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The Shell House, by Linda Newbery
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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.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #6539828 in Books
- Published on: 2004-04-13
- Released on: 2004-04-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.88" h x .89" w x 4.19" l, .1 pounds
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 352 pages
Amazon.com Review
Connected through time by a once stately mansion, now a burned-out shell of its former grandeur, two young men struggle with the contradictions between body and soul in both contemporary England and the barbed-wire battlefields of WWI. In 2002, Greg is a shy photographer who is elated to discover the ruins of Graveney Hall, a crumbling manor undergoing restoration. As he begins to photograph and explore the grounds, he mulls over the strange new feelings he's having for his classmate Jordan, an introspective boy on the school swim team. Meanwhile, he's also been befriended by Faith, an outgoing girl whose strong sense of spirituality draws Greg into several arguments about religion, causing him to wonder how his recent feelings for Jordan fit into the world of Faith's God. In 1917, Edmund is a young aristocratic soldier burdened by family expectations, the brutality of war, and a secret that could destroy his family. While he loves Graveney Hall, he knows that he will never produce the heir required for him to inherit it. Why? Because he is in love with Alex, his superior officer. Both Edmund and Greg strike bargains with God as each decides what he must to do to uncover his secret--or hide it forever.
Passionate and provoking, The Shell House will provide teens with food for thought on a number of compelling issues, including the search for identity, the question of spirituality, and how sexual ethics have changed over time. Fans of Aidan Chambers's similarly themed, Carnegie Award-winning novel, Postcards from No Man's Land, will also enjoy The Shell House. (Ages 13 to 18) --Jennifer Hubert
From Publishers Weekly
A pitch-perfect tale of contemporary teenage life intertwines with an overly dramatic if occasionally moving account of a privileged youth's literally life-changing experiences in the First World War. The modern-day story centers on Greg, who, with his longtime best friend attending another school, comes into his own. He makes friends with Faith, a sheltered and religious girl he meets while exploring and photographing the grounds of Graveney Hall, the shell house of the title, the skeletal remains of a stately home ravaged by fire in 1917. Meanwhile, Greg's thoughts are increasingly occupied by the self-possessed Jordan, an accomplished athlete whose reserved ways hide a piercing intellect and whose friendship takes on a romantic cast. The other narrative thread concerns Edmund Pearson, heir to Graveney Hall and an aspiring poet, whose world has been rocked by two events: the Great War and even more significantly his passionate affair with a fellow soldier, Alex. Scenes of Edmund and Alex at the front are compelling, but when Edmund visits his family (whom he now perceives as stifling and shallow) the novel takes on a callow, sniping tone, as in this description of his intended fianc‚e: "She had a way of looking at him from under her eyelashes, doe-eyed. Presumably she thought it was appealing." The melodrama of these later episodes stands in contrast to the wonder and compassion that illuminate the bulk of this book. Ages 12-16.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up-The setting for the puzzle and conflict of this story is the empty shell of an 18th-century mansion. Greg, 17, stumbles upon these ruins and encounters Faith, a devout Christian. The teens become interested in Edmund Pearson, the son of the wealthy, landed gentry member who owned the estate in 1917 when fire destroyed it. The two young men's stories are juxtaposed throughout the book as each one struggles to establish his sexual identity, determine the goodness in life, and decide whether or not there is a God. Edmund, just 18 when he enlists in World War I, meets Alex, and finds himself in love. After Alex is killed, Edmund loses all sense of purpose and propriety, returning home to greet parents whose only desire is for him to marry their chosen mate and provide an heir for Graveney. Overwhelmed and frustrated, he sets fire to his home and tries to drown himself. When the gardener's son saves him, he leaves a suicide note for his parents and leaves the estate. While trying to uncover the mystery of Edmund's past, Greg begins to reflect on his relationship with his friend Jordan and becomes entangled in cliched conversations with Faith about the existence of God. He has casual sex with a girl just to prove to himself that his feelings for Jordan are wrong. By the novel's end, Faith is seriously questioning her beliefs, Greg remains uncertain of who he is, and only Jordan seems to have a sense of what is important in life. Newbery's book begins as a fascinating tale of mystery and wonder involving characters readers care about. Unfortunately, the threads are not woven into a satisfying whole and teens will be left with the feeling that the story is incomplete.
Joanne K. Cecere, Monroe-Woodbury High School, Central Valley, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Just get past the first 50 pages...
By D. A. Matthew
If you can get past the first 50 pages of this book, you will find that it starts to grow on you. I put the book away, came back after a week, plowed on--and then I finished the last 3/4 of it in a flurry, needing to know what happened next.
