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The Reef
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gripping novel
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Love Is Blind
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- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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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.
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The Custom of the Country
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of Edith Wharton's most acclaimed works, The Custom of the Country is a blistering indictment of materialism, power, and misplaced values. Its heroine, Undine Spragg, is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. As she climbs the class ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows little concern for who she has to step on.
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-
Subtly but Extraordinarily Insightful
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The House of Mirth
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- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Beautiful, sophisticated and endlessly ambitious Lily Bart endeavours to climb the social ladder of New York's elite by securing a good match and living beyond her means. Now nearing 30 years of age and having rejected several proposals, forever in the hope of finding someone better, her future prospects are threatened. A damning commentary of 20th-century social order, Edith Wharton's tale established her as one of the greatest British novelists of the 1900s.
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Beautifully done.
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The Age of Innocence
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Countess Ellen Olenska, separated from her European husband, returns to old New York society. She bears with her an independence and an awareness of life which stirs the educated sensitivity of the charming Newland Archer, engaged to be married to her cousin, May Welland. Though he accepts the society's standards and rules he is acutely aware of their limitations. He knows May will assure him a conventional future but Ellen, scandalously separated from her husband, forces Archer to question his values and beliefs.
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Most enjoyable
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The Golden Bowl
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- Length: 25 hrs and 6 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Wealthy Maggie Verver has everything she could ever ask for - except a husband and a title. While in Italy, acquiring art for his museum back in the States, Maggie’s millionaire father, Adam, decides to remedy this and acquire a husband for Maggie. Enter Prince Amerigo, of a titled but now poor aristocratic Florentine family. Amerigo is the perfect candidate.
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Highly overrated ...
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The Portrait of a Lady
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 26 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The Portrait of a Lady tells the compelling and ultimately tragic tale of a beautiful young American woman's encounter with European sophistication. Set principally in England and Italy, the story follows Isabel Archer's fortunes as a variety of admirers vie for her hand. Her choice will be crucial, and she is not wanting for advice, whether from the generous-spirited Ralph Touchett or the charming Madame Merle.
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gripping novel
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First published in 1988 and described by Ali Smith as 'one of Muriel Spark's most liberating, and meditative novels' - A Far Cry from Kensington shows Muriel Spark at the mature height of her powers.The narrator is one Mrs. Hawkins. She writes from Italy, a far cry from Kensington indeed, taking us back to her threadbare years in postwar London. As a young, rather fat war-widow she spent her days working for a crazy, almost bankrupt publisher; and her nights offering advice from her boarding-house in South Kensington.
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some writer some narrator good story.
- By Amazon Customer on 16-04-18
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Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
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- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
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Performance
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Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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All consuming
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The Riddle Of The Sands
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- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Riddle of the Sands is set during the long suspicious years leading up to the First World War and is a classic of spy fiction.
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Excellent reading
- By Andrew on 10-01-09
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Summer
- By: Edith Wharton
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- Unabridged
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Story
Summer, set in New England, is a novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1917. The novel details the sexual awakening of its protagonist, 18-year-old, Charity Royall, and her cruel treatment by the father of her child. Only moderately well-received when originally published, Summer, has had a resurgence in critical popularity since the 1960s.
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A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement
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- Unabridged
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Story
Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.
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Completely compulsive and absorbing
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The Warden
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- Unabridged
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Story
Anthony Trollope's classic novel centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal toward exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter, Eleanor.
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1950's Trollope
- By Philadelphus on 21-10-07
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Solar
- By: Ian McEwan
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- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
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Roald Dahl meets Martin Amis
- By Martin on 07-10-10
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He Knew He Was Right
- By: Anthony Trollope
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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When Louis Trevelyan's young wife meets an old family acquaintance, his unreasonable jealousy of their friendship sparks a quarrel that leads to a brutal and tragic estrangement.
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A refreshingly up to date reading of a dark, psychological, Victorian tale of a marriage breakdown
- By Kindle Customer on 26-11-16
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Can You Forgive Her?
- By: Anthony Trollope
- Narrated by: Timothy West
- Length: 28 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six in the Palliser series. Trollope inextricably binds together the issues of parliamentary election and marriage, of politics and privacy. The values and aspirations of the governing stratum of Victorian society are ruthlessly examined, and none remains unscathed. But above all Trollope focuses on the predicament of women. 'What should a woman do with her life?' asks Alice Vavasor of herself, and this theme is echoed by every other woman in the audiobook.
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Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
- By Sharon on 08-03-10
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The Glimpses of the Moon
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas.
Summary
The affair becomes the reef on which four lives are in danger of foundering: two of them innocent and two of them burdened with experience and tinged with desperation. This is a story of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal and a clear-eyed assessment of the possibilities and limitations of human love.
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Overall
- Kenneth
- 20-03-09
Another compelling Wharton-style dilemma
I have always found the work of Edith Wharton deeply compelling, because I empathize so strongly with the characters and even as I watch them make disastrous mistakes, I can't help wishing there was some way they could avoid the inevitable tragic consequences of their mistakes. This was so with Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth, and it is equally so of The Reef. However, this book ends with an odd and surprising conclusion that to my mind was ambiguous. I felt this detracted from what was otherwise a complex and powerful story.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
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Overall
- Yennta
- 11-09-10
Wharton's Best?
I haven't read them all, but I've read many and for me, this is her very best. The characters are fascinating. The hero is a dolt, but Wharton makes him fascinating in his doltishness. The heroine was simply born at the wrong time, but she's touching and her fate involves you. Great narrator!
4 of 5 people found this review helpful