Golden Hill
A Novel of Old New York
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Borges
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By:
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Francis Spufford
About this listen
- Winner of the Costa First Novel Award
- Winner of the RSL Ondaatje Prize
- Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize
- Named "Novel of the Year" by the UK'S Sunday Times
New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: This is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won't explain why, or where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him...maybe even kill him?
Rich in language and historical perception yet compulsively listenable, Golden Hill is a story "taut with twists and turns" that "keeps you gripped until its tour-de-force conclusion" (The Times, London). Spufford paints an irresistible picture of a New York provokingly different from its later metropolitan self but already entirely a place where a young man with a fast tongue can invent himself afresh, fall in love - and find a world of trouble.
©2017 Francis Spufford (P)2017 S&S AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Heroic Fantasy well written
- By Bruce on 03-29-12
By: Karen Miller
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The Agency 1: A Spy in the House
- By: Y. S. Lee
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In Victorian England, orphan Mary Quinn lives on the edge. Sentenced as a thief at the age of 12, she’s rescued from the gallows by a woman posing as a prison warden. In her new home, Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls, Mary acquires a singular education, fine manners, and a surprising opportunity. The school is a cover for the Agency — an elite, top secret corps of female investigators with a reputation for results — and at 17, Mary’s about to join their ranks.
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yes, it's YA-but credible for genre for any age
- By connie on 02-25-11
By: Y. S. Lee
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The Book of Magic
- By: Gardner Dozois - editor, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, and others
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Sile Bermingham, Maxwell Caulfield, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 38 mins
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Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.
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some stinkers mostly good
- By M.T. on 12-11-18
By: Gardner Dozois - editor, and others
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Miss Marley
- A Christmas ghost story - a prequel to A Christmas Carol
- By: Vanessa Lafaye, Rebecca Mascul
- Narrated by: Josie Dunn
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
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Orphans Clara and Jacob Marley live by their wits, scavenging for scraps in the poorest alleyways of London, in the shadow of the workhouse. Every night, Jake promises his little sister ‘tomorrow will be better’, and when the chance to escape poverty comes their way, he seizes it despite the terrible price. And so Jacob Marley is set on a path that leads to his infamous partnership with Ebenezer Scrooge. As Jacob builds a fortress of wealth to keep the world out, only Clara can warn him of the hideous fate that awaits him if he refuses to let love and kindness into his heart....
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Perfect Christmas read
- By A. Speller on 12-24-18
By: Vanessa Lafaye, and others
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The Essex Serpent
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha.
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Unbearable Narrator
- By ACB on 06-08-17
By: Sarah Perry
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Impyrium
- By: Henry H. Neff
- Narrated by: Kim Mai Guest
- Length: 19 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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For over 3,000 years, the Faeregine dynasty has ruled Impyrium. But the family's magic has been fading, and with it their power over the empire. Whether it's treachery from a rival house, the demon Lirlanders, or rebel forces, many believe the Faeregines are ripe to fall. Hazel, the youngest member of the royal family, is happy to leave ruling to her sisters so that she can study her magic. But the empress has other plans for her granddaughter, dark and dangerous plans to exploit Hazel's talents and rekindle the Faeregine mystique.
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Amazing! Can't wait for the next book in the series.
- By Reddings on 03-11-17
By: Henry H. Neff
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The Janissary Tree
- A Novel
- By: Jason Goodwin
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Togalu, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch.
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Interesting premise, annoying narrator
- By Phillipa Somerville on 09-18-07
By: Jason Goodwin
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The Fire Rose
- By: Mercedes Lackey
- Narrated by: Kate Black-Regan
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Accepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children and only wants her to read to him through a speaking tube.
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Great story, poorly presented
- By Che on 02-26-10
By: Mercedes Lackey
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The Scar
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko, Elinor Huntington - translator
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Sergey and Marina Dyachenko mix dramatic scenes with romance, action and wit, in a style both direct and lyrical. Written with a sure artistic hand, The Scar is the story of a man driven by his own feverish demons to find redemption and the woman who just might save him. Egert is a brash, confident member of the elite guards and an egotistical philanderer. But after he kills an innocent student in a duel, a mysterious man known as “The Wanderer” challenges Egert and slashes his face with his sword, leaving Egert with a scar that comes to symbolize his cowardice.
