Moon Tiger
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Narrated by:
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Ruth Urquhart
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By:
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Penelope Lively
About this listen
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
Penelope Lively won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for this deeply moving, elegantly structured novel.
Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt.
Always the independent woman, often with contentious relationships, Claudia's personal history is complex and fascinating. As people visit Claudia, they shake and twist the mosaic, changing speed, movement, and voice, to reveal themselves and Claudia's impact on their world.
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Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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Mystery with humor and insight
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By: Ruth Rendell
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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Life Class
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Russell Boulter
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
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In Love and War
- By Cariola on 07-28-09
By: Pat Barker
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A Change of Climate
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- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
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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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Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
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From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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Behind the Scenes at the Museum
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- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
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Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.
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Another Kate Atkinson multi-generational story
- By Satisfied Customer on 11-08-18
By: Kate Atkinson
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My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
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- By: Louisa Young
- Narrated by: Dan Stevens
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The lives of two very different couples - an officer and his aristocratic wife, and a young soldier and his childhood sweetheart - are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war. Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight - and those who don't - and a poignant testament to the enduring power of love.
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Just read it!! Or rather, listen!
- By Annie M. on 08-31-14
By: Louisa Young
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Dreamers of the Day
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- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
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Story
A 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as an historic Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries.
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Little Big Woman
- By W.Denis on 10-02-08
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
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Performance
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Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
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Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
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Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
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Performance
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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.
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One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
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good but sad
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In a London Pub called The Coach and Horses, four men gather. Three of them have been friends for half a lifetime, having fought in the same war, drunk in the same pubs, and bet on the same horses. Now they have come together to deliver the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, to the sea. Their journey, which will take them deep into their collective and individual pasts, lies at the center of an astonishingly moving novel of friendship, memory, and fate.
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The story
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The Story of Lucy Gault traces the repercussions of a child’s attempt to remain in her beloved home.Threatened with a move from Ireland to England, 9-year-old Lucy runs away, setting off a series of misunderstandings that will eventually touch each inhabitant of her village.
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A Most Heart warming read
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Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon.
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Do yourself a favor and buy it
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What listeners say about Moon Tiger
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- BirderMame
- 05-26-24
Excellent story marred by performance
One of my biggest pet peeves is audiobook narrators who don't do their homework in learning the correct pronunciations of words, particularly proper names, in the books they record. In this case the Yugoslavian dictator Tito (tee-to) was rendered as Tie-to; the U.S. state of Iowa became ee-OH-wa, and any French word including the diphthong "oi" (pronounced "wah," as in Miss Piggy's "moi") became OY, to name but a few. I did think the reader's choices of voice for different characters was generally quite well done.
The book itself is very fine, as the recollections at the end of life of a strong and independent woman who, when gutted by the loss of her great love, becomes yet stronger and more independent in her relations with her family.
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- Doggy Bird
- 02-13-24
LOVED THIS BOOK, POOR NARRATION
Usually when the narration of a book is this bad, I don't bother to finish the audiobook. However, this is such a wonderful book and I have so little time to sit in a chair and read I was forced to finish the audiobook despite how the narrator grated on me. I'm so glad I was able to do so. This is SUCH A WONDERFUL MEANINGFUL book and I enjoyed it so much. I have a paperback copy and I look forward to reading it in two weeks on a long eight hour flight I have planned. However the narrator delivers this test in both a singsong and breathless voice for the main character that is so annoying it really took me quite a while to get beyond how poorly done it was. This is the first time I have read Penelope Lively although I have been meaning to do so for years and have a number of her books awaiting my attention on shelves. Hopefully some of the other audiobooks available will have better narrators as well. This particular book won a Booker Prize in 1987 - and one can easily see why, it's a profound and moving memoir of a woman's experience and love told from her deathbed in poetic bursts of memory through other characters and her own thoughts. I had tears in my eyes at the end of the book - I can't wait to read it again and savor it even more.
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- Joan
- 11-26-19
I LOVED THIS STORY !
This is a powerful, beautiful, haunting and real work. The narrator is excellent and brings the already vivid characters to the life they deserve in the listening. I must admit I was first drawn to the title of the book and the beauty of the cover, but am so glad for that. In a world without enough ways for celebrating strong women, this story adds another level of exploration. I was mesmerized. When the story ended I wanted more. Do not miss this one !
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2 people found this helpful
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- Pamela Ann Plumer
- 07-03-24
Great audiobook 😊
Did I hear that right? This book was written in 1987? How am I just now reading this book? I read reviews that stated some readers felt as though Claudia was a self absorbed person and maybe even narcissistic but I don’t agree with those opinions I think Claudia is passionate about what interests her and there’s nothing wrong with that imho overall this is a fabulous read with a great narrator 😄
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- Michael M. Rijssenbeek
- 10-31-24
An Epic Story
A brilliant story with so many threads and extraordinary characters. My only critique is that the reader chose a rather querilous voice for tge1
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- philip carr harris
- 03-31-19
stunning beauty
intricate description and a veritable dance between the present and the past as a frail woman finds herself as a part of the history of the world.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Zsa Zsu Pitts
- 07-30-20
Makes me wish I had been a reporter in WWII
Exciting, free life of a woman quietly determined to live her own life. I only wish I'd had the confidence to live the life I wanted instead of the life expected of a woman in the early 60's.
Very well written, rather more moving than I expected it to be. I love being surprised like that. Penelope Lively is a new favorite author now.
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1 person found this helpful
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Story
- C. Stites
- 12-25-22
Again and even more as i, too, age
The hero here is narrative. The word. The story. C’s story and Tom’s, hers and Gordon’s, her husband (jasper), her mother, her child, her Hungarian refugee and all the smaller characters like the unknowing nurses, the disinvolved doctor.
She is a writer, Tom (we learn late) is a writer, Life is suddenly everywhere, a beautiful miracle, and death also everywhere with its awful, total stillness.
What is the sense of it all? How are we to make sense of it?
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- Lexy
- 05-15-24
Gorgeous Story
This is definitely one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to. The scope of the writing is wide but the author still managed to create characters that I cared about and who were interesting.
Lovely writing, easy to envision the scenes and just an excellent tempo. The narrator does an excellent job, though, at times, I could imagine different inflections that I would have preferred— it just seemed a bit wooden, sometimes, especially with the male voices. But I really appreciated being read to, otherwise I might not have found the time to enjoy this very worthwhile book!
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- Doxie mom
- 12-27-23
Too much about nothing
Both the content and audio performance were overly excited. It was too much ado about nothing much.
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