-
The Only Story
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Guy Mott
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of An Ending, a novel about a young man on the cusp of adulthood and a woman who has long been there, a love story shot through with sheer beauty, profound sadness, and deep truth.
Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.
One summer in the 60s, in a staid suburb south of London, Paul comes home from university, aged 19, and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. In the mixed-doubles tournament he's partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who's 48, confident, ironic, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is also a warm companion, their bond immediate. And they soon, inevitably, are lovers. Clinging to each other as though their lives depend on it, they then set up house in London to escape his parents and the abusive Mr. Mcleod.
Decades later, with Susan now dead, Paul looks back at how they fell in love, how he freed her from a sterile marriage, and how - gradually, relentlessly - everything fell apart, as she succumbed to depression and worse while he struggled to understand the intricacy and depth of the human heart. It's a piercing account of helpless devotion, and of how memory can confound us and fail us and surprise us (sometimes all at once), of how, as Paul puts it, "first love fixes a life forever."
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
-
-
Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.
-
-
Not what I Expected
- By Mark on 02-20-08
By: Julian Barnes
-
Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
-
-
The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
-
Lessons
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon McBurney
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
-
-
Narrator Simon McBurney gets my 100% rating
- By Peggy M on 09-26-22
By: Ian McEwan
-
Elizabeth Finch
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone's taste. But she will change the way you see the world. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centers of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years.
-
-
Another masterpiece!
- By Davis Perkins on 08-23-22
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Sense of an Ending
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Andrew Lim on 06-14-21
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
-
-
Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.
-
-
Not what I Expected
- By Mark on 02-20-08
By: Julian Barnes
-
Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
-
-
The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
-
Lessons
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon McBurney
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
-
-
Narrator Simon McBurney gets my 100% rating
- By Peggy M on 09-26-22
By: Ian McEwan
-
Elizabeth Finch
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone's taste. But she will change the way you see the world. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centers of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years.
-
-
Another masterpiece!
- By Davis Perkins on 08-23-22
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Sense of an Ending
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Andrew Lim on 06-14-21
By: Julian Barnes
-
Metroland
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Greg Wise
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The adolescent Christopher and his soul mate, Toni, had sneered at the stifling ennui of Metroland, their cosy patch of suburbia on the Metropolitan line. They had longed for Life to begin - meaning Sex and Freedom - to travel and choose their own clothes. Then Chris, at 30, starts to settle comfortably into bourgeois contentment himself. Luckily, Toni is still around to challenge such backsliding.
-
-
Gosh I love Julian Barnes
- By Matthew on 01-14-14
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Lemon Table
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Timothy West, Prunella Scales
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a collection that is wise, funny, clever and moving, Julian Barnes has created characters whose passions and longings are made all the stronger by the knowledge that, for them, time is almost at an end.
-
-
A Real Downer
- By Cariola on 07-03-12
By: Julian Barnes
-
Arthur & George
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Homer Todiwala
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's extraordinary real-life fight for justice. Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer, George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age; George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.
-
-
Never Ignites
- By John on 11-03-23
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Vaster Wilds
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
-
-
Slow torture written too hastily
- By Jennifer on 09-23-23
By: Lauren Groff
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Book of Form and Emptiness
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Ozeki
- Narrated by: Kerry Shale, Ruth Ozeki
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.
-
-
Good narrator, terrible voices
- By Geonn Cannon on 09-23-21
By: Ruth Ozeki
-
The Remains of the Day
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
-
-
Beautiful and ever relevant
- By bbots on 07-04-20
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
Lucy by the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire.
-
-
Narrator
- By J. O'Connor on 09-22-22
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Less (Booktrack Edition)
- A Novel
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes—it would be too awkward—and you can't say no—it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong?
-
-
Less is not more. Plus a Pulitzer?
- By Seth on 03-24-20
-
The Year of Magical Thinking
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.
-
-
Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
- By Michael on 05-08-15
By: Joan Didion
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
A Calling for Charlie Barnes
- By: Joshua Ferris
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises, and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot.
-
-
the best book I've read this year
- By Brent & Marie on 10-07-21
By: Joshua Ferris
Editor's Pick
Love, arriving swiftly, ultimately proves to be incomprehensible
"Opening in 1963, 19-year-old Paul (student, home from Uni) and 48-year-old Susan (married, mother of two) meet playing mixed doubles at the tennis club, and fall face-first in love. Promises are made instinctively and with little foresight, setting in motion the central conflict of Paul's life. Throughout the narrative, Barnes moves almost randomly between first, second, and third person, but narrator Guy Mott's deft transitions are so seamless that it's not immediately apparent to the listener. And this struck me as exactly how self-reflection works: you view yourself from every angle, and here this shifting vantage point creates the room in the narrative for moments of granular honesty, both beautiful and gruesome."