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Highly, highly, Highly Recommended
- By Robert on 08-13-12
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
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A Most Extraordinary Pursuit
- By: Juliana Gray
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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February, 1906. As the personal secretary of the recently departed duke of Olympia - and a woman of scrupulous character - Miss Emmeline Rose Truelove never expected her duties to involve steaming through the Mediterranean on a private yacht, under the prodigal eye of one Lord Silverton, the most charmingly corrupt bachelor in London. But here they are, improperly bound on a quest to find the duke's enigmatic heir, current whereabouts unknown. Maximilian Haywood was last seen at an archaeological dig on the island of Crete.
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This Book Would Have Been A Hot Mess...
- By Alexis on 10-06-16
By: Juliana Gray
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The Unseen
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Webb
- Narrated by: Clare Wille
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A vicar with a passion for nature, the Reverend Albert Canning leads a happy existence with his naive wife, Hester, in their sleepy Berkshire village in the year 1911. But as the English summer dawns, the Cannings' lives are forever changed by two new arrivals: Cat, their new maid, a disaffected, free-spirited young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the law; and Robin Durrant, a leading expert in the occult, enticed by tales of elemental beings in the water meadows nearby.
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Great book!
- By Dana on 09-03-12
By: Katherine Webb
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Detective Gretel
- By: P.J. Brackston
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In the sleepy Bavarian town of Gesternstadt, gossip was viewed by many as a local sport, a popular hobby, a harmless pastime that showed only the depth and enduring nature of the interest of one neighbour for another. In Gretel’s opinion, however, tittle-tattle sowed the seeds of malice among the fertile soil of jealousy, often watered by the tears of its victims. So it was that upon hearing from brother Hans of the whispers concerning a young woman, a married man and a thwarted lover, Gretel is compelled to rise from her beloved day bed to set things to rights.
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Great! Looking forward to more
- By Monica P. on 12-07-20
By: P.J. Brackston
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The Lawrence Browne Affair
- By: Cat Sebastian
- Narrated by: Gary Furlong
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, is mad. At least that's what he and most of the village believes. A brilliant scientist, he hides himself away in his family's crumbling estate, unwilling to venture into the outside world. When an annoyingly handsome man arrives at Penkellis, claiming to be Lawrence's new secretary, his carefully planned world is turned upside down.
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Historical romance without the stupid stuff
- By April on 09-28-20
By: Cat Sebastian
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Baxter’s name isn’t George. But it’s 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he’ll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with “George.” On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days.
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Excruciating to get through
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In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
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God awful!
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Wolf Hall
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In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland 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 twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn.
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Divorced, beheaded, died...
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Homegoing
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Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the castle's women's dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.
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What listeners say about Golden Hill
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James A. Dittes
- 07-19-17
Good narration, even better tale
The mystery of "Richard Smith," a young man who shows up in mid-18th-century New York City with a £1000 check is examined over the course of this novel. Along the way there is romance, swordplay, double-dealing (with a feud between the colonial legislature and governor that mirrors the Obama-Congress stalemate of recent years). It almost seems Shakespearean.
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- Walter
- 10-18-17
Well...
...if you like a tale where the hero meets with one calamity after another, is insulted and wronged and never takes his recompense, then this book is for you. Nicely written and well-read, it nevertheless has a plot that disappoints.
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- synergy5
- 03-02-18
Immensely Engaging and Craetive
If you could sum up Golden Hill in three words, what would they be?
Unique, historic, delightful
What did you like best about this story?
The use of period language and tone-- shades of Tristan Shandy.
Which scene was your favorite?
The staging of Cato the Elder
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The machinations behind the relationship between Smith and Tabitha
Any additional comments?
Terrific reader-- granted a a dozen or so words were mispronounced but the reading was brilliant nevertheless!
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- Paula
- 08-02-17
What a delightful surprise!
Would you listen to Golden Hill again? Why?
The story is intricate, and involving. I loved the evocation of pre-revolutionary New York.
What does Sarah Borges bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Her narrative and vocal skills are extraordinary
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- David
- 09-05-17
Ehh.
