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Leaving the World

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Leaving the World

By: Douglas Kennedy
Narrated by: Kate Harper
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About this listen

On the night of her 13th birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents – she would never get married and she would never have children. But life, as Jane comes to discover, is a profoundly random business.

Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then Jane falls pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise – but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world.

Just when she has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for some sort of personal redemption. Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision – stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth.

Douglas Kennedy’s exceptional new novel is a portrait of the way we live now, of the many routes we follow in the course of a single life, and of the arbitrary nature of destiny. Like his previous highly acclaimed novels it is also a compulsive read – and one which speaks volumes about the dilemmas we face in trying to navigate our way through all that fate throws in our path.

©2009 Douglas Kennedy (P)2010 Random House Audio Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction Fiction Destiny
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Most relevant
I was lost in this story...it was great and am feeling disappointed that it's over. I just know my next book won't live up to this.

Fabulous

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This book will take you to such immensely dark places. At times utterly heart breaking. I love his writing style though send was gripped from beginning to end.

Great book

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Would you listen to Leaving the World again? Why?

Yes, I would. There are nuances, I know, which I missed but I wanted to get on with the story so didn't go back.

What did you like best about this story?

The humanity of the protagonist.

What does Kate Harper bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

A feeling of empathy and distrust, where appropriate.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Dig in and carry on!

..... and Re-Entering It

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This book was truly awful, disconnected and decidedly weird. It is a long time since I felt I couldn’t continue to the end of a book but I persevered because some of the reviews said it got better towards the end. It did but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

Is this a novel or a rant

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Hours and hours of dreary woman’s voice reading a dull story. I’d read a DK paperback years ago that was heartbreakingly sad, but this left me feeling totally unmoved, just bored.

Dreary dull and too long.

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