As you read, the characters become more alive and rounded, and their interests and experiences more developed, nuanced, and believable. The novel also has an ending that keeps you kind of guessing as to what eventually Greg tells himself about his own sexual identity. It is not a foregone conclusion that he will "come out" to himself or continue to think of himself as "definitely not" gay. The author has created in Greg a teenager who is still able to be quite turned on, physically, by girls, but who hasn't yet discerned whether his attraction to Jordan is something more than just aesthetic (he's a truly beautiful swimmer for Greg to watch and photograph) and platonic (he's a low-key but deeply-thinking friend).
About the novel's language: I am an American, and this book is thoroughly British, so I have no idea whether the dialogue is appropriately realistic. Do people say "yobs" and "gits"? I didn't care, because as I read, I became more convinced that I could see it happening.
The novel tries to weave together some big themes besides sexual identity, including the value of religion (trust in God vs. trust in the physical world, including sex), the tragic fighting of World War I, and, underlying both of those issues, the meaning/meaninglessness of suffering. I was skeptical that all this could be pulled off, but the author succeeded. Only occasionally are there too text-book-like phrases (such as the "3 questions of theodicy" put into the mouths of "normal" teenagers--but hey, I kind of like that "too-smart-for-real-teens" kind of talk once in a while, too. Think Dawson's Creek).
As I reflect on the book, some of the minor characters stand out most brightly. Greg's crude friend Gizzard is completely imaginable, as is Dean, the punk who causes him problems, and Dean's selfish mother. Their brief appearances deserve notice. Even more brightly drawn, but given too small a part, is Tanya. Tanya at first repulses Greg with her blatant sexual desire; she later proves to be a refuge for him (the most descriptive language about sex I've read in a teen novel occurs in Tanya's and Greg's encounter); finally, near the end, she appears in Greg's wet dream, her body blending (as in a dream) with the body of Jordan, the swimmer. I may go out on a limb here and state that Newbery seems able to create more believable "bad" characters than "good" ones. But it's said that it's harder to write good characters than bad.
Finally, as someone who did some "bargaining with God" in my own teen years, I can say that I found believable this novel's recurrent issues of wanting to believe in God, asking God for a sign (especially when something tragic occurs), and yet still basically thinking that God probably doesn't exist. The answers to the novel's questions are left hanging in the air--literally!--at the novel's conclusion, the meaning of which will be well debated by those who have read the book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Worth at least one read, but problematic
By Marauder The Slash Nymph
This was one of those books that disappointed me because I got the feeling that it had the potential to be so much better.
I should probably say that I'm older than the age group this book is intended for, which may bias some of my views. For young teenagers who don't have much exposure to gay fiction, I could see this being a good starting point.
One of the best things going for this book is its page-turning nature; I put off some work for an hour and a half towards the end because I just had to finish it. The ambiguity of Greg's sexuality is also a nice change from the standard; having been through my own long sexual identity crisis, I thought that it showed a nice range of doubts and questions.
A major problem, for me, lies in the relationship between Edmund and Alex. This is one of those books where we know they're in love because we're told so, not because it's evident from their behavior. It's obvious that they like each other and are attracted to each other, but their relationship should have been given more time to develop so the reader could feel the complete emotional impact. Alex in particular deserves much more time than he's given; his "alternate ending" to Edmund's poem hints at a lighter aspect of their relationship that could have balanced some of the angst.
Edmund's family and the family of the girl they want him to marry, Phillipa, are cardboard cutouts of stodgy and unaccepting Representatives of Oppressing Society. The scene where Edmund talks to the minister is a tired retread of a lot of better-written scenes that pit homosexuality against religion, to the point where I found myself successfully predicting the gist of the next line the whole way through.
The last part of Edmund's story, however, stuck in my mind, and belongs in a better book where the emotions are developed enough to suit its highly dramatic nature.
Faith and Jordan didn't fascinate me very much as characters, though they were just interesting enough not to be boring. A lot of the time I wanted to get back to the Edwardian part of the story, but when I did I was disappointed.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
'The Shell House', Hachneyed, cliched and BAD
By A Customer
There are almost no words to express how bad I thourght this book was.
It is a very nice love story but I am convinced that if the two couples were hetrosexual rather than homosexual then nobody would think that it was any good. Being able to write about gay people takes neither wit, talent nor skill merly a little imagination, which is no recomendation at all.
The prose was awful and if possible the dialogue was even worse. I hated the war peoms and feel that the opinions expressed about the first world war, however valid in themselves, were both hackneyed and cliched with no basis on real experience or research.
The only saving grace of the whole book was that the author didn't use the traditional streotypes of gay men, but any merit achieved by this was distroyed by her use of streotipical religious charcters.
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