The Realm of Shells

by Sonia Overall

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 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.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

I was born in Ely, the heart of the Cambridgeshire fens, in 1973.

I moved to Canterbury to study at the University of Kent, where I completed a combined BA hons in English Literature and Philosophy.

After my MA I endured the usual rounds of unemployment, underpaid jobs, temping and griping, but I kept up with the writing, penning some more novellas and experimenting with dialogue. I took a job as a lowly bookseller in Waterstone's Canterbury.

After a spell at various levels on the Waterstone's ladder I was taken on by my tireless agent Simon Trewin, and got a lucky break with the lovely Philip Gwyn Jones, then editor of Flamingo and now head of his own publishing house Portobello. A two-book deal followed, and A Likeness and The Realm of Shells were published under the new Fourth Estate / Harper Perennial banner.

I married artist and lecturer James Frost in 2002, who I met in my bookseller days. We have a son, Rowan. Unable to escape the lure of East Kent, we now live in Sandwich.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard of the shell grotto at Margate when an Aussie friend, living in England, took her two children there on holiday. She'd been fascinated by it for years, and decided she needed to see it before returning to Australia. She told me this book was about the discovery of the grotto and a bit about the history. Even though the book didn't enchant me that much, I want to travel to Margate to see the grotto myself.

[Bookguide · Rating 2 out of 5]

Growing up in Margate, I only learned about the shell grotto and eventually visited it when I was a young teenager. It was rather unprepossessing with a ramshackle entrance in a rather seedy area of Cliftonville. The shells had faded to an unattractive greyish colour, stained by the smoke from the gas lamps used to light the way for visitors before the advent of electric lighting. Yet it still had a certain magic and mystery for a child who had never seen anything like it before. Sonia Overall captures this magic in the way she describes the grotto's discovery by the youngest daughter of the family who ran the school in whose grounds it was found. The book was very promising with all the ingredients for an interesting period piece, set as it was in a Margate which was perhaps at its high point of fashion. Yet choosing a young girl as a narrator at the same time limits what can be described and yet allows her to go unnoticed and thus report on things which she would have missed if she had been older. Paradoxically she has the freedom to go out to play with her brother Joshua and the gardener's son George, listening in to conversations between her sisters and parents, but is unable to accompany them to balls or visiting or understand the implications of her sister's secret courting or the loss of reputation this would entail if it were discovered.

Other opportunities to describe society at the time are also missed as the Newlove family is such a well-ordered chapel-going family. A little more period colour with descriptions of dress and the Assembly Rooms would have added to the historical flavour of the book; Frances wasn't allowed any further than the library. In fact, I kept forgetting which period it was set in; it could have been anything from 1750 to the Edwardian period. There also seems to have been far too much emphasis on cold and rain for "sunny Margate" and a sycamore tree losing its leaves at the beginning of September is also rather improbable unless 1835 was a particularly wintery year. I was also not at all convinced by the servants' accents which did not ring true as a Kentish accent; they sounded rather northern to me. I was also rather surprised to see the description of the family as 'northerners' in the blurb at the front of the book as they have previously lived in London.

All in all, The Realm of Shells left me disappointed. Lizzie was one-dimensionally horrible and Mary was unalterably sweet. Fanny takes an immediate dislike to the captain and there are a couple of incidents where her original impression is more than confirmed, yet I am unconvinced by the dialogue and I didn't feel any real sense of menace. Equally, all encounters with da Costa were too indirect to make any great impression. Too many of the emotional upheavals took place behind closed doors and out of Fanny's reach and comprehension. I'm beginning to realise how well Jane Austen did this! The main disillusionment, however, is how little is resolved at the end; everything rather peters out and finishes off with an aged Frances writing to somebody writing a history of the grotto, hinting at untold secrets. I am left feeling frustrated and cheated.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on the true finding of an underground world of shell covered corridors and rooms in Margate during the 1830s the author has given us an interesting picture of what might have been. Mr and Mrs Newlove set up school in Margate and their son discovers an underground world in the grounds. Foster uses the real names of those that lived there and in the area to make her story as authentic as possible. The story talks of treasure, secrets, and scheming neighbours. The narrative is cleverly told from the viewpoint of the youngest daughter with what is happening and what she is thinking alongside each other. The novel ends with a copy of the original last letter ever written by Frances Newlove in 1897 which hints at mysteries yet untold. I really enjoyed this book.

[Herolike · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the most ridiculous books that I've ever read. The testimony of a child is undermined rather than be presented as illuminating due to the dull characters meant to be observed.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this a while ago but recall it as a strange book that never really captured my interest. The protagonist's voice doesn't ring true.