
Matchstick Man
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $15.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Aoife McMahon
-
By:
-
Julia Kelly
About this listen
Julia Kelly met charismatic and successful artist Charlie Whisker while she was working on her first novel. He was 20 years older than her. Their relationship was passionate and extraordinary; each of them inspired the other. Their friends were writers, artists and rock stars; they lived a glamorous life of exhibitions, parties and concerts.
They became parents to a daughter they adored. But Charlie suddenly changed, becoming hopelessly forgetful, angry and confused.
This is an unbearably honest, unsentimental and heartbreaking description of a brilliant man's mental disintegration and its effects on his family. Charlie's disturbing behaviour is described in a series of terrible, understated revelations.
An unforgettable telling of a story that will be familiar to many thousands of people in the UK and Ireland.
©2018 Julia Kelly (P)2019 W. F. Howes LtdListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Last Dance of the Debutante
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Marisa Calin
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it’s announced that 1958 will be the last year debutantes are to be presented at court, thousands of eager mothers and hopeful daughters flood the palace with letters seeking the year’s most coveted invitation: a chance for their daughters to curtsy to the young Queen Elizabeth and officially come out into society. In an effort to appease her traditional mother, aspiring university student Lily Nichols agrees to become a debutante and do the Season, a glittering and grueling string of countless balls and cocktail parties. In doing so, she befriends two very different women.
-
-
Not literary gold, but engaging
- By Jenny D. on 02-05-22
By: Julia Kelly
-
The Light over London
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Lucy Brownhill
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s always been easier for Cara Hargraves to bury herself in the past than confront the present, which is why working with a gruff but brilliant antiques dealer is perfect. While clearing out an estate, she pries open an old tin that holds the relics of a lost relationship: among the treasures, a World War II-era diary and a photograph of a young woman in uniform. Eager to find the author of the hauntingly beautiful, unfinished diary, Cara digs into this soldier’s life, but soon realizes she may not have been ready for the stark reality of wartime London she finds....
-
-
Never Forget
- By Caliope on 05-15-19
By: Julia Kelly
-
The Whispers of War
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Mary Woodvine
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In August of 1939, as Britain watches the headlines in fear of another devastating war with Germany, three childhood companions must choose between friendship and country. Erstwhile, socialite Nora is determined to find her place in the Home Office’s Air Raid Precautions Department, matchmaker Hazel tries to mask two closely guarded secrets with irrepressible optimism, and German expat Marie worries that she and her family might face imprisonment in an internment camp if war is declared.
-
-
Another look at WWII
- By RueRue on 01-03-21
By: Julia Kelly
-
Then She Was Gone
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Jewell
- Narrated by: Helen Duff
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenage golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her. And then she was gone. Now her mother, Laurel Mack, is trying to put her life back together.
-
-
SO GOOD
- By Ashleigh on 05-24-18
By: Lisa Jewell
-
The Secrets She Keeps
- A Novel
- By: Michael Robotham
- Narrated by: Lucy Price-Lewis
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Agatha is pregnant and works part time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, and a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog.
-
-
High praise!!
- By Getshotzi on 08-05-17
By: Michael Robotham
-
The Silent Wife
- By: Kerry Fisher
- Narrated by: Emma Spurgin-Hussey
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lara's life looks perfect on the surface. Gorgeous doting husband Massimo, sweet little son Sandro and the perfect home. Lara knows something about Massimo. Something she can't tell anyone else or everything Massimo has worked so hard for will be destroyed: his job, their reputation, their son. This secret is keeping Lara a prisoner in her marriage. Maggie is married to Massimo's brother Nico. She knows all of Nico's darkest secrets - or so she thinks. The one day she discovers a letter in the attic....
-
-
Tedious....ending not worth the time to get there!
