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Fool's Sanctuary

A Novel

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Fool's Sanctuary

By: Jennifer Johnston
Narrated by: Terry Donnelly
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About this listen

Jennifer Johnston's powerful novel of 1920s Ireland and one woman, on her deathbed, looking back on the tragic day that changed the course of her life

In northwest Ireland, eighteen-year-old Miranda Martin lives in a country estate home with her father. A recent widower, he spends his days consumed by a project to reforest their tranquil Donegal surroundings. Miranda, on the cusp of adulthood, spends her summer engrossed in a chaste but passionate courtship with a local boy named Cathal. Members of the Anglo-Irish class and the Protestant Ascendancy, Miranda and her father are sympathetic to the burgeoning movement for home rule.

On the other side of the argument is Miranda's brother, Andrew, a soldier in the British military during the First World War. On leave from service, Andrew has come home with his friend and fellow soldier, Harry. Their fateful visit, recalled by Miranda years later, is marked by tensions over the family's disparate politics and culminates in a heartrending cataclysm foreshadowing what's to come for Ireland in the twentieth century.

©1987 Jennifer Johnston (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Solider Heartfelt
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It was hard to listen to mainly due to the narration. They all sounded like they were on a scale of robotic - from slightly robotic to entirely robotic which made it difficult to enjoy. I wondered at times if it was a conscious choice by the narrator as some of the characters were awful but who knows. Probably better read than listened to.

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