The Stranger from the Sea (The Poldark Saga) (Paperback)

by Winston Graham (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"From the incomparable Winston Graham...who has everything anyone else has, then a whole lot more."

Product Description

Stephen Carrington's arrival in the Poldark household changes all their lives. For Clowance and Jeremy in particular, the children of Ross and Demelza, Stephen's advent is the key to a new world—one of both love and danger. This novel is set in early 19th-century Cornwall.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan UK (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 033034501X
• ISBN-13: 978-0330345019
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #537,483 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MORE WITH THE POLDARK FAMILY, June 25, 2003

By	W. MONTGOMERY (WASHINGTON, DC - U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Unlike the previous reviewer, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel. I had had some recollections of the PBS Poldark Series when it was on TV back in the '70s. But beyond that, I did not know anything else about Ross Poldark and his family. That is, until I read this novel, the first of the series for me.

In this novel, Winston Graham provides rich character sketches of Clowance and Jeremy, two of the Poldark children. Clowance is a free-spirited, sensitive, yet sober-minded kind of young lady. You see her becoming acquainted with a young man who was fished out of the sea, and are witness to her growing attraction to him. He (Stephen Carrington) is an adventurer, a dreamer, a striver, a charmer, and a gambler. Yet, he has a good heart. A big heart. I don't think it at all strange or odd that a young woman should be attracted to a man who is a bit rough round the edges as Stephen is. The reader may consider Stephen Carrington as a force of nature in terms of his personality and spirit.

Jeremy's story is especially touching. He and his father have a somewhat uneasy and distant relationship, which by turns, begins to become closer. And there is also Jeremy's growing love for Cuby Trevanion.

Contrary to what the earlier reviewer said, I thought "The Stranger from the Sea" was a wonderful story. In addition to Ross and Demelza, you begin to see in this novel how the lives of their children are shaping themselves. I liked that. And the author's descriptions of Cornwall are so evocative. You can almost feel the salt of the ocean on your skin and clothes as it pounds against the beach, or feel the touch of a rising breeze sweeping across the hills, signaling the approach of an autumn storm.

I can hardly wait to read the rest of the series!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 1810-1811, October 23, 2006

By	Penny Dreadful (Under Your Skin) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

After the powerful ending to The Angry Tide, Winston Graham made the intelligent, bold, but sometimes criticized decision to move this next Poldark novel a decade into the future from where the last installment ended. It is now 1810, the eighteenth-century is but a memory, the war with France, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of British lives and drained the national treasury, plows into its third decade, and in Cornwall, the tragically costly Warleggan-Poldark feud has, in Graham's words "cooled to ashes." In this segment of the series, the children of the aging but far from antiquated Ross and Demelza move onto center stage and it is as much on their lives as those of the now older generation that the plot focuses. Clowance Poldark, oldest surviving daughter of the Nampara household, and her older brother Jeremy, each become fixated upon love interests. Jeremy is infatuated with the gracefully elegant Cuby Trevanion, a young woman from an ancient but impoverished family of the gentry, while the normally sensible Clowance loses her heart to the title character of this volume, the mysterious Stephen Carrington, the "stranger from the sea." When Carrington is first introduced to the series, it is as he is pulled nearly dead and clinging to the wreckage of a ship that washes in near Nampara Cove. While recovering in the Poldark home, Carrington seems reluctant to discuss his past, and is judged (probably correctly) to be a privateer or smuggler. However the energetic, rugged Carrington, partly an ambitious ne'er do well, partly a sort of lower-class version of the unconquerable Ross Poldark himself, soon asserts his presence in the local community, and becomes popular for his bravery and grand plots to gain wealth.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I prefer to stop the series with "The Angry Tide", January 14, 2003

By A Customer

Well, I'm sorry but I just don't like sequels, I keep getting terribly disappointed. I loved the first 8 Poldark books, the ones that concentrated on Ross & Demelza; I didn't feel that their children needed their stories told!! But, given that, Stranger from the Sea is a poor first follow-up. I particularly dislike the character of Stephen & can't see how Clowance would ever be attracted to him; Jeremy & Cuby's story is slightly more interesting, but blah blah blah, it's all much ado about nothing. (I liked Jeremy's story as it continued through the other sequels; however, I never understood anything about Clowance or what attracted so many men to her.) My advice: read every Poldark book up to "The Angry Tide" and then stop.