The Shell House - Softcover

Newbery, Linda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099455935 ISBN 13: 9780099455936

Publisher: Red Fox, 2003

Synopsis

The Shell House is a beautifully written and sensitive portrayal of love, sexuality and spirituality over two generations. Greg's casual interest in the history of a ruined mansion becomes more personal as he slowly discovers the tragic events that overwhelmed its last inhabitants. Set against a background of the modern day and the First World War, Greg's contemporary beliefs become intertwined with those of Edmund, a foot soldier whose confusion about his sexuality and identity mirrors Greg's own feelings of insecurity. This is a complex and thought-provoking book, written with elegance and subtlety. It will change the way you think.

About this title

Review:

"Powerful, challenging reading for older teens" (Sunday Mirror)

"Compelling . . . Elegiac, even literary" (David Self TES)

"Celevrly intertwines two stories and encompasses some big themes . . . Intelligent and perceptive" (Guardian)

"A novel to read, think about, and then read again" (Independent)

"[An] enjoyably meaty read . . . Newbery writes wonderfully" (Financial Times)

From the Author:

Several of my novels are set in real places - "The Shell House" more obviously than most. I first saw the ruined 18th-Century mansion on which the "Graveney Hall" of the novel is based when I was eight years old and my family moved to Epping. On our walks, we became familiar with the austere frontage of the mansion on the edge of Epping Forest. It is only the shell of its former splendid self, as it was gutted by fire in 1917. The lower floor of the house was boarded up, the gardens fenced off, and at that time pigs were kept in its outbuildings.

Years later my mother joined a group of volunteers aiming to preserve and partially restore the once-elaborate gardens. One of my mother's photographs - of a caryatid on one of the summerhouses - made me start thinking of a possible novel. Although I was interested in a fictional version of the events leading to the 1917 fire, involving Edmund Pearson, a young army officer, I wanted a present-day story to dominate, with main character 17-year-old Greg, who strays in to take photographs. The double plot gave me the opportunity of showing Graveney Hall both as an aristocratic family home during the First World War years, and in ruins in the contemporary setting. It soon took on a symbolic significance, as both house and shell.

I've revisited the real "Graveney Hall" several times recently, and it's with the rather odd sense that my fictional version is more real to me than the physical place.

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Fox
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0099455935
• ISBN 13: 9780099455936
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352