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The Clock Winder

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.
The audio edition of The Clock Winder by Anne Tyler.

'Her brilliance in capturing the ripples on the surface of family life gives her a claim to be the Jane Austen of our age' - Allison Pearson, Daily Mail

Having sacked her handyman, newly-widowed Mrs Emerson finds a replacement in Elizabeth, a lanky, awkward girl. The Emersons - there are seven grown-up children - have a reputation for craziness and Elizabeth finds herself drawn into their disorderly lives against her will. But in the end it is hard to tell whether she is a victim of the needy Emersons, or the de facto ruler of the family.


OVER A MILLION ANNE TYLER BOOKS SOLD

‘She’s changed my perception on life’ Anna Chancellor

‘One of my favourite authors ’ Liane Moriarty

‘She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan

‘Anne Tyler has no peer’ Anita Shreve

‘My favourite writer, and the best line-and-length novelist in the world’ Nick Hornby

‘A masterly author’ Sebastian Faulks

‘Tyler is not merely good, she is wickedly good’ John Updike

‘I love Anne Tyler’ Anita Brookner

‘Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humour’ Eudora Welty

 Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Women's Fiction World Literature

Critic reviews

Delicate, unpretentious and highly enjoyable
Tyler writes skilfully, with a detached air and a precise eye for detail
She writes with virtuosity, confidence and perfect insight and compassion
Anne Tyler is brilliant
All stars
Most relevant
It was difficult to listen to this book. The dialogue is very much louder than the narration.

Awful sound quality

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Great story and Tyler gives her usual depth and detail to the characters. Unfortunately, the narrator spoiled the listening experience with constant inappropriate pausing. Her use of accents was good but did not compensate for the irritation caused by mid sentence pauses and hurried beginnings of new chapters.

Poor narration

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Beautiful expressed with great word choices setting scenes and delineating characters but I found the narrative hard going and the characters less sympathetic than many of Tyler's. A depressing bleaknesshung over my evening reads.

Didn't enjoy as much as other Anne Tylers

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