The Shrimp and the Anemone

The Shrimp and the Anemone

L. P. Hartley2000
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.
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