Coming Home

Four days of not even visiting WordPress. What is happening to me. I am really getting so lazy to blog.

I just finished rereading Rosamunde Pilcher’s Coming Home. Yeah, you read it right,  I read it back in 2012. I have most of her books in my shelf since I discovered her upon the recommendation of a friend.

I wrote this review back in 2011 when I started looking for her books. I am reposting it here. It’s part of a long, long review that I did back then. I wrote this last November 24, 2011

I first encountered Rosamunde  Pilcher upon the recommendation of a friend whom I met at a book club three years ago. I got curious because for a guy to rave about  one particular author or  book, she really must be good. So I looked for a copy of The Shell Seekers, one of her well-known and much-loved books. I was hooked and from then on, I tried to look for more of her books every time I got the chance to visit Booksale.  Last month, I found four more of her earlier works and bought them all. The funny thing is I was able to finish three in the three days that I was indisposed. Her stories are not your run of the mill love stories. They speak of family relationships, heartbreak, friendships, betrayals, forgiveness and love. Once you start reading  her books, you get to absorb the characters like they are your next-door neighbors or your favorite cousin or your beloved brother or sister.  And seeing her describe Cornwall and Scotland with such beauty and grace makes you long to go there and see the snow-capped vistas and azure skies, it makes you stay at the beach all day long and  just look  at the water and go home with the thought of a nice hot cup of tea and fish and chips prepared by a loyal housekeeper who treats you as a long-lost daughter.  It makes you even curious how a Biro pen looks like because the character you’ve read won’t have no other except a Biro. It makes you long to buy rose-scented soaps and lavender bubble baths and stay relaxed for an hour or two immersed in warm and scented water and wrap yourself with pretty thick bath towels afterward.  You think of the first chill of autumn and the countryside awashed with pretty flowers. Short of saying, I want to live in Scotland and  get to explore Porthkerris despite the rains and the cold. I want to see the  silver hues of the raindrops  on a cold and chilly morning. Such are what you can imagine, just reading her books.

Coming Home is one such book that you would want to reread again and again. It’s a wonderful journey of a teenager left behind by  her parents back in 1935 in Cornwall.  The struggles of being away from one’s immediate family although she found loyal friends who treated her as one of the members of their family. She was also taken cared of by her aunts from both sides and grew up to be a responsible adult despite all the setbacks. It’s pre-war Britain until the end of the  WWII. I just love it.

 

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