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You'll laugh, you'll cry.
- By Charles on 09-12-09
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Brian has arrived at university with a stronger desire than the acquisition of knowledge: he's going to be a star of TV's hottest quiz, University Challenge. But his progress on 'The Challenge' is somewhat stymied by his growing desire for the beguiling Alice Harbison, struggling to make her mark as an actress. And as obstacles impede their affair, Brian becomes more and more convinced that only overwhelming success on the quiz show will win her.
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a good read
- By Carol on 13-04-13
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Great funny Story
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In 1997, Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don't remember in the school photograph. His exams have not gone well. At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way round, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person.
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Simply superb.
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Conversations with Friends
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Frances is a 21-year-old college student in Dublin; she performs at spoken word events with her best friend and ex-lover, Bobbi. When they are profiled by journalist Melissa, they enter an orbit of beautiful houses and raucous dinner parties. Initially unimpressed, Frances begins an affair with Nick, Melissa's husband, which gives way to an unexpected intimacy.
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Great performance of a not so great novel
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Golden Boy
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Max Walker is the golden boy. He's attractive, intelligent, athletic. He's even nice to his little brother. Max is going to pass his exams with flying colours; he’s going to make his parents proud.
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The great puzzle of life
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One Day
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He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark, and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?
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You'll laugh, you'll cry.
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- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
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Overall
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Brian has arrived at university with a stronger desire than the acquisition of knowledge: he's going to be a star of TV's hottest quiz, University Challenge. But his progress on 'The Challenge' is somewhat stymied by his growing desire for the beguiling Alice Harbison, struggling to make her mark as an actress. And as obstacles impede their affair, Brian becomes more and more convinced that only overwhelming success on the quiz show will win her.
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a good read
- By Carol on 13-04-13
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The Understudy
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- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Does your life feel like a dress rehearsal? Do you long to enter the limelight and steal the show? But what do you do when you're playing second fiddle to an arrogant actor who barely knows your name? And, more importantly, what do you do when you find yourself falling in love with his wife?
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Great funny Story
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Sweet Sorrow
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In 1997, Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don't remember in the school photograph. His exams have not gone well. At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way round, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must take on a challenge that could lose him the respect of his friends and require him to become a different person.
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Simply superb.
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Frances is a 21-year-old college student in Dublin; she performs at spoken word events with her best friend and ex-lover, Bobbi. When they are profiled by journalist Melissa, they enter an orbit of beautiful houses and raucous dinner parties. Initially unimpressed, Frances begins an affair with Nick, Melissa's husband, which gives way to an unexpected intimacy.
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Great performance of a not so great novel
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Golden Boy
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Max Walker is the golden boy. He's attractive, intelligent, athletic. He's even nice to his little brother. Max is going to pass his exams with flying colours; he’s going to make his parents proud.
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The great puzzle of life
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The Sunday Lunch Club
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The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.
Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.
Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of 40. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate.
Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future?
Juliet Ashton weaves a story of love, friendship and community that will move you to laughter and to tears. Think Cold Feet meets David Nicholls, with a dash of the joy of Jill Mansell added for good measure.
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I just loved this book
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Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee - a girl who inherited her mother's bright-blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt, and Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to hold someone accountable. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who may be the only one who knows what really happened.
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Superb!
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Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired.
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The Sense of an Ending
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The Midnight Library
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Thirty-four-year-old Nora's life could be better. She's lonely, single and has just lost her job. Her cat dying feels like the last straw. What else is there to live for? Then she finds a library between life and death where she gets to try all the other lives she could have lived. The Midnight Library is a gloriously relatable novel about life, death and the in-between. It is about finding hope, playing chess, dumping regrets and picking the right people around you.
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Fantasy may be hard to take if you’re depressed
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The Switch
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When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen's house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn 80. She'd like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn't offer many eligible gentlemen. Once Leena learns of Eileen's romantic predicament, she proposes a solution: a two-month swap. Eileen can live in London and look for love. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire....
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Feel good- but not quite believable
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Brick Lane
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Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with an older man and misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor.…
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One of the best
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Dirty Little Secrets
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Death stalked the Vale. In every corner, every whisper. They just didn't know it yet. Six neighbours, six secrets, six reasons to want Olive Collins dead. In the exclusive gated community of Withered Vale, people's lives appear as perfect as their beautifully manicured lawns. Money, success, privilege - the residents have it all. Life is good. There's just one problem. Olive Collins' dead body has been rotting inside number four for the last three months. Her neighbours say they're shocked at the discovery, but nobody thought to check on her when she vanished from sight.
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A Delightfully Different Style of Thriller.
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As teenagers, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love in a Nigeria under military dictatorship. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America, where Obinze hopes to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?
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Life-changing
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The Thursday Murder Club
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In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved killings. But when a local property developer shows up dead, 'The Thursday Murder Club' finds themselves in the middle of their first live case. The four friends, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, might be octogenarians, but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?
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Oh WHAT a disappointment!
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Annie's put fifteen years into safe, slightly obsessive Duncan, and now she'd like her money back, please. It's time to move on. But she lives in Gooleness, the north's answer to a question nobody asked. Is she really going to find real, proper, fell-it-deep-down-in-your-boots love on a damp and windy seafront? Or perhaps she should follow her heart and pursue Tucker, the reclusive American rock star, who keeps emailing her his smart advice. But between Annie and her second chance lie a few obstacles.
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Good fun but beware the narration
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Normal People
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege.
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Utterly Tedious. Vapid Bonkfest.
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The Flatshare
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Story
Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they're crazy, but it's the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy's at work in the day and she has the run of the place the rest of the time. But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven't met yet, they're about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rule book out the window....
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Loved it!!!
