The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher


I read this when it first came out in 1987...it introduced me to Agas and scrubbed pine kitchen tables and so many other things that we are fortunate enough to see often now in British magazines and movies. But it was rarer back then.


It was very, very good....tho' not as good as her later books, I think. I marked just a very few passages this reading:


"You couldn't say "I can't bear it" because if you didn't bear it, the only other thing to do was to stop the world and get off, and there did not seem to be any practical way to do this. To fill the void and occupy her hands and mind, she did what women, under stress and in times of anxiety, have been doing for centuries: immersed herself in domesticity and family life. Physical activity proved a mundane but comforting therapy. She cleaned the house from attic to cellar, washed blankets, dug the garden. It did not stop her from wanting Richard, but at least, at the end of it, she had a shining, sweet-smelling house and two rows of freshly planted young cabbages."




"I lived with sadness for so long. And a loneliness that nothing and no one could assuage. But, over the years, I came to terms with what had happened. I learned to live within myself, to grow flowers, to watch my children grow, to look at painting and listen to music. The gentle powers. They are quite amazingly sustaining."



The gentle powers...isn't that thought-provoking? There is a book or a blog or something that might be made of that idea...when the time is right.


And lastly...




September has come, it is here

Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,

Whose nature prefers

Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.

So I gave her this month and the next

Though the whole of my year should be hers who has

rendered already

so many of its days intolerable or perplexed

But so many more so happy.

Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls

Dancing over and over with her shadow

Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls

And all of London littered with remembered kisses.



-Louis MacNeice

fresh

I have been re-decorating a bit around here, and hope it looks nice to your eyes (I haven't checked it on my studio computer yet and hope it isn't too bright....my old laptop has a rather dim screen!).

I will be back soon with a few posts. As the year is so fresh and new, and I am only on my second book, it feels like a good time to start again. This year will feel that much richer at the end of it if I have taken the time to collect some beauty and meaning from my reading as I go along.

See you very soon.

a grand thing

I finished The Language of the Bees several days ago and soon discovered that our library's copies of the next book in the series were all checked out.....with a waiting list. So I made the rare decision to order a new copy from Amazon. It was just what I needed to qualify an order of home-schooling books for free shipping. (So you see the wonderful rightness and logic of my decision, don't you?)

While I waited for the book to arrive, I started Agatha Christie's autobiography. I can tell that it is going to be interesting and delightful.

From the introduction:


"To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most refreshing things about life.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."


But poor Agatha is going to have to wait now.....I received a package from Amazon this afternoon....I am tired and aching from uncluttering and cleaning....and now the rain has begun to fall....so I am taking The God of the Hive and heading to the porch sofa!

solitude

From chapters 9-12 of The Language of Bees....the latest (for me!) Mary Russell novel by Laurie King.
Utterly enjoyable.


"I set the wine to cool while I closed up the house against the creatures of the night, then put together a plate of strong cheese, oat biscuits, and summer fruit. I spread some cushions and a travelling rug on the warm stones of the terrace and dined in solitary splendour while the colours came into the sky. I lay with the soft rug around me, watching the azure slip into indigo, and spotted the first meteors.

I fell asleep watching them, no doubt assisted by the better part of a bottle of wine."



"I spent the morning settling into the quiet, amiable house..."



"I spent the rest of the day walking up; up to my own farm, where I looked from a distance and decided I did not wish to spend any more of the day in conversation, and then west towards the Cuckmere."


"Birds sang, despite the lateness of the season, and the lush countryside soothed my parched skin and my thin-stretched spirit."


"I bathed and put on a silk robe I had bought in Japan, and while the kettle boiled, I went to the library in search of a congenial book."


"I was pleased to find a portion of meat pie in the back of the icebox, stale but still smelling good, and ripe tomatoes from the garden outside the door, into which I chopped some onions and cheese. A bottle of cider from the pantry, a slice of stale bread and fresh butter, and I was content in my small and no doubt temporary island of tranquillity. I ate at the scrubbed wood table in the kitchen, and left my dishes in the sink until morning."

garments

I thought I would continue the "g" theme, tho' there was actually no calculation involved in doing so. Laurie King's writing has simply sent me to the computer again to record:

When he first saw our conjuring and magic, Bindra was apprehensive, but once he had witnessed the similar reaction of the rustics, he immediately took on the garments of sophistication and scorned to gape, other than secretly.

"took on the garments of sophistication"

So pleasing.

I am rather timid in saying this (as a homeschooling mother), but I have never been very good at remembering what various literary devices are called (or grammar either, for that matter). But I do know what I love, what speaks to me, what "conjures" up evocative images in my mind as I read certain words strung together...and Laurie King seems to string words together in ways that make me very happy.

One day I will move on to another author, but I am still intrigued by Mary and Holmes, and their adventures are especially satisfying on these rainy days we are enjoying. A log fire and a scalding cup of tea would make for perfection.

gleanings

(from Laurie King's Mary Russell books-still gladly in the midst of them!)


I love this for its aptness:


"Badger Old Place welcomed us with all its run-down, shaggy magnificence, like and old friend shifting to make room on a bench."

And I love this because it is wonderful to spend time with a friend in the way the last six words describe, and because this is illustrative of the abundance of comforting drinks and cosy places in which to drink them that happily dot Laurie King's novels.


"Mary! What are you doing here? Looking for me? But why in heaven's name didn't you come and find me--you must be in an advanced stage of ice cube-ism. come along; we'll find a warm corner with drinks in it and bemoan the state of the world."

There was also a lovely sentence with something about "grasping the nettle" along with Holmes' hand or some such....but I had to return the book to the library before I could find the beloved sentence. I have since looked up "grasp the nettle" online and it seems to mean forging ahead with something difficult or unpleasant, tho' you know there will be a sting. On my first visit to England in the early 1980s I was thrilled to come across a patch of nettles in Cornwall and proceeded to swish my forearm across the leaves. The resulting tingling accompanied me for quite a while as my friend and I walked to the sea, but I was foolishly glad to have at last experienced what I had read about so often in my books!

glorious

"A brief hour's tramp through wet woods brought us to the village of Lydford, nestled along a river at the very edge of the moor's rising slopes. There we succumbed to the temptations of the flesh and spent a glorious thirty minutes in front of an inn's blazing fireplace, drinking coffee and steaming our boots."

-Laurie King


Tho' I had only just reclined upon my sofa and begun the first paragraph of Chapter Four in The Moor by Laurie R. King....I made myself go to the computer to place those few sentences into my word nest....because they capture some of what I have so been enjoying in the reading of the Mary Russell series (I am on book four with many more to go-thank goodness!). The wonderful detail, the intelligence, the utterly satisfying and lovely writing that leads you on and on, the fascinating cases and settings, the intriguing relationship between Mary and Holmes....I highly recommend them.

And I thank whoever it was that recommended them to me (Barry? One of my readers at the Bower when I asked for ideas for a good read?).

They are making for delightful reading this Summer and will take me contentedly into the Autumn.