Artist's daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are. Yet she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old-age. And when she discovers that her most treasured possession, her father's painting, The Shell Seekers, is now worth a small fortune, it is Penelope who must make the decisions that will determine whether her family can continue to survive as a family, or be split apart.
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Editorial Reviews
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'A huge warm saga ... A deeply satisfying story written with love and confidence' -- Maeve Binchy in The New York Times Book Review 'A beautiful, haunting story ... that will tug at your heart strings' -- Prima 'Her genius is to create characters you really care about' -- Daily Express 'A long, beguiling saga, typically English ... Splendid' -- Mail on Sunday
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite book of all time,
By
This review is from: Shell Seekers (Paperback)
Every time I see a copy of this book in a sale, I buy it to give as a gift. It is a girlie story but even my husband enjoyed it. This is a story about the natural aging of a women that does not live her life controlled by the guilt one of her daughters tries to put on her. Love, the story (set in England), the emotion it evokes and the lessons it teaches.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shell Deekers,
By Valerie Johnson (Lake Charles, LA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shell Seekers (Paperback)
One of my favorite books of all time. I am buying for my daughters who are now teens and old enough to enjoy the story from the Mom's point of view!
Read this book!
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What was so great about these characters?,
By
This review is from: Shell Seekers (Paperback)
I didn't like this book very much because I found it impossible to like the main character, Penelope, and the secondary character, Penelope's daughter, Olivia.
Penelope was portrayed as a woman who had succeeded in life by marching to the beat of her own drum, but I couldn't really understand how her life was so successful. Her three children were all unlikeable people: Penelope's first daughter and only son were both grasping and materialistic, but her second daughter wasn't really that much better, being a selfish person -- a user -- who kept others (including her mother, actually) at arm's length so that they couldn't interfere with her plans, her privacy, her career or her own special world she'd created for herself in her own home. The woman actually hesitated, fearing that her precious privacy would be invaded, when an ex-lover's bereaved daughter called from Spain and asked if she could stay for a few days. I tend to agree with Jaqueline Kennedy's assessment, which I'm paraphrasing here: "If you mess up on raising your children, it really doesn't matter what else you do in your life." This applies to fictional characters, too, especially when I'm being told over and over and over again how wonderful they are. Penelope's marked preference for one of her children over the two others was just not good. Plus, she gossiped unkindly about her two less-favorite children to others, including those siblings' sister, which is a negative character trait that I found impossible to excuse. Plus, in reading this book, a reader is forced to deal with being told how wonderful Penelope and her family are because they're such delightful bohemians, blah blah blah. Since part of their bohemian existence includes Penelope's father telling her she should seize the chance to go ahead and commit adultery, well, it's understandable that I found just about everyone involved to be selfish, careless and ridiculously shallow with their air of, "It's okay that I am going to do this outrageous thing, because, you see, I am an artist, a bohemian, a citizen of France, etc." It was very predictable and dull. The greatest question I had of this book was never answered in all the many pages and it was: If Penelope was such a great mother, why were all her children such vile people?
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