—Emily C., Audible Editor
Related to this topic
-
Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
-
-
The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
-
-
Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
-
After Anna
- By: Alex Lake
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The real nightmare starts when her daughter is returned.... A bone-chilling psychological thriller that will suit fans of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Daughter by Jane Shemilt, and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless. The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved.
-
-
My feedback..2 overall
- By Haneet on 09-05-16
By: Alex Lake
-
Corduroy Mansions
- A Novel
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In London’s Pimlico neighborhood lies a tenement described in architectural guides as “a building of no interest whatsoever.” But the residents of Corduroy Mansions—including a literary agent, a wine merchant, a thoroughly unpleasant member of Parliament, and a vegetarian dog—are a rather fascinating lot.
-
-
Oedipus Snark, MP
- By connie on 04-25-12
-
The Body on the Beach
- A Fethering Mystery
- By: Simon Brett
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recently retired, Carole Seddon is residing in Fethering in the cottage she purchased with her ex-husband. There she maintains a quiet and sensible life with the companionship of Gulliver, her Labrador retriever. But everything changes when she and Gulliver, while taking their daily constitutional, find a corpse on the beach. What's more, there are two wounds on its neck. The body mysteriously disappears and the police dismiss Carole as a befuddled middle-aged woman.
-
-
Reminds me of "Rosemary & Thyme" TV series
- By Crochetaway on 11-17-14
By: Simon Brett
-
The Testament of Gideon Mack
- By: James Robertson
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Christopher on 07-06-08
By: James Robertson
-
Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
-
-
The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
-
-
Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
-
After Anna
- By: Alex Lake
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The real nightmare starts when her daughter is returned.... A bone-chilling psychological thriller that will suit fans of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Daughter by Jane Shemilt, and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless. The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved.
-
-
My feedback..2 overall
- By Haneet on 09-05-16
By: Alex Lake
-
Corduroy Mansions
- A Novel
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In London’s Pimlico neighborhood lies a tenement described in architectural guides as “a building of no interest whatsoever.” But the residents of Corduroy Mansions—including a literary agent, a wine merchant, a thoroughly unpleasant member of Parliament, and a vegetarian dog—are a rather fascinating lot.
-
-
Oedipus Snark, MP
- By connie on 04-25-12
-
The Body on the Beach
- A Fethering Mystery
- By: Simon Brett
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recently retired, Carole Seddon is residing in Fethering in the cottage she purchased with her ex-husband. There she maintains a quiet and sensible life with the companionship of Gulliver, her Labrador retriever. But everything changes when she and Gulliver, while taking their daily constitutional, find a corpse on the beach. What's more, there are two wounds on its neck. The body mysteriously disappears and the police dismiss Carole as a befuddled middle-aged woman.
-
-
Reminds me of "Rosemary & Thyme" TV series
- By Crochetaway on 11-17-14
By: Simon Brett
-
The Testament of Gideon Mack
- By: James Robertson
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Christopher on 07-06-08
By: James Robertson
-
The Golden Notebook
- By: Doris Lessing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
-
-
Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
-
Things We Never Said
- By: Nick Alexander
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Catherine learns that she is dying, she remembers the words her husband once jokingly uttered and decides to leave him the ultimate posthumous gift: a time capsule containing photographs of their life together along with tape recordings in which she recounts every secret she ever kept, every unspoken thought whether loving or treacherous - the things they never said.
-
-
Boring couple, Boring Book
- By Shell on 12-23-18
By: Nick Alexander
-
Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
-
-
Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
-
Past Imperfect
- By: Julian Fellowes
- Narrated by: Richard Morant
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Damian Baxter is hugely wealthy and dying. He lives alone in a big house in Surrey, England, looked after by a chauffeur, butler, cook and housemaid. He has but one concern--his fortune in excess of 500 million and who should inherit it on his death.
