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Starve Acre
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Richard Burnip
About this listen
An atmospheric and unsettling story of the depths of grief found in an ancient farm in northern England—now a major motion picture starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark.
The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby's son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place. Convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, Juliette seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree. But as they delve further into their grief, both uncover more than they set out to.
Starve Acre is a devastating novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.
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Critic reviews
"[Hurley] ably captured the vibe of the era’s demon-spawn novels like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. . . Top-shelf gothic-folk horror."—Kirkus (Starred Review)
“Hurley has a slow and steady hand in establishing a gloomy, nearly gothic atmosphere, allowing his characters’ grief room to breathe even as he tightens the noose in ways readers won’t see coming until the chilling and memorable conclusion. This is folk horror that knows how to take its time.”—Publisher's Weekly
“A tour de force of physiological fantasia . . . Writing of this quality - sensuous, exact, observant - ensures that other scenes, too, pulse with vitality . . . Hurley's gothic storylines send specters of deathliness through his fictional world. His prose brings it vividly alive”—Peter Kemp, Sunday Times (UK), Fiction Book of the Year pick
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Over the course of a long, hot summer in London, the lives of three very different married couples collide when their children join the same tutoring circle, resulting in illicit relationships, shocking violence, and unimaginable fallout. There’s Eve, a bougie earth mother with a well-stocked trust fund; she has three little ones, a blue-collar husband, and is obsessed with her Instagrammable recipes and lifestyle.
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remarkable
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By: Jane Shemilt
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The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
- By: Robert Hillman
- Narrated by: Daniel Lapaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
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It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met - she's passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has only read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife - and still missing her sweet son, Peter - Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy.
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Listener beware
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By: Robert Hillman
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A Slow Fire Burning
- A Novel
- By: Paula Hawkins
- Narrated by: Rosamund Pike
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Laura is the troubled one-night-stand last seen in the victim’s home. Carla is his grief-stricken aunt, already mourning the recent death of yet another family member. And Miriam is the nosy neighbor clearly keeping secrets from the police. Three women with separate connections to the victim. Three women who are – for different reasons – simmering with resentment. Who are, whether they know it or not, burning to right the wrongs done to them.
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This book should have a DISCLAIMER!
- By Amazon Customer on 09-06-21
By: Paula Hawkins
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Mercy Among the Children
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- By: David Adams Richards
- Narrated by: Bernard Clark
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
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Sydney Henderson is a truly great man. As a young man, Sydney, believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God, promising never to harm another if the boy's life is spared. In the years that follow, the almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise - at terrible cost to himself and his family. Stunningly beautiful and haunting, scenes from this magisterial novel will remain etched in the mind forever.
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Epic story
- By jhar14 on 06-04-22
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Autumn
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
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Overall
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Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.
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Incredible use of language
- By Mary on 03-06-17
By: Ali Smith
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A Fatal Inversion
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In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
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Oh my!
- By Jill on 06-15-14
By: Barbara Vine
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Elmet
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In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
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Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
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The Shadow Lines
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Ghosh’s radiant second novel follows two families - one English, one Bengali - as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian-born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.
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Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Vanishing Falls
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Overall
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Deep within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar House - currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner; his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms - and Celia Lily isn’t in any of them. She has vanished without a trace.… Joelle Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s simple-minded.
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OK Story
- By Cindy House on 12-21-21
By: Poppy Gee
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For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband, and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies - until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan.
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Fantastic
- By Christopher on 07-06-08
By: James Robertson
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The Shadowy Horses
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Overall
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Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea. Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it - not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.
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Slow Build Atmospheric Story of Light Rom Susp
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By: Susanna Kearsley
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The Third Policeman
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Overall
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Flann O'Brien's most popular and surrealistic novel concerns an imaginary, hellish village police force and a local murder.
Weird, satirical, and very funny, its popularity has suddenly increased with the mention of the novel in the TV series Lost.
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Hell is other people's bicycles.
