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Alan Bennett's selection of English verse by his favourite poets: Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman, W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Philip Larkin is accompanied by his own enlivening commentary and was recorded before a live audience. In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen more than seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biographical detail.
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Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, and the streets are not a woman's territory; so she becomes confined in her flat. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.
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Stone Mattress
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A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. Vintage Atwood creativity, intelligence, and humor: think Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace.
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In summer 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256 mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born.
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The Complete Short Stories is a collection to be loved and cherished, from one of the finest short-story writers of the twentieth century. From the cruel irony of A member of the Family to the fateful echoes of The Go-Away Bird and the unexpectedly sinister The Girl I Left Behind Me, in settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark coolly probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent.
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Exceptional reading of substantial short stories
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Dubliners
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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in 1882 in Dublin but spent most of his life living with Nora Barnacle in various parts of Europe. Apart from a collection of verse, Dubliners was his first published work in 1914. In Dubliners, Joyce portrays quite brilliantly human relationships in Ireland at the turn of the century. His characters are so vital and exciting and the stories so fresh, evocative, and entertaining that they could well have been written today.
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Life, Death and Dublin
- By Francis on 13-04-13
Summary
Moments of change, chance encounters, twists of fate that create a new way of thinking or being: The stories in Dear Life, by Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, build to form a radiant, indelible portrait of just how dangerous and strange ordinary life can be. The collection includes four powerful pieces, "autobiographical in Feeling", set during the time of Munro's own childhood, in the area where she grew up.
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What listeners say about Dear Life
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Alison
- 06-12-13
Very Gentle & Enjoyable
I got this because I felt I had an Alice Munro shaped gap in my listening/reading, plus I love short stories. I especially like short stories where not an awful lot happens - and these fit that bill well, too. In fact, her story telling is so cleverly subtle, there are actual plots (usually - others meander rather less purposefully, but that's fine too), you just don't always see the plot until quite some way in.
Some of the stories were a little too inconclusive even for my relaxed approach to a tale - but I enjoyed them all very much anyway.
Highly evocative of time and place.
The narrators were very good, with voices that changed well for different stories - especially the male reader; and with gentle styles that suited the writing.
16 people found this helpful
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- MS
- 16-03-15
Highly recommended listening
I come back to these stories again and again, always with renewed and immense pleasure. Alice Munro's writing is unsurpassed.
9 people found this helpful
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- Charmian Supra
- 15-01-21
Highly recommend - articulate, insightful
Excellent, as always. A true story teller with insight, eloquence and empathy. Worth the read.
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- Helen
- 03-12-20
Compelling, absorbing listening
Please can we have more Alice Munro on Audible? Profound, perfect, ordinary stories. I’ve read so many of her books. The narration is excellent and Liza Ross’s voice suits Alice Munro’s characters perfectly. I keep looking to see how much time is left I don’t want it to run out yet.
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- Emma
- 04-06-15
What a disappointment!
I don't like writing negative reviews, because taste in books is very personal and subjective, but I found these short stories lacking in depth, emotion and substance, the characters were cold and lifeless and there was an undercurrent of unease throughout. For me, reading is a form of escapism. I want to be transported to happier places, with a gripping storyline and believable characters. Sadly, this book hadn't a single one of these ingredients.
5 people found this helpful