-
-
Read Snobs instead
- By cristina on 02-14-13
By: Julian Fellowes
-
Smut: Two Unseemly Stories: The Greening of Mrs Donaldson & The Shielding of Mrs Forbes
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two unexpected tales written and read by the best-selling author of The Uncommon Reader, Untold Stories and The History Boys."The Greening of Mrs Donaldson" - Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers, her mundane life becomes much more stimulating…
-
-
A fun British story about unmentionable subjects!
- By Anonymous User on 11-05-12
By: Alan Bennett
-
The Echo
- By: Minette Walters
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author Minette Walters captivates mystery aficionados throughout the world with her evocative, multi-layered novels, which have been translated into 22 languages. In The Echo she spins a finely-wrought web of secrets and betrayals, love and guilt that entangles everyone who touches it. A homeless man has been found dead of starvation—huddled next to a food-filled freezer—in a London socialite’s garage.
-
-
Cumbersome, dull and not worth the time
- By Celia on 04-08-14
By: Minette Walters
-
44 Scotland Street
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The brilliant Alexander McCall Smith became an international sensation with his New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. His award-winning wit, made famous through that series, is fully on display in 44 Scotland Street.
-
-
Smith's answer to Maupin
- By Amazon Customer on 10-23-05
-
Rumpole of the Bailey [Recorded Books]
- By: John Mortimer
- Narrated by: Patrick Tull
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first of six witty short stories, 60s-something English barrister, Horace Rumpole, takes on the younger generation both at home and in the hallowed courtroom—while offending his esteemed colleagues and his draconian wife, Hilda.
-
-
great fun
- By Amazon Customer on 09-28-16
By: John Mortimer
-
The End of the Affair
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Colin Firth
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Graham Greene’s evocative analysis of the love of self, the love of another, and the love of God is an English classic that has been translated for the stage, the screen, and even the opera house. Academy Award-winning actor Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, A Single Man) turns in an authentic and stirring performance for this distinguished audio release.
-
-
Colin Firth Kills It
- By Em on 05-09-12
By: Graham Greene
-
Maeve's Times
- In Her Own Words
- By: Maeve Binchy
- Narrated by: Kate Binchy
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.
-
-
A GLIMPSE THROUGH MAEVE'S LOOKING GLASS
- By jstrfic on 08-08-17
By: Maeve Binchy
-
The Brimstone Wedding
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is elegant, smart and in control. Only Jenny, her care assistant, knows that she harbours a painful secret, and only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. As the women talk, Jenny pieces together the answers to many questions that arise: Why has she kept possession of a house that her family don’t know about? What happened there that holds the key to a distant tragedy?
-
-
Amazing reader elevates book to a higher level
- By Doggy Bird on 10-04-14
By: Barbara Vine
-
Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
-
-
Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
-
-
Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
Flaubert's Parrot
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Julian Barnes pens a kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar’s search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert and the obsession of this detective, whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert’s characters.
-
-
Strange and quirky story
- By Lela Ellsworth on 01-24-24
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Sense of an Ending
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Andrew Lim on 06-14-21
By: Julian Barnes
-
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Mitzi on 09-01-23
By: Julian Barnes
-
Elizabeth Finch
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone's taste. But she will change the way you see the world. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centers of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years.
-
-
Another masterpiece!
- By Davis Perkins on 08-23-22
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
-
-
Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
Flaubert's Parrot
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Julian Barnes pens a kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar’s search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert and the obsession of this detective, whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert’s characters.
-
-
Strange and quirky story
- By Lela Ellsworth on 01-24-24
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Sense of an Ending
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Andrew Lim on 06-14-21
By: Julian Barnes
-
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Mitzi on 09-01-23
By: Julian Barnes
-
Elizabeth Finch
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone's taste. But she will change the way you see the world. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centers of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years.
-
-
Another masterpiece!
- By Davis Perkins on 08-23-22
By: Julian Barnes
-
Something to Declare
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Barnes’ appreciation extends from France’s vanishing peasantry to its hyperliterate pop singers, from the gleeful iconoclasm of nouvelle vague cinema to the orgy of drugs and suffering that is the Tour de France. Above all, Barnes is an unparalleled connoisseur of French writing and writers. Lively yet discriminating in its enthusiasm, seemingly infinite in its range of reference, and written in prose as stylish as haute couture, Something to Declare is an unadulterated joy.
By: Julian Barnes
-
Levels of Life
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Julian Barnes
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.
-
-
Every love story is a potential grief story.
- By Darwin8u on 09-27-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.