- By WillowayGirl on 12-15-17
By: Kerry Fisher
-
The Last Dance of the Debutante
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Marisa Calin
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it’s announced that 1958 will be the last year debutantes are to be presented at court, thousands of eager mothers and hopeful daughters flood the palace with letters seeking the year’s most coveted invitation: a chance for their daughters to curtsy to the young Queen Elizabeth and officially come out into society. In an effort to appease her traditional mother, aspiring university student Lily Nichols agrees to become a debutante and do the Season, a glittering and grueling string of countless balls and cocktail parties. In doing so, she befriends two very different women.
-
-
Not literary gold, but engaging
- By Jenny D. on 02-05-22
By: Julia Kelly
-
The Light over London
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Lucy Brownhill
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s always been easier for Cara Hargraves to bury herself in the past than confront the present, which is why working with a gruff but brilliant antiques dealer is perfect. While clearing out an estate, she pries open an old tin that holds the relics of a lost relationship: among the treasures, a World War II-era diary and a photograph of a young woman in uniform. Eager to find the author of the hauntingly beautiful, unfinished diary, Cara digs into this soldier’s life, but soon realizes she may not have been ready for the stark reality of wartime London she finds....
-
-
Never Forget
- By Caliope on 05-15-19
By: Julia Kelly
-
The Whispers of War
- By: Julia Kelly
- Narrated by: Mary Woodvine
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In August of 1939, as Britain watches the headlines in fear of another devastating war with Germany, three childhood companions must choose between friendship and country. Erstwhile, socialite Nora is determined to find her place in the Home Office’s Air Raid Precautions Department, matchmaker Hazel tries to mask two closely guarded secrets with irrepressible optimism, and German expat Marie worries that she and her family might face imprisonment in an internment camp if war is declared.
-
-
Another look at WWII
- By RueRue on 01-03-21
By: Julia Kelly
-
Then She Was Gone
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Jewell
- Narrated by: Helen Duff
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenage golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her. And then she was gone. Now her mother, Laurel Mack, is trying to put her life back together.
-
-
SO GOOD
- By Ashleigh on 05-24-18
By: Lisa Jewell
-
The Secrets She Keeps
- A Novel
- By: Michael Robotham
- Narrated by: Lucy Price-Lewis
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Agatha is pregnant and works part time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, and a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog.
-
-
High praise!!
- By Getshotzi on 08-05-17
By: Michael Robotham
-
The Silent Wife
- By: Kerry Fisher
- Narrated by: Emma Spurgin-Hussey
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lara's life looks perfect on the surface. Gorgeous doting husband Massimo, sweet little son Sandro and the perfect home. Lara knows something about Massimo. Something she can't tell anyone else or everything Massimo has worked so hard for will be destroyed: his job, their reputation, their son. This secret is keeping Lara a prisoner in her marriage. Maggie is married to Massimo's brother Nico. She knows all of Nico's darkest secrets - or so she thinks. The one day she discovers a letter in the attic....
-
-
Tedious....ending not worth the time to get there!
- By WillowayGirl on 12-15-17
By: Kerry Fisher
-
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
- By: Phaedra Patrick
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater-vest; waters his fern, Frederica; and heads out to his garden. But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam's death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam's possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he's never seen before.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By BikeVON on 05-17-16
By: Phaedra Patrick
-
To Throw Away Unopened
- By: Viv Albertine
- Narrated by: Jasmine Blackborow
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every memoir is a battle between reality and invention - but in her follow up to Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys., Viv Albertine has reinvented the genre with her unflinching honesty. To Throw Away Unopened is a fearless dissection of one woman's obsession with the truth - the truth about family, power and her identity as a rebel and outsider. It is a gaping wound of a book, both an exercise in bloodletting and psychological archaeology, excavating what lies beneath: the fear, the loneliness, the anger.
-
-
Excellent
- By Anora Sutherland McGaha on 11-07-20
By: Viv Albertine
-
The Love of My Life
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Rosie Walsh
- Narrated by: Imogen Church, Theo Solomon
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she’d do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie. And she might just have got away with it, if it weren’t for her husband’s job. Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best – researching and writing about his wife’s life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name isn’t real.