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Editor reviews
Summary
Douglas Petersen’s family is on the brink of dissolution. His marriage of 21 years to Connie is almost over. When autumn comes around, their son Albie will leave for college. Connie has decided to leave soon after.
But before everything falls apart, there's still the summer holidays to get through - a Grand Tour of Europe's major cities - and over the course of the journey, Douglas devises a plan to win back the love of his wife and repair his troubled relationship with his son.
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- Robert
- 20-08-15
A Self-Analysis Of One Man's Marriage
Douglas Petersen is 54 and his wife of nearly 25 years is thinking of leaving him....
This is how "Us" begins, and over the series of many short chapters, we are submerged into Douglas' world entirely from his perspective, both through the present, and the past, with some glimpses into the future. This shifting of time I at first found a bit unsettling, but it helps us to understand why Douglas finds himself to be in the predicament he is in.
On the whole, I came away from this feeling pessimistic about life, and how despite your best efforts you can still be left in solitude. I also found it hard to fully sympathise with Douglas. Sure - the breakdown of his marriage was not all his fault. Connie was just as much to blame, but his lack of empathy towards his son, Albie, was at times truly cold. But, then, this was not entirely Douglas' fault, as his parents showed him very little warmth when he was growing up.
David Nicholls is without doubt a talented writer, with a lot of depth to his craft. He manages to bring a lot of humour, to what is ultimately a sad story. There are some dark moments here, but there are also some tender ones too. I also enjoyed the European backdrop to the story and some of the descriptions of the places Douglas and his family visited. At times, it was a little verbose, but still enjoyable.
And finally, I thought Justin Salinger's narration was pretty good. He seemed to strike the right tone and balance throughout.
14 people found this helpful
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- lou58
- 13-10-14
Great Story but….
When there are so many great narrators out there, why chose one so dull? This novel is long awaited and much anticipated but the narrator reads with a wearisome two-tone delivery as though it's a local news report. Douglas comes across as a whiner and all the gentle comedy is lost.
27 people found this helpful
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- Lorraine
- 20-01-15
Excellent book, literally laughed out loud
I loved this book. Very well written with ups and downs. A lot of laughing out loud. A warming story of love and devotion.
6 people found this helpful
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- Genevieve
- 07-01-15
Lovely journey of a breakdown and repair of family
It was a lovely listen, the story I felt did take a while to get into but I am glad I continued as it was a very sweet novel - an easy listen but not particularly gripping, but very nice.
5 people found this helpful
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- Kaggy
- 20-06-15
MarveloUS
This book is every bit as good as I expected from this author. The tale of a man in his fifties who is unexpectedly told by his wife that she wants to leave him after their son leaves home. It is a fantastic idea to unfold this story against the backdrop of a grand tour of Europe. Families on the move are a great source of tension and potential catastrophe and what happens here is hilarious, cringeworthy and at times filled with pathos. I won't say any more because this is a story that keeps you guessing to the end and every step of the way is an absolute pleasure.
4 people found this helpful
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- sandra
- 20-11-14
weak story line and terrible narration.
poor narration killed it . I know he had a boring character but the voice didn't have to match
9 people found this helpful
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- Dynamo
- 17-01-15
Life, love and unhappiness
A engaging look at the complicated father-son-mother triangle of love, interdependency and growth. How no one is an island and as as we live we take something of the others that we live and love with.
8 people found this helpful
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- Nicola Lawton
- 02-01-15
A let down
Would you try another book written by David Nicholls or narrated by Justin Salinger?
Yes
What was most disappointing about David Nicholls’s story?
It was a let down after One Day - I felt that the wife was spiteful, the husband boring and found I couldn't care what happened to any of them...
How could the performance have been better?
It was a little monotone for my taste.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disinterest - the worst kind of reaction.
3 people found this helpful
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- Jennie
- 14-01-15
Was ok but the narrator's voice ruined it
I enjoyed listening to it but the narrator's voice was hard to get used to. The story might have been better for me if I had read the book myself
6 people found this helpful
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- Highlight
- 21-10-17
ABSOLUTELY UTTER DEPRESSING DRIVEL
This audiobook was a gift which is the only reason I allowed myself to go through 9 hours of slow agonising pain of the mind. NEVER AGAIN. Justin Salinger narrates beautifully with compassion and sympathy for what were the most grotesque wife and son and a shabbily treated father. This type of book is laborious over the garden wall drivel, infiltrating one’s grey cells with other people’s private miserable problems that are in the end only of value to the people concerned or you are a marriage guidance counsellor. Not recommended for recreation or stimuli. This is too melancholy and miserable. Thank heavens I will never read anything of this genre ever again, not even when a gift from a loved friend because they know I admire Justin’s Salinger’s work and have many of his audiobooks. I have forgiven her. 😉
2 people found this helpful
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- David
- 26-09-19
Rancid
After thoroughly enjoying Sweet Sorrow by the same author, I tried, am trying, this audio book. Lacks the humour of SS and feels like a latter day version of Kramer vs Kramer. Simply horrid narration. Destroys what humour may have been there and woeful non Euro accents. The plot wallows in self pity. Never ending lists of places and paintings and musicians as if seeking to impress. Unlikeable characterisations to the point where one wishes that the son would have indeed been sent to Ibiza and the main folks quietly permitted to divorce. Should be refundable.
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- Claire Zenkerova
- 11-04-18
David Nicolls - never disappoints
Another witty. moving and heart-breakingly real story with down-to-earth, believable chatacters and charming use of the english language. David Nicholls is a genius at potraying normal life in a way which is engaging and intriguing.
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- S Easthope
- 21-06-17
Best narrator I've heard
You should listen to this book just for the narration alone. It's wonderful. The story itself is so real, and so funny and sad. I loved every minute.