The Storyteller By The Sea is the second adult novel by award-winning British author, Phyllida Shrimpton. Melody has lived all of her thirty-four years in a beachside cottage called Spindrift, in the village of Shelly right near Exeter. When she was three, her baby brother, Milo arrived to much fanfare, and Melody was instantly smitten. A year later, her cousin Juliana was born to her stern, unapproachable Aunt Isobel and lovely Uncle Gordon. The summers that Juliana spent at Spindrift made them firm friends.

When Melody was seven, her father Daniel left, unable to cope with the idea of a backward son, leaving her mother Flora and Melody to raise Milo. Melody wondered why Milo’s delight in life could not be enough for their father. They never saw Milo as a burden: the joy he brought them eclipsed any inconvenience. Life in Spindrift was always happy and carefree, even if Flora had to take in darning and ironing to make ends meet. No amount of cajoling by Isobel or Gordon could convince them to leave their shabby cottage.

While Juliana’s wealthy parents ensured she had a top-notch education, an exclusive school and University, Melody willingly gave up her higher education aspirations to stay in Spindrift with Milo and Flora. During a particularly severe winter, when library visits were impossible, Melody kept her brother amused with stories she made up, and thereafter took inspiration from her beachcombing finds to create interesting tales for the boy who was, by this time, less mobile and more confined. “Why limit Milo to the characters in a book, when there were a thousand stories she could think of to make his small world a magical place?”

When Melody lost Flora, and then Milo, within two years of each other, she clung to every reminder she had there in Spindrift: Flora’s terry dressing gown hung on a hook behind her door; Milo’s wheelchair in his bedroom; Daniel’s gum boots by the door. Her part-time work at the shop allowed her to keep roaming the beach, bringing home flotsam and jetsam, and spinning stories around them, telling Milo, even though he was only there in spirit.

It's true that what Melody collected and kept was seen as a problem by her cousin Juliana, who kept offering to help her clear it out. Melody knew that Juliana didn’t understand the importance of what she kept. But now, in mid-1988, maybe it is going to be a problem…

Juliana, somewhat estranged, is insisting on a visit, and Melody dreads her repeated offers of help. She will have to reveal the awful news that Shelly is to be “regenerated” and the developers will be demolishing the row of cottages. She and all her neighbours, her only friends, will have to relocate, but Flora and Milo, still there with her: will she lose that connection? Where will Big Joe Wiley, her neighbour since childhood, and the man with whom she has secretly been in love, go?

Juliana has her own troubling news to tell. And is it now time to tell the deep dark secret she stumbled across when sorting her mother’s papers?

Shrimpton easily evokes her era and setting, particularly the 1950’s mindset about teen pregnancy and physical and mental disability. Her characters have depth and appeal, and it’s wonderful to see Juliana’s laterally-thought-out solution to Melody’s hoarding problem.

The secret that Melody has discovered will keep even the most astute reader guessing, and the plot takes some unexpected turns. It is debatable whether the epilogue was really necessary: a neatly-tied bow that is perhaps overkill. A moving and uplifting read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Aria & Aries.