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Take Nothing with You
- Narrated by: Patrick Gale
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
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Summary
From the best-selling author of A Place Called Winter comes a new novel of boyhood, coming of age, and the confusions of desire and reality. For all readers of Ian McEwan's Atonement or L P Hartley's The Go-Between.
1970s Weston-Super-Mare, and 10-year-old oddball Eustace, an only child, has life transformed by his mother's quixotic decision to sign him up for cello lessons. Music making brings release for a boy who is discovering he is an emotional volcano. He laps up lessons from his young teacher, not noticing how her brand of glamour is casting a damaging spell over his frustrated and controlling mother.
When he is enrolled in holiday courses in the Scottish borders, lessons in love, rejection and humility are added to daily practice.
Drawing in part on his own boyhood, Patrick Gale's new novel explores a collision between childish hero worship and extremely messy adult love lives.
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What listeners say about Take Nothing with You
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- the typist
- 03-09-18
Great start, then meandering middle and muddled end.
I like Patrick Gale’s writing a lot. When he’s on form he’s riveting. This, to me, is a curate’s egg of a story however. After a tremendous start involving an HIV positive man navigating online dating it quickly devolves into a meandering riff on cello lessons/childhood recollections before bizarrely heading up a cul de sac of nonsense about conversion therapy. In isolation any one of these topics could have made a great book, but they simply don’t hang together as a cohesive novel. And I wish he’d get a decent narrator to read his books. His voice is flat and his array of accents belie a dreadful sense of snobbery. Every working class woman sounds like some sort sex crazed Eastenders reject!
7 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Ms Hilary Thornton
- 30-03-19
Falls short of usual Gale standard
For me, as a non-musician, there was far too much technical detail. Also, I wasn’t expecting the main plot to be a sort of rite of passage of a young teenage boy.
I did not enjoy the author’s performance and thought it would have been better left to a professional actor.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Simon Palmour
- 23-10-18
Perfect storytelling
I could have done without the present-day framing, but otherwise it has some of the most beautiful writing I can remember.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Moondew
- 13-09-18
Music to your ears
This book begins and ends with Eustace who, with or without his cello, somehow survived the ups and downs of life in calm and measured manner. A book which should be read twice. With Bach's cello concerto.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Terry Browning
- 09-02-20
An enjoyable and thoughtful story
I enjoyed this tale of coming of age and the twirl between the older and younger self.
Full of learning about music and full of emotion that will ache and keep you riveted and some sex for added pleasure.
Get it, you won’t regret.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tom France
- 27-08-19
Oh my, this tapped nostalgic emotions.
I really enjoy Patrick Gales voice and the book felt real, growing up gay, very sexy too, and the characters and their questing to find meaning and closeness. He has a tenderness that can tell the various characters story without judgement when to say they are good or bad would be too simple — and shows not only compassion for the human condition but believable motivation. Great writing, can’t wait to download the next one.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- K Bright
- 18-04-19
Coming out in Weston-super-Mare
Rather good coming put story entwined with a story of developing a love of music.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 18-09-18
Breathtaking!
A superbly authentic and empathic novel, brilliantly read by the author. Certainly the best I have "read" this year of its genre and one I am unlikely ever to forget. I suspect I will be revisiting this one more than once in the future. Surely a modern classic and certainly rewards at so many levels. Not the first I have read by Patrick Gale, but I will now be exploring many more.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Louise Adkins
- 11-09-18
I didn’t want it to end.
The best book I’ve read or listened to in ages. Patrick’s voice is sublime. I will miss Eustace, I wanted the story to go on and on. Thank you Patrick.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- TJ
- 01-09-18
First ever audio book
i have read lots of Patrick Gales books but this was my first audio book.... a strange experience at first, but once I lost my own reading voice I got into it. in fact it's very relaxing to be read to so a new discovery.
The book is great, a well written coming of age story. Loved the central character Eustace and particularly enjoyed the chapters where the world opened up to him in Bristol.
Highly recommended!
1 person found this helpful