The Corner That Held Them Audiobook By Sylvia Townsend Warner cover art

The Corner That Held Them

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The Corner That Held Them

By: Sylvia Townsend Warner
Narrated by: Emma Gregory
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A unique novel about life in a fourteenth-century convent by one of England’s most original authors

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel like no other, one that immerses the listener in the dailiness of history, rather than history as the given sequence of events that, in time, it comes to seem. Time ebbs and flows and characters come and go in this novel, set in the era of the Black Death, about a Benedictine convent of no great note. The nuns do their chores, seek to maintain and improve the fabric of their house and chapel, and struggle with each other and with themselves. The book that emerges is a picture of a world run by women but also a story—stirring, disturbing, witty, utterly entrancing—of a community.

What is the life of a community and how does it support, or constrain, a real humanity? How do we live through it and it through us? These are among the deep questions that lie behind this rare triumph of the novelist’s art.

©1948 The Estate of Sylvia Townsend Warner (P)2021 Penguin Audio Fiction Historical Fiction Medieval Women's Fiction Middle Ages Witty
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the story is barely a story. it is held together by careful observations and details of lives unknown to most of us

nothing I have read quite like it. the turns of phrase can be extraordinary.

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The story weaves in an out about individuals at a Nunnery and has the unique feature it seems of giving us insights into the challenging lives of people in the 14th century

Fascinating view into the medieval mind and life

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Best book I’ve listened to in years. Thanks to the Booklisted podcast for bringing it to my attention. I think I’ll read it now or listen again. So satisfying. Now on to Lolly Willows!

My new favorite book

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This was an unusual and enjoyable view of life in the middle ages. I really am happy I listened to it

Unusual and enjoyable

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This was an interesting account of what it would be like in religious circles during this period. I learned things I never knew before. It could have been several hours shorter. Many of the same situations were repeated.

Too long

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