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Ending Up

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Ending Up

By: Kingsley Amis
Narrated by: Fergus Craig
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

At Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage in the English countryside, five elderly people live together in rancorous disharmony. Adela Bastable bosses the house, as her brother Bernard passes his days thinking up malicious schemes against the baby-talking Marigold and secret drinker Shorty, while kindly George lies bedridden upstairs. The mismatched quintet keep their spirits alive by bickering and waiting for grandchildren to visit at Christmas. But the festive season does not herald goodwill to all at Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage. Disaster and chaos, it seems, are just around the corner ...

Told with Amis's piercing wit and humanity, Ending Up (1974) is a wickedly funny black comedy of the indignities of old age.

© Kingsley Amis 2011 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

 Classics Dark Humour Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Comedy Funny
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Most relevant
I actually came to really like the narration of this swift brilliant book. There is some slight, and I mean slight, pausing for some words but the tone is perfect throughout and the well timed humour delivered brilliantly.

Hilarious and well read

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The reading here is strangely hesitant, insecure and always on the edge of stumbling over itself, as if the narrator were sight reading something he doesn’t quite understand. It’s all very odd, and makes for an uninvolving read through one of Kingsley Amis’ best books.

Wonderful book, but...

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Good story ruined by inadequate, halting narration with no ear for emphasis and appalling failures of pronunciation. Cheap voice caricatures rather than characterisations.

Shocking lack if preparation with faltering failures of emphasis.

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