The Shrimp and the Anemone
By (Author) L.P. Hartley
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
1st July 2005
3rd April 2000
FF Classics
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.912
Paperback
240
Width 110mm, Height 178mm, Spine 18mm
200g
There is a delicious irony and humour in this Jamesian story about Eustace and Hilda, an Edwardian brother and sister, with its famous opening scene as nine-year-old Eustace watches an anemone devour a shrimp in a tidepool among the rocks on a Norfolk beach during the summer holidays. A shadow begins to be cast over the children's innocent conversations and gaucherie, revealing their anxieties about themselves, and the constraints of their cosseted lives, as the outside world - of other children, dancing lessons, adults, illness, funerals, money, excursions in landaus, future schools - impinges in Eustace and Hilda's intimacies and fantasies.