Seven Steeples
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Narrated by:
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Aoife McMahon
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By:
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Sara Baume
About this listen
One of Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of the Year • Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize • Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize • An Irish Times Best Book of the Year
“One of the most beautiful novels I have ever read.” —New York Times Book Review
The acclaimed novel about a couple who, pushing against traditional expectations, move with their dogs to the Irish countryside where they embed themselves in nature and make attempts to disappear from society.
It is the winter following the summer they met. A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another—one embedded in ritual, and away from the friends and family from whom they’ve drifted.
They arrive at their new home on a clear January day and look up to appraise the view. A mountain gently and unspectacularly ascends from the Atlantic, “as if it had accumulated stature over centuries. As if, over centuries, it had steadily flattened itself upwards.” They make a promise to climb the mountain, but—over the course of the next seven years—it remains unclimbed. We move through the seasons with Bell and Sigh as they come to understand more about the small world around them, and as their interest in the wider world recedes.
Seven Steeples is a beautiful and profound meditation on the nature of love and the resilience of nature. Through Bell and Sigh, and the life they create for themselves, Sara Baume explores what it means to escape the traditional paths laid out before us—and what it means to evolve in devotion to another person, and to the landscape.
©2022 Sara Baume (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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By: Bailey White
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The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: A Novel
- By: Steven Sherrill
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Five thousand years out of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.
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The author is a professor of English
- By ShySusan on 11-16-11
By: Steven Sherrill
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Everything Under
- A Novel
- By: Daisy Johnson
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals.
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A brilliantly understated classic
- By Jeff Lacy on 10-29-19
By: Daisy Johnson
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Coop
- A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
- By: Michael Perry
- Narrated by: Michael Perry
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Last seen sleeping off his wedding night in the back of a 1951 International Harvester pickup, Michael Perry is now living in a rickety Wisconsin farmhouse. Faced with 37 acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home, Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood - his city-bred parents took in more than 100 foster children while running a ramshackle dairy farm - for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father.
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Meh
- By dpenney on 12-22-16
By: Michael Perry
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My Family and Other Animals
- By: Gerald Durrell
- Narrated by: Hugh Bonneville
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
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The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas in which the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog.
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Love it, but please mark as Abridged!
- By Meredith Ramirez on 09-14-21
By: Gerald Durrell
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Long Lankin
- By: Lindsey Barraclough
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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When Cora and her little sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their great-aunt in the isolated village of Bryers Guerdon, they receive a less than warm welcome and are desperate to go back to London. But Auntie Ida’s life was devastated the last time two young girls were at Guerdon Hall, and now her nieces’ arrival has reawakened an evil that has lain in wait for years. A haunting voice in an empty room; a strange, scarred man lurking in the graveyard; mysterious words scrawled on the walls of the abandoned church ... all point to a horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its grip for centuries.
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AMAZING!!!
- By Sharron on 09-06-14
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The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
- By: David Wroblewski
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 21 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled with breathtaking scenes, the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a meditation on the limits of language and what lies beyond, a brilliantly inventive retelling of an ancient story, and an epic tale of devotion, betrayal, and courage in the American heartland.
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Devastatingly Dark Story
- By Knitme23 on 02-07-15
By: David Wroblewski
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Jagannath
- By: Karin Tidbeck
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A child is born in a tin can. A switchboard operator finds himself in hell. Three corpulent women float somewhere beyond time. Welcome to the weird world of Karin Tidbeck, the visionary Swedish author of literary sci-fi, speculative fiction, and mind-bending fantasy who has captivated fans around the world. Originally published by the tiny press Cheeky Frawg - the passion project of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer - Jagannath has been celebrated by listeners and critics alike, with rave reviews from major outlets and support from lauded peers like China Mieville and even Ursula K. Le Guin herself.
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Always unique, usually quite good, sometimes meh
- By Eugene on 02-13-19
By: Karin Tidbeck
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Scribbling the Cat
- Travels with an African Soldier
- By: Alexandra Fuller
- Narrated by: Lisette Lecat
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.
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Astonishing
- By G. Robinson on 06-27-04
By: Alexandra Fuller
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Ring of Bright Water
- By: Gavin Maxwell
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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'Ring of Bright Water' represents Gavin Maxwell's account of his life at Camusfearna, a remote cottage in the western Highlands, and in particular the two otters, Mijbil and Edal, who became his constant and much-loved companions.
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A Kindness to Creatures Great and Small
- By Sariah on 01-19-18
By: Gavin Maxwell
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Gods of Howl Mountain
- By: Taylor Brown
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted 1940 Ford coupe.
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Appalatia Noir
- By meanwhile on 09-18-18
By: Taylor Brown
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The Saturdays
- By: Elizabeth Enright
- Narrated by: Pamela Dillman
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The four Melendy children live with their father and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, in a worn but comfortable brownstone in New York City. There's thirteen-year-old Mona, who has decided to become an actress; twelve-year-old mischievous Rush; ten-year-old Randy who loves to dance and paint; and thoughtful Oliver, who is just six-years-old.
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Excellent for children and adults
- By Dale on 05-15-04
What listeners say about Seven Steeples
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- BuyAlot
- 06-12-22
Beautiful poem
Were they two? Are they one? Two and the same?
A page turning poem.
Unforgettable.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-08-22
A meditation
The narration and the words and the images the words create are mesmerizing. There’s no real storyline, and there’s a lot of real life that’s not included in this seeming diary of a quiet Irish countryside life, so it’s not an exciting book, but it’s absolutely lovely
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- Mike Pearson
- 06-29-23
An adventure in language
Subtle novel —poetic and brave. Baumé is a unique writer and deserves a place among the best new Irish writers.
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- Viola Miller
- 05-30-22
Beautifully written.
Interesting book but not really much story. The language is beautifully descriptive and almost vibrates as you read.
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- Martha
- 01-02-23
Beautiful
Beautifully read and very poetic writing, well capturing the lonely Irish coastal setting. More mood, less action.
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- Eileen Lange
- 01-12-23
Boring
This is the most boring book I’ve read. I should have returned it, but I kept listening to it in hopes that it would get better. It didn’t.
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- beatriz Rodriguez
- 02-18-23
Hoping for something to happen, silly me
I realize it is passé to want things to happen, to
have, like a plot, or something, but a good read does require more than a description of the changing landscape.
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- ETH3200
- 04-11-23
Do you like to watch paint dry?
If so, you may enjoy this book. In rating, they ask you to rate Performance. Sure, it was read well, but there was no reason for any nuance of tone or voice throughout since there was no conversation, no drama or any emotion necessary.
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