-
-
My preference
- By Avid series reader on 03-03-22
By: Rosie Walsh
-
Ghosted
- A Novel
- By: Rosie Walsh
- Narrated by: Katherine Press
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sarah meets Eddie, they connect instantly and fall in love. To Sarah, it seems as though her life has finally begun. And it's mutual: It's as though Eddie has been waiting for her, too. Sarah has never been so certain of anything. So when Eddie leaves for a long-booked vacation and promises to call from the airport, she has no cause to doubt him. But he doesn't call. Sarah's friends tell her to forget about him, but she can't. She knows something's happened - there must be an explanation.
-
-
Boring, tedious, not worth my time. I am so aggravated that I preordered this book. It was absurd. Much ado about nothing!
- By Pamela M. on 07-28-18
By: Rosie Walsh
-
This Is Not a Pity Memoir
- By: Abi Morgan
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the partner of Emmy Award–winning screenwriter Abi Morgan abruptly collapsed from a mysterious illness, doctors were concerned that he would not survive. Then, six months later, Jacob woke from his coma, to the delight and relief of his family and friends—except this proved to be anything but a Hollywood ending. Because to Jacob, the woman standing at his bedside, who had cared for him all these months, was not his partner. Not his children’s mother. Not the woman he loved. Sure, she looked like his Abi, but this was an imposter, living someone else’s life.
-
-
Good book
- By Amazon Customer on 02-10-24
By: Abi Morgan
-
Because We Are Bad
- OCD and a Girl Lost in Thought
- By: Lily Bailey
- Narrated by: Lily Bailey
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the age of 13, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she'd done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough. Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder.
-
-
Helped me so much with my OCD
- By Amazon Customer on 06-08-21
By: Lily Bailey
-
Postcards from a Stranger
- By: Imogen Clark
- Narrated by: Henrietta Meire
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Cara stumbles across a stash of old postcards in the attic, their contents make her question everything she thought she knew. The story she pieces together is confusing and unsettling, and appears to have been patched over with lies. But who can tell her the truth? With her father sinking into Alzheimer’s and her brother reluctant to help, it seems Cara will never find the answers to her questions. One thing is clear, though: someone knows more than they’re letting on.
-
-
How do these authors do it?
- By DeRoseBreathe on 03-24-20
By: Imogen Clark
-
Shtum
- A Novel
- By: Jem Lester
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this darkly funny and emotive debut, Ben Jewell has hit a breaking point. His profoundly autistic 10-year-old son, Jonah, has never spoken, and Ben and his wife, Emma, are struggling to cope. When Ben and Emma fake a separation - a strategic yet ill-advised decision to further Jonah's case in an upcoming tribunal to determine the future of his education - father and son are forced to move in with Georg, Ben's elderly and cantankerous father. In a small house in North London, three generations of men - one who can't talk, two who won't - are thrown together.
-
-
Touching, funny and enlightening.
- By Rebecca on 06-21-17
By: Jem Lester
-
A Spot of Bother
- A Novel
- By: Mark Haddon
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can’t be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie’s deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip.
-
-
Bother with this one
- By Book Club Gal on 09-29-06
By: Mark Haddon
-
Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
-
-
Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
-
Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
-
-
One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
-
My Husband's Wife
- By: Amanda Prowse
- Narrated by: Amanda Prowse
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once a week Rosie Tipcott counts her blessings. She goes to sit on her favourite bench on the North Devon cliffs and thanks her lucky stars for her wonderful husband, her mischievous young daughters and her house by the sea. But then her husband unexpectedly leaves her for another woman and takes the children. Now she must ask the question: what is left in her life? Can Rosie find the strength to rebuild herself? More importantly, does she even want to?
-
-
Narrated by the author,. . .
- By Kelly on 01-23-17
By: Amanda Prowse