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The Shell Seekers

AuthorRosamunde Pilcher

NarratorHayley Atwell

Duration19h 34m

CategoriesAdult Fiction, Romance, Family Sagas

PublisherHodder & Stoughton

VersionUnabridged

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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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Susan 26 Jul 2023

book: The Shell Seekers

Set in the 2nd world war period, then peace time, the hangovers left by war, quickly bought you eloquently into Penelope Keeling character, afluent background with liberal artistic parents who have left her to drift, so obviously for each other that Penelope was treated like a mini adult, her mother more like a sister, her father much older with ill failing health but they loved her dearly and she felt loved. The many people drifting in and out of the parents home, refugees coming to stay and becoming chosen family.
Her internal struggles of now and of yesteryear, her children, not by any means perfect and each interwoven character became them in your head as you sampled them in turn and felt Penelope's dilemma with each.
The children now adults, their choices, each had a self protective streak, some selfishness, maybe due to the fact they had difficult years as a children on rations making do, also Penelope had tried to make them happy ones, only some actually forgot this of course because they were needy or greedy.
The marriage of their parents had been unhappy, an absent father, but even when around not engaged or his examples, relatives intervening, not always best intentions, the children had built a shell around themselves in their different ways.
Ultimately about Penelope Keeling, her relationship with her parents, the war, the rushed marriage her failing health, remembering the past, the whispers of ghosts in her head, the struggles, sadness, friends a long the way but love, happiness for a few snatch moments with powerful hold on her until the very end.

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