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  • Love Is Blind

  • By: William Boyd
  • Narrated by: Roy McMillan
  • Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (887 ratings)
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Love Is Blind cover art

Love Is Blind

By: William Boyd
Narrated by: Roy McMillan
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Summary

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Love Is Blind by William Boyd. 

Love Is Blind is William Boyd's sweeping, heart-stopping new novel. Set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the fortunes of Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish musician, about to embark on the story of his life. 

When Brodie is offered a job in Paris, he seizes the chance to flee Edinburgh and his tyrannical clergyman father, and begin a wildly different new chapter in his life. In Paris, a fateful encounter with a famous pianist irrevocably changes his future - and sparks an obsessive love affair with a beautiful Russian soprano, Lika Blum. Moving from Paris to St Petersburg to Edinburgh and back again, Brodie's love for Lika and its dangerous consequences pursue him around Europe and beyond, during an era of overwhelming change as the 19th century becomes the 20th. 

Love Is Blind is a tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavour and the illusions it creates; of all the possibilities that life can offer, and how cruelly they can be snatched away. At once an intimate portrait of one man's life and an expansive exploration of the beginning of the 20th century, Love Is Blind is a masterly new novel from one of Britain's best loved storytellers.

©2018 William Boyd (P)2018 Penguin Audio

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What listeners say about Love Is Blind

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  • Overall
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Brilliant

William Boyd is a superb writer and Love is Blind ranks in his top three, with Any Human Heart and The new Confessions. Once again he gives us a fascinating, multi-layered work of art that captivates throughout. His characterisation is so sure-footed that it was a pleasure to meet the people he created and to be taken through late nineteenth century Edinburgh and Paris, to Nice and St Petersburg and a far flung corner of the earth was a thrill. Thrilling too was the plot-line, and subtle the references to the arts, music and the life and literature of Chekov.
Roy McMillan narrated very skilfully . His voice is pleasant, well modulated and varied. I frequently find myself irritated by narrators who do not check out the pronunciation of non-English names and phrases and so I was pleased to find that the French and German was well handled.

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18 people found this helpful

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Boyd on Top Form

Any William Boyd novel is a big event for me and I am delighted to say that 'Love is Blind' has been well worth the wait and fully lives up to expectations. The blend of character and plot is excellent with a sweeping narrative that convincingly depicts time and place. The research really pays off. For me, as a listener, the quality of the narrator can make or break a book and whereas, 'Sweet Caress' was (to my ear) unlistenable Roy McMillan has done an impeccable job with 'Love is Blind'. He has all the warmth, depth, empathy and authority required to bring this impressive novel to life. I did not want it to end.

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18 people found this helpful

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The nuances of Love

I just love the writing style of William Boyd, nothing is out of place it flows beautifully through my ears.
Brodie was such a nice character and although I was not keen to start with Brodies love interest Lika she did grow on me. Simply a turn of the century love story, with so much more going on.
Roy Macmillan had a magnificent range of voices and accents and bought this audible to life.

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6 people found this helpful

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Beautifully written and read

This novel has everything: a heart-rending and unusual love story, combined with such a wealth of period detail as to bring life at the beginning of the twentieth century vividly to life in front of your eyes. William Boyd paints wonderful landscapes and cityscapes but doesn’t get bogged down in too much description, so the story moves along at a pace, with never a dull or jarring moment. I can’t praise this book enough!
Add to the mix a superb narrator who gets the tone exactly right and you have a dozen hours or so of unadulterated listening pleasure. His voice manages to capture the loving tenderness of the ill-starred couple and the sheer malevolence of the ‘baddies’ perfectly. At times I was moved to tears, at others frightened out of my life! Highly recommended.

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4 people found this helpful

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Brilliant book. Excellent narration.

I loved this book. William Boyd is a master at bringing his characters to life and this novel worked on every level, helped in no small way by the superb narration by Roy McMillan.
Reminded me in a way of "Love in the time of Cholera".

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4 people found this helpful

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Beautifully Read

As moving and brilliant a book as one would expect of Willim Boyd, done marvellous service by the talented reading by Roy McMillan.

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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We see very little when we want to.


This is not my usual taste in books but it was written by William Boyd, and that makes it something I would explore. I was not disappointed.

The story is a beautiful period piece that describes time and places in a beautiful way and develops a plot and characters you naturally care for; Brodie Moncur became real and his travels and period became alive, and his fictitious life was real for a few spackling hours.

A definite yes, if you like good writing and something delicate.

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3 people found this helpful

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William Boyd

Great story which was very well narrated by Roy McMillan which made it a very enjoyable listen. I spent too much time listening when I should have been working!

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3 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

More cat and mouse than a real get your teeth into

I was really looking forward to this book and kept waiting for the story to evolve, but for me it was a simple tale of cat and mouse, I really don't get where the real grit / story comes into it. I found it boring, only made more pleasurable by the narrator who was great. Sorry, not one for me...

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2 people found this helpful

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Disappointing

Sorry to say (being a major WB fan), this novel did not work for me, on a number of levels. Firstly, the plot and premise - the life of a piano tuner - seemed overdone. It just seemed a stretch for a likeable piano tuner to be imployed by a maestro in the first place, let alone in getting caught up in all the plots and subplots of the life of a musical performer. seconde - the characters, aside from Brodie, seemed 2-dimensional, especially Leica; there was little character development, so no understanding for me of the intense love interest. As expected, there was good pace and enjoyable locations to keep you listening, but at times I wondered where the book was going, and whether WB was making it up as he went along. A curious final section, but not out of character for a WB work. One huge positive though - the brilliant reading of Roy McMillan, he possibly made the book sound better than it was, which I appreciate is a form of damning praise. So often a book is let down by its reading; here, the reader lifted an uneven book into something just about passable.

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2 people found this helpful