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A Petrol Scented Spring

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About this listen

The day after her wedding, Donella Ferguson Watson wakes up shackled to a man haunted by the past. The lonely days become weeks, months. Her husband, Hugh, a prison doctor, will offer no explanation for their sexless marriage. She comes to suspect the answer lies with a hunger-striking suffragette who was force fed and held in solitary confinement. But what really happened between Hugh and his prisoner patient?

©2015 Ajay Close (P)2016 W.F. Howes Ltd Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage

Critic reviews

"A fascinating insight into one of the most compelling stories in the history of the women's suffrage movement." ( The Times)
"Holds a deserved place in the Pantheon of Scotland's exciting contemporary novelists." (Val McDermid)
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I rely enjoyed the content relating to the suffragette movement but attention wavered as the book became more smoothy.
enjoyed as audible though. excellent quality and performance

started well but fizzled out

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This story doesn't really offer any insights into the women's suffragist movement - in my opinion, suffragism is used simply as a peg on which to hang a story of the conflicting attitudes which can develop between captor and captive.

The rest of the story is a bit of a potted social history of bohemianism in the affluent classes as well as a rambling investigation into sexual needs, desire and obsession.

The fact that the characters are based on real people is not particularly important - their stories are nowhere near unique and I would guess that lots and lots of people had, and continue to have, similar issues to deal with pretty well all the time.

The narrator is probably an actress and, for me, the narration was far too actressy. The style would have been more appropriate for a live performance in front of an audience.

A rather uninteresting story about sex and power

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