The Golden Rule cover art

The Golden Rule

Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

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The Golden Rule

By: Amanda Craig
Narrated by: Lucy Price-Lewis
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About this listen

Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

A Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Mail and Financial Times Best Book of 2020 Pick

When Hannah is invited into the First-Class carriage of the London to Penzance train by Jinni, she walks into a spider's web. Now a poor young single mother, Hannah once escaped Cornwall to go to university. But once she married Jake and had his child, her dreams were crushed into bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for Eve, rich and childless, and Hannah has been surviving by becoming a cleaner in London. Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey the two women agree to murder each other's husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train - who could possibly connect them?

But when Hannah goes to Jinni's husband's home the next night, she finds Stan, a huge, hairy, ugly drunk who has his own problems - not least the care of a half-ruined house and garden. He claims Jinni is a very different person to the one who has persuaded Hannah to commit a terrible crime. Who is telling the truth - and who is the real victim?

2021, Women's Prize for Fiction, Long-listed

©2020 Amanda Craig (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK Domestic Thrillers Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Crime Marriage

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Critic reviews

"A highly enjoyable story about female resilience and finding fulfilment on your own terms." (Sunday Times)

"An irresistible summer read." (Guardian Book of the Day)

"A typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner." (Daily Mail)
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This is my first book by this author. I had read some good reviews but was disappointed.

I felt the story was cliched and the protagonists massive caricatures. The story had some promise but ultimately didn’t deliver for me.

Also I didn’t particularly enjoy the reader.

Disappointed

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I think this novel would have been less cumbersome had I read it rather than listened to it. The author had a good idea but the plot became submerged in the issues .... cleaners’ conditions; Cornwall and it’s problems; divorce and the injustices suffered by women; Gaming versus reading .....all individually interesting topics but too much when tucked around the narrative .

Too polemic ... too many issues

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I really wanted to like this - the "back cover blurb" appealed, it sounded a good premise for a gripping story; unfortunately on the whole it wasn't. It's likely that it will probably offend people with rural backgrounds or lives and people who voted to Leave the EU, or Conservative voters - unfortunately the author wears her political colours very clearly on her sleeve and denegrates anyone who doesn't love London or the EU as ignorant bigots and Tory voters as misguided at best! If you can get past that, it's a benign enough book.

Not sure

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You will either love this or hate it, I think - hence the reference to Marmite. It is hard to see there being much middle ground here.I had heard good things about the author and the quality of her work, so I was looking forward to a good listening experience.

What I was treated to was a real mish-mash of cliched opinion, a portrait of Cornwall as an impoverished backwater, the portrayal of the Cornish as rich degenerates/rich outsiders/ignorant, poorly educated, anti-EU locals and the woes of divorcing women. As a representation of Cornwall and the Cornish the author has been very unkind and unfair in my opinion. But the worst thing, for me, was the preposterous central plot device the author used - two strangers meet on a train, discover a common grievance (rich men who are bastards) and agree to carry out the murder of each other's husbands. I just found the whole thing so hard to connect with. On the one hand, the author wants us to believe that the central character is an intelligent woman who has been wronged by her husband and who is struggling to make a life for herself and her young daughter. But on the other hand she wants us to believe that this same intelligent woman would agree to murder a complete stranger after a few glasses of wine on a train and, by doing so, put her daughter's welfare and future in jeopardy. Utter tosh.

The author clearly has strong political and feminist views. There is nothing wrong with either of those things but she did lay some of it on thickly; some subtlety and finesse would have helped. The characters themselves were well drawn and some of them were likeable. But overall, the silly central device plot ruined the whole thing for me.

The narration was very good.

A Marmite book

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Very good performance by the narrator.
I must admit that I struggled with this book.
The main character is SO annoying. Going on about Jane Austen and literature through (what were supposed to be) some very dramatic and traumatic events. The whole plot was totally unrealistic.
Having said that, I finished it (but only because it was a book club choice and I want to be able to talk about it with my group!)

Just about ok

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