The Serpentine Cave

By Jill Paton Walsh

Book Overview

When Marion's mother is silenced first by a stroke and then by death she is left confronting the chaotic detritus of a life obsessively devoted to art. she has left it too late to ask the crucial questions about scenes confusedly remembered from her childhood and above all about the identity of her own father 'lost in the war'. Out of the hundreds of paintings in her mother's studio one a portrait of a young man is inscribed 'For Marion'. Is this her father? And who was he?

Marion's search takes her to the Cornish town of St Ives. In the remote and closeknit town where communities of fisherfolk and artists have coexisted for many years she learns of a tragedy which is intrinsically tied up with her father's life. Over fifty years before the St Ives lifeboat went down with all hands bar one. Marion must delve deep into the past to discover the identity of a man she never knew a nd in so doing confront the demons which have tortured her own adult life.

The Serpentine Cave is an imagined story containing a true one - a powerful novel about memory and loss birth and rebirth and past regrets which still have the power to plague the present.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 055299720X
• ISBN13: 9780552997201
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Black Swan Books, Limited
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

searching for herself

The Serpentine Cave is a beautifully written story about a middle aged woman's search for her unknown father. Set in Cornwall, this novel evokes the spirit of this special region of England, and is a lovely study of a woman's search for her self in the context of her own past and that of her homeland. Jill Paton Walsh is a gifted writer. Also recommended is A Parcel of Patterns, which centers upon the plague village of Eyem.

Well written and intriguing

I first read Paton Walsh with the completion of Dorothy l. Sayers mystery novel, THRONES, DOMINATIONS and thought she wrote very well. This novel is also well-written; the characters are believable. The situation of never finding out who your father was is a little less believable, but as another review states, the artist character who keeps the secret, very well, could be the type to keep a secret to her grave. I liked the use of a real story from the coast of England as a part of this novel. The people of the village were intriguing as well as the major characters. Marion, the protagonist, finally finds her father but more she finds herself. She realizes that life is what is made of it, and we are responsible for making a happy life. And we are more like our parents than we ever want to be.