I've been reading reviews of this book that claim it's some kind of literary such and such, but I don't see it. The reader makes the whole book seem pompous, affected, and strangely effeminate. I did enjoy some particularly well-written tidbits and I liked what history there was, although I felt it to be more, but I'm not sure that the story is truly there, and it certainly in no way a literary marvel. It is a good fun read and it's sad that others have played it up to be more than what it is.
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- Bruce Herr
- 08-01-17
So-so story, so-so narration
I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters, and found the conceit of hiding Smith's identity and mission throughout the book annoying rather than intriguing. And I agree with other reviewers who found the narration weak and the editing sloppy - there were a lot of mispronunciations, and I found the dialogue overly dramatic, at the expense of clarity. For example, I played Septimus's final words over and over again, and never could understand them. Overall, I think the book might have been a better read than listen.
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- IA from Manhattan
- 04-17-18
Time Travel
If you could sum up Golden Hill in three words, what would they be?
Entertaining, engaging, informative
What was one of the most memorable moments of Golden Hill?
An unexpected bedroom scene in very old New York
What about Sarah Borges’s performance did you like?
Believable dialogue among many characters
If you could rename Golden Hill, what would you call it?
Below Fourteenth Street
Any additional comments?
If only early-American history were always taught this way.
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- S. Hunter
- 02-22-22
So many mistakes…
The reader mispronounced so many words! Half the time she called the character “Joris” “Horus” and half the time “Yoris”. She pronounced “amour” as “armor”, “minute” (as in small) as “minute” (as in 60 seconds)…I could provide many other examples of mispronounced words. It was distracting. Where was the director? Not great.
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- Susan G.
- 01-15-23
Thanks for such a gift!
Love, love, love everything about this book! The characters, the story, the history, the imagination and the soul.
The reader is perfect!
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- Dubi
- 12-01-17
Unexpected Pleasure or Unexpected Pain
There is only one scene in Golden Hill that takes place outside of mid-18th century New York City. Two characters take a boat trip up the Hudson to Tarrytown. Richard Smith, one of the two characters, recently arrived from England, shows consternation at the view of the cliffs of upper Manhattan, the Palisades, and of the wide expanse of the river at the Tappan Zee.
As a longtime resident of NYC, I sometimes look around me at the city of today and wonder what it was like before it was built up. Just like any place else, I suppose, in today's rural America -- some farms and a lot of woods, which you could not foresee being some great metropolis of the 23rd century. But to look back from the city as it exists today to get a glimpse of what it was like when it was just another backwater is fabulous, at least when it is done this well.
One of the great things about Golden Hill is that it brings that era of pre-metropolis NYC so vividly to life, a city that was really just a small town of 7,000 surrounded by rivers and forests. But that would be not enough -- in fact, the first half of the book dwells too heavily on describing the city and its social life, the novelty wearing off and the reader hoping for more. The first half is also told using English as it was spoken in those days, which is a bit of rough go.
Fortunately, that's just when the actual story gets going, with the language reverting to the way we speak it today. Smith has come to New York with a boatload of money but refuses to tell anyone what he plans to do with it, or anything about himself. So naturally everyone focuses all their attention on him, some because they hope to benefit from his wealth, some because they hope to undermine him.
In the end, two great secrets are revealed which bring the story together. I am not going to even hint at what those secrets might be. Suffice it to say that those secrets are revealed, and that should be enough to keep you going until the end.
Unfortunately, a number of other reviewers do not agree -- this is clearly a love it or hate it book. I usually attribute that to expectations, and such is the case here -- but what I mean is the opposite of the usual sense of unrealistic expectations being dashed. I believe that if you realistically know what to expect or not expect, you will not be disappointed.
One thing you should not expect, despite the story being set just a few decades before the American Revolution, is anything even remotely related to the upcoming revolution. Nor for that matter is there anything at all about the other colonies, nor anything about any of the well known figures of the day (i.e. the founding fathers) other than a handful of lesser known New Yorkers (e.g. Clinton and Delancey).
You should expect to learn the reason why a woman narrates a book written by a man that is mostly about a man. You should expect a comedy of manners about New York society, some drama and action derived from the colonial nature of the city during that era, and an ultimate reveal that you will not see coming. Give it a shot, never mind the bad reviews.
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20 people found this helpful