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Trio

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Trio

By: William Boyd
Narrated by: Hannah Arterton
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About this listen

A producer. A novelist. An actress.

It is summer in 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a rackety Swingin' '60s British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives.

As the film is shot, with its usual drastic ups and downs, so does our trio's private, secret world begin to take over their public one. Pressures build inexorably - someone's going to crack. Or maybe they all will.

From one of Britain's best-selling and best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel that asks the vital questions: what makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't?

©2020 William Boyd (P)2020 Penguin Audio Fiction Historical Fiction Literature & Fiction

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Critic reviews

"William Boyd has probably written more classic books than any of his contemporaries." (Daily Telegraph)

"Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation." (Sebastian Faulks)
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reader was unable to pronounce frank words and names or Lytton Strachey's name. this spoilt the audiobook

reader

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William Boyd's writing is superb and once again he has come up with a multi-faceted plot to entertain me. I wish I had bought the book rather than the audio because I would simply have revelled in the words, rather than wincing at the mispronounciations.
Previous reviewer have been harsh about the reader, Hannah Arterton. I found her voice pleasant and she captured the characters well but as with many audiobooks, the pronunciation of almost every French word made me cringe. I find it mystifying that a language so closely linked with our own is a stranger for most voice actors.and I also wonder how these audiobooks are produced, does the actor simply sit with a tape recorder and read the book in total, with no help? Incidentally, the reviewer who sounded off about Cap Ferrat was wrong. This was indeed Cap Ferret, west of Bordeaux, best to check these things out before whingeing.
It took me a while to engage with the characters in Trio. I find it is often the case with William Boyd, he gives us flawed, complex characters and gradually unreels the layers. Certainly by the end I was anxious for each one of them and I was relieved that there was a good outcome for at least one of them. I thought the portrayal of the alcoholic woman was excellent, William is able to get right into the female psyche.

Superb writing

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I love William Boyd. This book was cleverly written and interesting following a number of characters in parallel. It took a while to get into the story but once I did I enjoyed its twists and turns. The narration however was very poor. When I first listened to it I became convinced it was an automated voice , the emphasis on the words in the sentences was bizarre and meant they didn’t flow and the pronunciation of French names appalling , the wise I’ve heard. I nearly gave up but a friend whose read the book said it was worth it. I managed to overcome it but the dreadful grammar and sentence structure really irritated me. I’ve no idea why this would be allowed. I even wondered if it was meant to be ironic or clever but if it was it was lost on me.

Interesting story but poor narration

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I enjoyed this book , in fact each story ended too soon and too sharply. if it were a film I'd want to rewrite the endings. all 3 would end with the desires fulfilled instead of one hidden in a nunnery, one dead, and one still in hope of a bit of gay sex. they should have had it all

3 lives, each having the wrong ending.

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William Boyd is great story teller. Let down by a reader whose French in non-existent and has not been edited.

So badly edited.

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