The Realm of Shells

(Paperback)

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A delicately balanced novel of childhood secrets, hidden treasure and the lengths people will go to in order to protect or discover what they deem valuable.
The Margate Shell Grotto really exists: a serpentine corridor decorated in swirling patterns using 50 varieties of shell, and whoever made it created an enigma that has puzzled historians and speliologists for generations. Though it has been suggested that the cave might be Phoenician in origin, the fact that most of the iconography is Egyptian and Eastern suggests a more recent, 19th century origin.

Fanny Newlove is new to Margate, the daughter of Evangelist parents and spurned by the local children as being from the 'sheers' here, anywhere north of London is considered foreign territory. When her brother finds an entrance to a hidden grotto on land their father has been advised to buy, the discovery sets into motion events that will rock this outsider family.

The shells on the walls and the elaborate altar suggest a religious function so why do the locals speak of buried treasure And why does dour young writing master Davidson condemn shells as daemonic, upsetting Fanny's father's Christian sensibilities by invoking the Kabbalah's 'realm of shells', the basest plane of physical existence and hellish world of hidden devils

As different people stake their claim to the grotto including Fanny's father, whose principles have been outweighed by the lure of tourist money Fanny will learn that in the adult world, the nature of value is never simple.

Reviews

'This novel is very good indeed -- confident and vividly energetic in a way that is entirely captivating!I cannot recommend this novel too highly.' Daily Telegraph 'Sonia Overall manages to tell a conventional story with remarkable originality!Her confidence is astonishing!It takes a writer of rare ability to produce a novel as good as this. She has made the grade.' Glasgow Herald 'While Fanny's voice, full of onomatopoeic accounts of household noise and incident, is thoroughly engaging, some of the best things here!are perhaps the least Victorian in character. It may be that Overall will eventually come to regard the 19th century as a constraint on her very considerable imagination.' The Independent 'An engrossing, accomplished tale of lost innocence which tiptoes elegantly towards its tragic denouement with genuine literary flair.' Easy Living

Author Bio

Sonia Overall grew up in Ely and later moved to Canterbury, where she studied Literature and Philosophy. She lives in Kent, with her husband, a fine artist. She has published two novels, A Likeness and The Realm of Shells.