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The Crossing

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The Crossing

By: Andrew Miller
Narrated by: Luke Thompson
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About this listen

 She is sailing. She is alone. Ahead of her is the world's curve and beyond that, everything else. The known, the imagined, the imagined known.

Who else has entered Tim's life the way Maud did? This girl who fell past him, lay seemingly dead on the ground, then stood and walked. That was where it all began.

He wants her - wants to rescue her, to reach her. Yet there is nothing to suggest Maud has any need of him, that she is not already complete. A woman with a talent for survival, who works long hours and loves to sail - preferably on her own. A woman who, when a crisis comes, will turn to the sea for refuge, embarking on a voyage that will test her to the utmost, that will change everything . . .

From the Costa Award-winning author of Pure comes a viscerally honest, hypnotic portrait of modern love and motherhood, the lure of the sea and the ultimate unknowability of others. This pitch-perfect novel confirms Andrew Miller's position as one of the finest writers of his generation.

(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton©2015 Andrew Miller Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction World Literature Heartfelt Tear-jerking Emotions

Critic reviews

Told in his usual exquisite prose, the story centres on the strangely reticent character of Maud, who leaves the West Country after a tragedy and bravely attempts to single-handedly sail across the Atlantic. You know you're going to like a character when, in the first few pages, she falls 20ft in a boatyard, then gets up and tries to walk. Infused with nautical detail and the cool brine of the sea, this is perfect summer reading (Sarah Hall)
We readers have a most fabulous time . . . Maud, and questions about Maud, will linger in your mind long after you close this remarkable novel
Hypnotic . . . Andrew Miller has a poet's ear but he can also write white-knuckle passages that will leave you winded by towering waves. Most surprising of all, you'll find yourself rooting for Maud as she confronts the limits of her own detachment
Visceral and exquisitely written . . . few characters are so neutrally, impassively masterful. In her silence she is magnificent . . . Miller, wisely, hardly analyses Maud. But the portrayal of this practical, disconcerting figure is wildly emotional
Achieves a kind of hallucinatory strangeness, simultaneously intriguing and disturbing
Part relationship study, part sailing yarn, this odd yet enthralling book lingers long in the mind (Books of the Year)
A beautiful novel; moving, funny, mysterious and compelling. Maud is a stunning creation - a great modern heroine with a pure ancient heart (Patrick Marber, author of Closer)
His structure - perfectly linear yet radically fragmented - tests the extremes to which one character's trajectory can lead, and each half is strangely gripping in very different ways . . . deeply intriguing (Francesca Wade)
Whether he sets a story in the 18th century or the present, and no matter his subject, [Miller's] prose is highly distinctive in its detached precision. He writes like a scientist, utterly shorn of sentimentality, patient and clear-eyed
All stars
Most relevant
I really like and admire Andrew Miller. I think that he has attempted something difficult and different here. It pretty much works.The story surrounding the main character is told in 2 separate parts which are very different.
It is well written and read.

Strange woman & book. Enigmatic maybe better.

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An 'interesting' story. Not really sure it has a meaning. Maybe more of an interest to someone who sails.

Different

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fantastic. I might have found it a bit slow paced to read, but perfect as an audio book. I loved the narration.

heart wrenching, unexpected and brilliantly read

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What an intriguing, puzzling, mesmerising novel! It's totally absorbing, ultimately satisfying and unsatisfying, extraordinary and ordinary, firmly rooted in the real world and floating in some mystical zone... At every turn you can't stop yourself being pulled in and pulled along.

It all starts very simply - and the whole has an engaging simplicity with its present tense and prose like delicate brush strokes. Tim falls for Maud at the university sailing club, attracted by her enigmatic bluntness, intrigued by her emotional blankness. Maud visits Tim's family: she's from a ordinary family in Swindon, he's from an awful, wealthy family with so much land it takes the Hunt 20 minutes to cross, and their Christmas turkey is as big as an alsatian. Maud moves in with Tim and continues with her job as a scientist investigating pain relief; Tim pursues his unfocused 'career' in music; they have a baby, Zoe; Maud continues to work apparently unmoved by her child; Tim looks after Zoe... So far, so everyday. WHY, we ask ourselves, is Maud so detached? We want to know and understand.

But then the novel cracks and splinters and we enter another realm. A terrible tragedy occurs which Miller conveys not directly, but in shocking segments. Maud takes the boat which she and Tim had planned to sail together and sails across the Atlantic alone. Miller certainly knows his sailing, as the boat is all but destroyed by a tremendous storm. I won't give away the rest of the novel which changes gear again into something powerful but puzzling with a dash of Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust with Shakespeare's The Tempest. And the very end? All those things we wanted to know about Maud's inner life, we still don't know. In fact we're even more puzzled than before.

This is a tantalising novel well served by the narrator who skilfully conveys that other-worldly and yet ordinary Maud and her mysterious core. Definitely well worth listening to.

Enjoy the enigma but don't expect answers!

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What did you like most about The Crossing?

Although I enjoyed listening to this story, I think it is a weaker Andrew Miller novel. It opens with the beginning of the relationship between Tim and Maud and maps its journey, to its inevitable crash. The first half sits uncomfortably on the second half of the book, as if he had two ideas and didn't know how to reconcile them. I Dont think it was a good idea to relate the story from both the male and the female perspective in the first half and then drop one of them completely in the second. Also the circumstances of of the affairs was very unclear, very muddy, and there is enough ambiguity in one character alone without the need to add to it.The second half is Mauds journey, her rite of passage, to where? one can only speculate, it doesn't matter, but she survives it and inevitable emerges stronger. Baptized.I enjoyed the character of Maud, the outsider, the loner, but always chuckle when male authors turn their female protagonist into what appears to be just the female side of themselves! In all respects other than her periods and ability to give birth, she could have been a lad.Miller has written a few brilliant and unforgettable books, sadly this is not one of them.

Uneasy Rite of Passage

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