Customer Reviews:
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 Never dissappointed August 26, 2008
I've read all of her books. Wish she were still alive to write more -- I am so selfish. Love everything she has written and miss her . Son Robin Pilcher is working on carrying on his own talent with new novels and is a storyteller worth reading. Miss Rosamunde, and I am excited about Robin Pilcher's work. thanks for letting me share.
A Quick Vacation Read April 5, 2007
5 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is the tale of a woman who's on a personal journey to learn what place she has in her father's busy life. On the way she must learn her own place in the world.
 A Second Look January 5, 2007
Rosamunde Pilcher has long been an author who can generate stories that leap off the page with vivid characters who have real struggles and triumphs. "Another View", an early work, is a fast-paced read, but fairly common ground for any reader familiar with other Pilcher novels.
The reader is immediately introduced to Emma Litton, a nineteen-year-old virtual orphan, who has always played second fiddle to her father's career as an artist. Shuttled off to boarding school, then a nanny job in Paris while her father, Ben Litton, travels the world to paint, she is ready to move back home. She longs to know the place she has in her father's life, and moves back to Cornwall, only to be disappointed yet again. It isn't until Emma is willing to do a little character exploration of her own, to know what she wants for her life, to be able to understand the place she has in her father's heart.
"Another View" is a typical Pilcher novel, well-written with believable characters. Yet it is often too predictable and rushes to a happy-ending conclusion within the last few pages. It is a perfect quick holiday read but hardly reaches the grandeur and sustenance of Pilcher's better works, such as "Coming Home", "The Shell Seekers", and "September".
 I Thought it Would Be a Woman's Book January 5, 2006
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
My wife bought this book because of the author, but set it aside when she saw the 1968 copyright. She had read Winter Soltice and is now reading Shell Seekers, and loves them both. This is my first Rosamunde Pilcher. We're in Germany on an extended visit, and I finished reading (my more manly) Grisham's The Broker, and had nothing else to read. For some reason I expected Another View to be a romance novel, but it was much more. And, the fact that it was written so long ago didn't lessen it at all. The only time-sensitive part was the excessive (in my view) amount of smoking. Everyone smokes in the book. But, of course, many did back in 1968.
As a father of two grown girls, I especially enjoyed the father-daughter struggles. Of course I'm not a famous artist like Ben is in the story, but still, fathers are often taken away from their children by their work. And, often, we have regrets for that lost time.
I thought the plot was well structured for the most part and I wondered if this might have been her first novel. If so, what an exceptional job for a first book.
Early Pilcher May 11, 2003
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
Rosamunde Pilcher wrote this short and sweet novel in the late 60s, and it foreshadows her later, larger works of brilliant character studies that bely some fairly complicated plots.This particular story takes place mostly at the Cornish seaside, one of Pilcher's favorite venues. It opens, however, in Paris, where the beautiful, fey, and slightly muddled Emma Litton awaits her plane back to England. Having spent many years in France as a nanny, Emma now yearns for her homeland--and the fulfillment of a desire that has obviously been with her all her life: She wishes to bond with her famous artist father, Ben. Emma's sudden and unexpected meeting at the airport with her step-brother Cristo, whom she knew during one of Ben's brief marriages, but has not seen in many years, allows us to see her needy and sensitive side, even as others observe only a hip young Sixties mod. The remainder of the brief book takes place in her father's studio-cum-cottage on the seaside, as Emma settles in as daughter, housekeeper, muse, and, eerily, almost as a wife to her elusive father. Will it work? Can Emma get over her childlike fantasy of being Daddy's Little Girl and get on with her life? Will she notice the worthy young man whose heart she has captured? Or will she lose him too in her fruitless desire to create the family she never had? Without the deep substance of her later books, nevertheless, this sweet Pilcher offering is well worth reading--especially when narrated by Sian Thomas, who captures the quiet, brooding tone just right. I recommend this lovely tale to all Pilcher fans.
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