
Ordeal
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Narrated by:
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Ian Stuart
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By:
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Nevil Shute
About this listen
Life in the Corbett family turned upside down when the first German bombs struck their well-ordered street. But life goes on through fire and destruction, life and love rising from the rubble of London and “the Blitz.”
©1967 Mrs. Frances Norway (P)1989 Recorded Books, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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December 1940. As German bombs fall on Southampton, England, the city's residents flee to the surrounding villages. In Upton village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep, unclaimed at the back of an empty bus. Little Pamela, it seems, is entirely alone. Ellen has always believed she does not want children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her husband, Selwyn, had dreamed for themselves. As the war rages on, love grows where it was least expected, surprising them all.
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Nasty reviews, why? Beautiful book.
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Every day, Albert Entwistle makes his way through the streets of his small English town, delivering letters and parcels and returning greetings with a quick wave and a “how do?” Everyone on his route knows Albert, or thinks they do—a man of quiet routines, content to live alone with his cat, Gracie.
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Omit the “f” words!
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Going Solo
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Superb stories, daring deeds, fantastic adventures! Going Solo is the action-packed tale of Roald Dahl's exploits as a World War II pilot. Learn all about his encounters with the enemy, his worldwide travels, the life-threatening injuries he sustained in a plane accident, and the rest of his sometimes bizarre, often unnerving, and always colorful adventures. Told with the same irresistible appeal that has made Roald Dahl one of the world's best-loved writers, Going Solo brings you directly into the action and into the mind of this fascinating man.
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Live of a master, read beautifully
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A war no one fully understands has devastated the planet with radioactive fallout from massive cobalt bombing. Melbourne, Australia, is the only area whose citizens have not yet succumbed to the contamination. But there isn’t much time left, a few months, maybe more—and the citizens of Melbourne must decide how they will live the remaining weeks of their lives, and how they will face a hopeless future.
-
-
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By: Nevil Shute
-
Pastoral
- By: Nevil Shute
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She was from the hills of Yorkshire, country born and bred. He was a city boy. By the stream where they fished they were two young people falling in love. Overhead, the bombers roared, threatening to blow their idyllic world, so young, so fresh, to smithereens.
-
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What listeners say about Ordeal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Adayam mirsky
- 10-03-24
Excellent
This is my 4th Neville Shute novel. I’m still amazed I’ve never heard of him before. His down to earth non nonsense account of the event seems in the beginning unemotional, but a reading goes on we discover the amazing story very touching and emotional. An absolutely amazing narrator brings all the characters to life.
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Overall
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- Michael
- 04-06-12
Time Well Spent: Novel of How Men Prevail
What did you love best about Ordeal?
With bombs falling around your house at night, and water getting shut off, what would you do? A good story in the Shute tradition: men and women doing some amazing things to protect those they love and follow the journey of their chosen values. Not the first Shute I've read, but if it was, I'd read more. It's enjoyable reading about common people solving problems and facing moral issues, and good people helping each other.
More in the Rattingan tradition (Separate Tables; the Browning Version) than the Rostand tradition (Cyrano de Bergerac) -- but both are good: benevolent and rational.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Eileen
- 02-12-12
Absorbing!
As with most Nevil Shute novels, this book seems to begin slowly. Once you're in the middle of the story though, you will realize that the beginning of the book introduces the characters and that their subsquent actions are built on the foundation laid in the first few pages. This book is a fascinating look at the "stiff upper lip" Britains at the beginning of the war- even more fasscinating when you realize that the book was written before the first bombs dropped! If you have read "On the Beach", you will recognize many of these characters as the literary parents of the people in Mr. Shute's last novel.
I highly recommend this and every other work by Nevil Shute.
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5 people found this helpful