Waiting for Sunrise cover art

Waiting for Sunrise

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Waiting for Sunrise

By: William Boyd
Narrated by: Jack Rowan
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £11.20

Buy Now for £11.20

Brought to you by Penguin.

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city's preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is immediately drawn to her, unaware of how destructive the consequences of their subsequent affair will be. One year later, home in London, Lysander finds himself entangled in the dangerous web of wartime intelligence - a world of sex, scandal and spies that is slowly, steadily, permeating every corner of his life...

© William Boyd 2012 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

 20th Century Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World War I Fiction England
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
I'm very much enjoying william Boyd's books at the moment and this one did not disappoint. It has his signature blend of recreating an image of a particular place and time in your in your memory (here Vienna, London and Geneva 1913-15) whilst filling it with interesting characters and language that is a pleasure to read/listen to.

Jack Rowan does a good job overall and he has a nice voice. His English accents are great, but foreign pronunciations need some work. Quite refreshing to have a novel like Boyd's narrated in a cockney twang.

Very enjoyable.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I read this book a little while ago and suggested it for my upcoming book club. I got it on audible to remind myself about the plot etc and was hugely disappointed by the reader. His accent, pronunciation and pace were so poor it jarred. Some readers are better than others but this was something else. This is the second William Boyd I have read. His storytelling is wonderful. His characters fit the period and are beautifully drawn. I am a great fan of audible but shall stick to the book for William Boyd in future.

Frustrating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed the narration most of the time but there were some jarring mispronunciations particularly of place names. I found the story absorbing and exciting but I would have preferred a clearer ending. Perhaps the whole point of the book is that people alter the ‘truth’ so that they can get on with their lives.

Complicated

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The reader seemed to be incapable of accents and pronounced various words quite incorrectly. This is the first time I have had to complain about this on Audible. This may have influenced my enjoyment of the book itself which I found not to be up to Boyd’s usual standard.

Poor performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’m a fan of William Boyd ( Any Human Heart is terrific ) but this book was ruined by the narrator’s complete lack of ability to do any accents at all apart from cockney, to vary the the different characters voices ( one was so grating it hurt to listen to him ) and finally he couldn’t actually pronounce words. Quadrangle became quandrangle and he pronounced the ‘ l ‘ in Folkestone to name two of many. It did distract from the story when the narrator couldn’t actually read or got the emphasis on the wrong syllable of a word.

Interesting story ruined by awful narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews