A Whistling Woman Audiobook By A. S. Byatt cover art

A Whistling Woman

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

A Whistling Woman

By: A. S. Byatt
Narrated by: Pamela Garelick
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $27.48

Buy for $27.48

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel
In this intoxicating novel, Frederica falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, while tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life and those of the people she loves.

In the late 1960s, the world begins to split. The languages of religion, myth, and fairytale overlap with the terms of science and the new computer age. The meaning of love itself seems to vanish and people flounder, often comically, while searching for their true sexual, intellectual, and emotional identities.

Through the author's wayward, lovingly drawn characters and breathtaking twists of plot, she illuminates the effervescence of the 1960s, both its excitements and its dangers, as no one has done before.

(P)2003 Blackstone Audio Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction England

Critic reviews

"Byatt is a wonderful writer, constantly engaging wherever she takes us." (London Times)
All stars
Most relevant  
Loved the narrator. Found the story hard to pull together . The numerous odd names added to incoherence. The individual storylines were interesting but we're not connected enough to follow.

Mixed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I made myself listen to the end of the first part of this 3 part audio book. I had been so excited to find it on Audible since I read and loved Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt. But this book is about discrimination against women and the abuse and even murder of wives and children. The book tells the stories of innumerable women and men whose lives demonstrated the evils caused by this kind of horror and discrimination. Their stories are linked by the smallest threads and tell of lives of desperation or sacrifice. Byatt seemed to be saying a woman could have a servile marriage or have a career. I began my career in the 60s and had to admit more than once that I had chosen the wrong man, but in the 60s a woman could make changes, and with right man, it was possible to have a meaningful career and a good marriage. I did not want to revisit the darkest days of the feminist movement and have never been willing to believe that the horrors visited upon women and children were the result of that movement. The horrors were always there. The feminist movement only finally gave us the power to change our own lives. Perhaps the second and third parts of the book gave some hope to those desperate lives, but I didn’t get that far.

I couldn't force myself to finish

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.