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How Much the Heart Can Hold
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Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris. When his marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?
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Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply lovable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.
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Every-day lives made to matter
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Transcription
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In 1940, 18-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathisers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat.
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Masterful
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Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to work away, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river they encounter a madman, who predicts that one of the brothers will kill another. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact will transcend the lives and imaginations of both its characters and its readers.
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Drunk, dazed, disoriented, and stumbling down Clifton Street at 11:30 a.m., Effie is the kind of girl you’d likely avoid eye contact with while silently labeling a drifter or a delinquent. You’d probably pass judgment, assuming you know her - but you don’t know the half of it. As Effie’s life spirals through a mess of excess, drama, and addiction plaguing her at every turn, she has nothing to look forward to but a hangover worse than death itself each morning. Until one night gives her the chance to become something more.
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In a 1970s commuter town, Tracey Thorn's teenage life was forged from what failed to happen. Her diaries were packed with entries about not buying things, not going to the disco, the school coach not arriving. Before she was a best-selling musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties, Meaningful Conversations and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living.
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One wet Friday evening, Professor Andrew Martin of Cambridge University solves the world's greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems different. Besides the lack of clothes, he now finds normal life pointless. His loving wife and teenage son seem repulsive to him. In fact, he hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton. And he's a dog.
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A profound and shining star
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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My favourite book
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Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other, for no one but Saunders could conceive it. February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery.
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Mistake
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'I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently....' What does feminism mean today? In this personal, eloquently argued essay - adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers listeners a unique definition of feminism for the 21st century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness.
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A good start in intersectional feminist theory
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Summary
A brilliant collection of seven original stories inspired by different concepts of love, by seven award-winning authors.
Love is not a singular concept.
In this collection, seven award-winning authors explore seven concepts of love: from philautia (self-love) to agape (love for humanity) and from storge (a natural affection for family) to mania (a frenzied, obsessive love):
La Douleur Exquise (the pain of unrequited love)
'Before It Disappears' by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (c) 2016
Pragma (enduring love)
'One More Thing Coming Undone' by D. W. Wilson (c) 2016
Philautia (love for oneself)
'White Wine' by Nikesh Shukla (c) 2016
Mania (obsessive love)
'Magdala, Who Slips Sometimes' by Donal Ryan (c) 2016
Storge (familial love)
'Codas' by Carys Bray (c) 2016
Eros (erotic love)
'The Love Story' by Grace McCleen (c) 2016
Agape (love for humanity)
'The Human World' by Bernardine Evaristo (c) 2016
The publication of How Much the Heart Can Hold is heralded by a Sceptre short story competition. The winning story, based on a concept of love, will be published in the paperback edition.
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- Ilaria Bellantuono
- 12-03-17
A good idea not successfully developed
I did not find that the stories were a real reflection of what they were meant to represent. A real disappointment
1 of 2 people found this review helpful