Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | LP FIC PILCHER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | LP Pilcher, R. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Rosamunde Pilcher was born Rosamunde Scott on September 22, 1924 in Lelant, Cornwall, England. When World War II broke out, she left school and went to work for the Foreign Office. In 1944, she joined the Women's Royal Naval Service and was stationed in Ceylon when the war ended. Her first short story was published while she was serving in Ceylon. She married Graham Pilcher in 1946.
Her first novel, Half-Way to the Moon, was published in 1949 under the penname Jane Fraser. She continued writing books under that penname into the early 1960s, but in 1955 she also published her first book under her own name entitled A Secret to Tell. Her best-known novel, The Shell Seekers, was published in 1987. Her other novels included Sleeping Tiger, The End of the Summer, Wild Mountain Thyme, Voices in Summer, September, Coming Home, and Winter Solstice. She also wrote short stories. She died after a short illness on February 6, 2019 at the age of 94.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
September in Scotland is a little like April in Paris, according to Pitcher. And since she lives there, she ought to know. So in this fat, cuddly semi-sequel to The Shell Seekers (1988), she sends a brace of interrelated highlanders invitations to a ball--one to be held one Indian Summer night at a manor house near the village of Strathcroy--and then shows what happens in the months before the champagne flows. As before, Pilcher's central character is an elderly gentlewoman, here Violet Aird, who's retired to a cottage on the local laird's estate to watch her garden grow--and to see son Edmund make a hash of his second marriage to lovely young Virginia. The sources of marital discord are wee Henry, whom Edmund intends for boarding school against overprotective Virginia's wishes; and Pandora Blair, the laird's smashing sister, who ran away from home some 20 years before after having an affair with Edmund, and who has now returned (Virginia fears) to rekindle banked fires. Then there's dear, dumpy Alexa, Edmund's daughter (by his first wife), who's fallen in love for the very first time with Noel Keeling (Penelope Keeling's schmucky son in The Shell Seekers, here whitewashed); and Vi's friend, Archie Balmerino, the laird who's come upon hard times, with a leg lost fighting the I.R.A. in Ireland; and the faithful old retainer, nanny Edie, who's saddled with her half. crazed cousin Lottie when she escapes from the loony bin the night of the ball. Of course, everything gets sorted out come September--since, as ever in Pilcher's fiction, there isn't that much to sort out to begin with. And though there are far too many slim blond beauties to keep track of, Pilcher fans will revel in the easy intimacy created between character and reader, and in the prevailing tastefulness of it all--which is the one ingredient Pilcher has added to the commercial women's fiction formula. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.