for a while, but all sorts of topics would come up in these earnest conversations---the nature of good and evil, what life is all about in the grand scheme of things, what sort of religious beliefs one does (or doesn't) hold, and why... And that's just how the friends in this book talk---man, makes me a bit nostalgic for my youth and a time before I became a bit jaded....

There really haven't been a huge number of books in my daily reading these past few years, that bring thoughts (and memories) like this to mind and put me in a contemplative mood. And in this respect, I think this novel put me very much in mind of the work of Madeleine L'Engle, an author who I've long admired---so for me that is high praise.

Both the flashback and the current-day story-lines are quite interesting, but the majority of the novel deals with the present day---the text isn't evenly divided into past/present sections. There are three major plot-lines in the book, and none of them is wrapped up in a neat little bow, though I will say that the ending in general has a hopeful tone. I really liked this book, and gladly recommend it.

(Not to mention, the entire sub-plot about the volunteers working on the remnants of the house and gardens of this once-stately manor seems tailor-made for me---just the sort of thing guaranteed to grab my interest!)

Interesting... the flower on the cover is a calendula, which symbolises grief, despair, and sorrow---quite appropriate for some of the WWI portions of the novel...

This captivatingly-poignant, love story-mystery vibrantly depicts the struggles of Greg, Faith, and Jordan as the lives of these young adults of the twenty-first century and those of the twentieth century Edmund intertwine in the universal quest for identity. As Greg, Jordan, and Faith explore their sexual, spiritual, and moral identities in the year 2002, their lives begin to reflect the issues surrounding the mystery of an intriguing antique mansion, left as a mere shell by a fire that ravaged it during World War I, and of Edmund, the wealthy young man who once lived in the magnificent home. In spite of his wealth and apparent ease of lifestyle, Edmund encountered many of the same issues that Greg and his friends do in their middle class lives in 2002.

Vivid, flowing descriptions paint a memorable, picturesque integral setting in which the believable, fully-developed characters struggle to mature. Considering the controversial topics conveyed, this novel is remarkably free from didacticism, thus lending itself conducive to the reader to, in turn, strive to be true to his own reality. The unusually subtle denouement as well as the neutral tone of the author, merely reinforces this. The characters' antagonists are their own preconceived expectations of what life should be. Symbolism and metaphors are skillful embellishments that contribute to deeper meaning and impact of the theme of self-discovery. The story is very effectively written in first person narration, primarily by Greg and intermittently by Edmund. Each young man's chapter is introduced by his own means of self expression. A mental photograph, reflecting Greg's love of photography, begins each chapter narrated by Greg, and Edmund's chapters are initiated by his poems. Although this is a British novel and the slang is problematic for American youth, this will prove to be no hindrance to its appeal. Once the young reader deciphers the unfamiliar words, the language used may even become part of its appeal.

This was one of those books that disappointed me because I got the feeling that it had the potential to be so much better.

I should probably say that I'm older than the age group this book is intended for, which may bias some of my views. For young teenagers who don't have much exposure to gay fiction, I could see this being a good starting point.

One of the best things going for this book is its page-turning nature; I put off some work for an hour and a half towards the end because I just had to finish it. The ambiguity of Greg's sexuality is also a nice change from the standard; having been through my own long sexual identity crisis, I thought that it showed a nice range of doubts and questions.

A major problem, for me, lies in the relationship between Edmund and Alex. This is one of those books where we know they're in love because we're told so, not because it's evident from their behavior. It's obvious that they like each other and are attracted to each other, but their relationship should have been given more time to develop so the reader could feel the complete emotional impact. Alex in particular deserves much more time than he's given; his "alternate ending" to Edmund's poem hints at a lighter aspect of their relationship that could have balanced some of the angst.

Edmund's family and the family of the girl they want him to marry, Phillipa, are cardboard cutouts of stodgy and unaccepting Representatives of Oppressing Society. The scene where Edmund talks to the minister is a tired retread of a lot of better-written scenes that pit homosexuality against religion, to the point where I found myself successfully predicting the gist of the next line the whole way through.

The last part of Edmund's story, however, stuck in my mind, and belongs in a better book where the emotions are developed enough to suit its highly dramatic nature.

Faith and Jordan didn't fascinate me very much as characters, though they were just interesting enough not to be boring. A lot of the time I wanted to get back to the Edwardian part of the story, but when I did I was disappointed.

There are almost no words to express how bad I thourght this book was.
It is a very nice love story but I am convinced that if the two couples were hetrosexual rather than homosexual then nobody would think that it was any good. Being able to write about gay people takes neither wit, talent nor skill merly a little imagination, which is no recomendation at all.
The prose was awful and if possible the dialogue was even worse. I hated the war peoms and feel that the opinions expressed about the first world war, however valid in themselves, were both hackneyed and cliched with no basis on real experience or research.
The only saving grace of the whole book was that the author didn't use the traditional streotypes of gay men, but any merit achieved by this was distroyed by her use of streotipical religious charcters.