- By Darwin8u on 03-01-15
By: Flann O'Brien
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Absolutely LOVED this tale!!
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Enjoying the story, narration is rough
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Enjoyed the audiobook
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What listeners say about Starve Acre
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-20-25
Atmosphere
It’s kinda just not as scary pet semetary
The way the final scene ends is so predictable that it takes away slightly from the good atmosphere
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- Elizabeth M. Perez Campos
- 08-09-24
Eerie
Well-written, almost comfy story despite its creepiness. Narrator has a calming voice. I was drawn into the characters’ lives, and the haunting Starve Acre.
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- Celia
- 12-05-24
Image Mood Voice & Subject Matter
Narration - Richard Burnip has an accent and inflection that painted this story into my mind in lovely layers of intrigue, charm, and dark turbulence. His voice is a perfect match for Starve Acre's characters, setting, and tone.
Style - I am enchanted with Andrew Michael Hurley's style. His vocabulary and composition combine with relatable characters, rich folklore, and bleak settings to create scenes that feel like paintings birthed by Francis Bacon, Winslow Homer, and Theo Major. Hurley is a talented author who I hope is just beginning his journey to mastery.
Story - As much as I admire Hurley's writing, this story is not as well constructed as some of his other work. This story was adapted for the screen, and in this case I actually feel like the screenplay was a more appropriate arrangement for this story.
***MILD SPOILER ALERT***
Starve Acre begins by examining the lives of a couple in the aftermath of the loss of their only child. Hurley uses a familiar construction that sets up the manner and events of the child's death as a mystery and plots to and fro in time down a slow-burn folk-horror path to eventually reveal to the reader the circumstances of the child's death. This creates a sense of mystery around the death that I feel gummed up the works of the story engine.
For me, the elements of the story that propelled me through it were the terrible effects of grief on the couple's relationship, the guilt of having a "bad" child, the guilt of losing a child, the gravity of the dark supernatural forces being intensified by the loss, and the mystery of Jack Grey and the old tree. The manner of the child's death and the "reveal" around the mother's guilt were elements unnecessary to highlight. This just slowed down the ratcheting up of the tension for me though, it did not ruin the experience of a GOOD story.
I want to be clear that I did enjoy this book. It is well written, well voiced, and is a touching and terrifying story about parenting and loss and guilt and evil and blood debts being attached to a family and their land. Hurley is top of his class in modern folk horror. I have not found a contemporary of his that I like more.
I saw the reviews full of complaints about the build-up with no bang. Hurley's works are not fast-paced page turners full of scares. He doesn't pepper his stories with many tension relieving moments. He slowly ratchets up the tension in an unrelenting and very relatable way, artfully revealing a raw and ancient human darkness that pushes his characters into the most uncomfortable and complex situations. There is no ta-da moment that wraps up the story in a satisfying way. The payoff is the reveal of the beastly and tortured human masterpiece that you sympathize with, despise, and fear. It's like pulling the drape off an uncanny self portrait where all the worst and darkest things in you have been distorted and magnified by a talented painter, but you can still clearly see yourself in there.
Starve Acre is a very good book that could have been great with a little restructuring. Go check out Devil's Day and The Loney. If you liked this one you will love those. I can't wait to see what Hurley does next!
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- MP
- 06-21-24
Beautiful Language, Haunting Story
Starve Acre is a hypnotic story of a family dealing with tragedy. It is trance-like and disturbing. Both the author and the narrator do an amazing job bring this unusual story to life.
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Story
- Luke
- 08-06-24
delicious
A fresh and engrossing execution of of classical ghost story goodness. Thrilling and uneasy even as it feels like an old friend.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jessica
- 02-05-25
Pointless book
No answers, all lose endings. Even though this book has good atmosphere and characters are just plain unlikable especially the wife.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- jessica_morgan121
- 07-01-24
Boring
Very boring don’t waste your time. You int bit of creepiness mostly boring and a little weird.
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