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An Experiment in Love
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
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Publisher's summary
Carmel McBain is the only child of working-class Irish-Catholic parents. Her mother aspires to something more for her than what life in their depressed mill town has to offer. She is ambitious for her daughter, determined that she slip through England's rigid social barriers. And so, early on, she pushes Carmel, first to gain a scholarship to the local convent school, then to sit the exams for a place at London University. And Carmel does not disappoint. But success carries with it a fearful price. It sets her on a lonely journey that will take her as far as possible from where she began, uprooting her from the ties of class and place, of family and faith, and ultimately from her own self.
A coming-of-age novel, a memoir of a Catholic childhood, a piercing and witty look at social pretensions, a story of lost possibilities and girlhood betrayals: perhaps only a novelist of Hilary Mantel's enormous talents could have taken such material and shaped it into so fresh and arresting a tale.
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In 1964, Maggie wakes to find herself in a mental asylum, with no idea who she is or how she got there. Remnants of memories swirl in her mind - a familiar song, a storm, a moment of violence. Slowly, she begins to piece together the past and the events which brought her to this point.
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Disappointing
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-22
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The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
- By: Tiffany Baker
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Truly Plaice, an overly large and ungainly girl, is the polar opposite of her sister, Serena Jane, the epitome of feminine perfection. With their parents dead, Truly and Serena Jane are separated: Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation.
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meh...
- By Victoria on 02-25-09
By: Tiffany Baker
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I Couldn't Love You More
- A Novel
- By: Esther Freud
- Narrated by: Niamh Cusack
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A sweeping story of three generations of women, crossing from London to Ireland and back again, and the enduring effort to retrieve the secrets of the past.
By: Esther Freud
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The Killer Next Door
- By: Alex Marwood
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash - no credit check, no lease. It's the kind of place you end up when you you've run out of other options.The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don't know is that one of them is a killer. He's already chosen his next victim, and he'll do anything to protect his secret.
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Incredible--but not for the faint of heart
- By Lesley on 01-11-15
By: Alex Marwood
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A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
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sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
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Lionel Asbo
- State of England
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .
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Jēz...us! Just don't buy it for your Grans.
- By Darwin8u on 01-03-13
By: Martin Amis
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East of the Sun
- By: Julia Gregson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood, ghosts from the past and freedom.
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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The Red Ribbon
- By: Lucy Adlington
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Rose, Ella, Marta and Carla. In another life we might all have been friends together. But this was Birchwood. As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death.
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Wonderful story of hope
- By m.webster on 08-04-24
By: Lucy Adlington
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Bianca Amato
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Even a life on the untamed plains of Africa can't prepare Wilhelmina for the wilds of an English boarding school in this lovely and lyrical novel from the author of Rooftoppers, which Booklist called "a glorious adventure". Wilhelmina Silver's world is golden. Living half-wild on an African farm with her horse, her monkey, and her best friend, every day is beautiful. But when her home is sold and Will is sent away to boarding school in England, the world becomes impossibly difficult.
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Wonderful!
- By Clayton on 10-11-24
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Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
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Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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Brilliant, terrifying, relevant
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One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin - or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action.
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Small, tight irreverant novel that wryly inverts
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When Frances Shore joins her engineer husband in Jeddah, she is warned not to ask questions. But bored, she begins to speculate about her neighbors and the empty flat above her. At first she believes the flat is being used as a lover's tryst - then she suspects something more sinister.
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Vintage Mantel, ahead of its time
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Evelyn Axona is a medium by trade; her daughter, Muriel, is a half-wit by nature. Barricaded in their crumbling house, surrounded by the festering rubbish of years, they defy the curiosity of their neighbors and their social worker, Isabel Field. Isabel is young and inexperienced and has troubles of her own: an elderly father who wanders the streets, and a lover, Colin, who wants her to run away with him. But Colin has three horrible children and a shrill wife who is pregnant again - how is he going to run anywhere?
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I could not finish
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Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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London, 1782: center of science and commerce, home to the newly rich and the desperately poor. In the midst of it all is the Giant, O'Brien, a freak of nature, a man of song and story who trusts in myths, fairies, miracles, and little people. He has come from Ireland to exhibit his size for money. O'Brien's opposite is a man of science, the famed anatomist John Hunter, who lusts after the Giant's corpse as a medical curiosity, a boon to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
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Brilliant, terrifying, relevant
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Ten years have passed since Muriel Axon was locked away for society's protection, but psychiatric confinement has only increased her malice and ingenuity. At last free, she sets into motion an intricate plan to exact revenge on those who had her put away. Her former social worker, Isabel, and her old neighbors have moved on, but Muriel, with her talent for disguise, will infiltrate their homes and manipulate their lives, until all her enemies are brought together for a gruesome finale.
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It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden - and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter.
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In the wake of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall Trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village “scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.” For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.
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Stories only Hilary Mantel could write
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In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. “Ink is a generative fluid,” she explains. “If you don’t mean your words to breed consequences, don’t write at all.” A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades.
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The writing. I would read the phone directory if Mantel wrote it. wonderful collection.
- By Anonymous User on 09-22-24
By: Hilary Mantel
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Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black and More
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- Original Recording
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One of the 21st century's most celebrated authors, Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: for 2009's Wolf Hall, the first in her phenomenally successful Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel in the series, 2020's The Mirror and the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This collection includes three of her best works of contemporary fiction, ranging from the Gothic to the blackly comic.
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Finally made it to the end
- By anonymous D on 10-06-23
By: Hilary Mantel
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Wolf Hall
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England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
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Superb narration, but keep a character index at hand
- By Oculus on 12-27-20
By: Hilary Mantel
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories
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One of the most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories. Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.
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Superhuman Prose that Defies Gravity
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What listeners say about An Experiment in Love
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Paganini
- 04-30-20
Wonderful writing
This book has remarkable imagery, deft character delineation and crackling dialogue
which keep the reader’s or listener’s interest in spite of a weak narrative. The “ok, we’re done here” denouement is deeply unsatisfying. Ms Mantel is certainly more comfortable with a violent conclusion. Still, the book is worthwhile.
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- Ela B.
- 11-28-18
Curiously Compelling
Not my favorite of her novels but I still think worth the listen because she writes so well and gives us a portrait of a specific time, place and community. Especially the class divide in England and the cultural challenges facing women in post war Britain. An excellent narration kept me listening. A Change of Climate and Giving up the Ghost still my favorites. if you listen and like this novel then definitely get Giving up the Ghost - in a similar vein.
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- BG
- 06-17-23
Another great book
It's Hilary Mantel's magnificent writing. And as expected, she always speaks about the dark side of life. However, this book was hilarious, in the first part. The second half was serious.
A feminist novel? I read that in another review. I think it told of life.
I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I had put reading, finishing everything else she's written first. I think the cover of the book doesn't complement the content. Experiment in Love is serious and funny as hell. it's good—read it. and the narrator was so perfect.
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- A reader
- 11-06-20
Great Sixties Proto Feminist Lit
I am so glad to expand my enjoyment of this wonderful author by this audible of her first novel. The reader is wonderful, with a northern, working class inflection that's not laid on too thick, but a welcome change from the overly crisp (to this Yank's ears) readings of so many of my favorite British novels.
I also highly recommend Mantel Pieces, the author's own reading of a selection of her essays for The London Review of Books.
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Overall
- SuzieQ
- 02-27-15
Excellent story telling
I rather enjoyed this novel. I was so wrapped up in it that like her friend is didn't realize Carmel was suffering from the terrible disorder
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1 person found this helpful