-
-
Not what I Expected
- By Mark on 02-20-08
By: Julian Barnes
-
Arthur & George
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Homer Todiwala
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's extraordinary real-life fight for justice. Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer, George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age; George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.
-
-
Never Ignites
- By John on 11-03-23
By: Julian Barnes
-
Sweet Tooth
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of such prestigious honors as the Booker Prize and Whitbread Award, Ian McEwan is justifiably regarded as a modern master. Set in 1972, Sweet Tooth follows Cambridge student Serena Frome, whose intelligence and beauty land her a job with England's intelligence agency, MI5. In an attempt to monitor writers' politics, MI5 tasks Serena with infiltrating the literary circle of author Tom Healy. But soon matters of trust and identity subvert the operation.
-
-
Perfect Book for your Literary Sweet Tooth
- By Susianna on 11-18-12
By: Ian McEwan
-
Last Stories
- By: William Trevor
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With a career that spanned more than half a century, William Trevor is regarded as one of the best writers of short stories in the English language. Now, in Last Stories, the master storyteller delivers ten exquisitely rendered tales - nine of which have never been published in book form - that illuminate the human condition and will surely linger in the listener's mind. This final and special collection is a gift to lovers of literature and Trevor's many admirers, and affirms his place as one of the world's greatest storytellers.
-
-
William Trevor's Last Literary Gems
- By W Perry Hall on 07-01-18
By: William Trevor
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
Walk the Blue Fields
- Stories
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly, Aoife McMahon, Aidan Quinn
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Claire Keegan continues her outstanding work with this new collection of quietly wrenching stories of despair and desire in modern-day Ireland. A writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll's old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder whose ulterior motives emerge as the night progresses. A priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage—and battles his memories of a love affair that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life. And a man seeks solace at the bottom of a bottle as he mourns both his empty life and his lost love.
-
-
Just Superb.
- By Deborah on 12-09-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
Companion Piece
- A Novel
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Natalie Simpson
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With an eye for rendering the timely in a timeless way and enchanting audiences with lyrical prose and grace, Ali Smith's ambitious Seasonal Quartet—a series of four stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected—artfully guided us through #MeToo, Brexit, the refugee crisis, a global pandemic, and more. Now, Smith's highly anticipated Companion Piece looks to the future and builds upon this "time-sensitive project". This new novel stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself.
-
-
She said she said she said
- By Cate on 05-29-22
By: Ali Smith
-
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
- A Novel
- By: Kate Atkinson
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Another Kate Atkinson multi-generational story
- By Satisfied Customer on 11-08-18
By: Kate Atkinson
-
The North Line
- A Novel
- By: Matt Riordan
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone believes Adam to be something he’s not. Sometimes that’s because he’s told them a story. Sometimes he’s told himself one. But when Adam joins an Alaskan fishing crew that’s promising quick money, the dangerous work and harsh lifestyle strip away all fabrications and force a dark-hearted exploration of who he really is. On the unforgiving Bering Sea, Adam finds the adventure and authenticity of a fisherman’s life revelatory. The labor required to seize bounty from the ocean invigorates him, and the often crude comradery accompanies a welcome, hard-earned wisdom.
-
-
Great Summer Read!
- By J.R. on 06-13-24
By: Matt Riordan
-
Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past.
-
-
One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
What listeners say about The Only Story
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- TDB
- 05-11-23
Transcends a simple boy-meets-woman narrative
This is certainly one of Julian Barnes' finest novels, in my opinion. For a relatively short work, the author explores an extraordinary range of human emotions, triumphs, and vices.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jamie kohl
- 08-12-18
ADeepDive
The narrator set a tone that was intoxicating. It felt almost like someone whispering their deepest secrets. The story navigating a life examined explored multiple important themes, including infidelity, love, abuse, alcoholism. Moving, thoughtful and engaging.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- KP
- 09-21-18
The Only Story
I really loved Julian Barnes’ previous book, The Sense of an Ending. This book, The Only Story, seems a lot sadder and more depressing, which is saying a lot since The Sense of an Ending wasn’t the happiest book around, anyway! This one also has to do with a love affair between a younger man and a much older woman, but it is more simply a look back by the younger man, who is now 50+, in order to examine what went wrong with the affair and to try to make sense of his life.
I enjoyed that the couple met on the tennis courts playing doubles, since that’s my game. Some tennis symbolism in the book is interesting, too. While they are playing tennis, Susan who is then 45 warns Casey Paul, all of 19 years old, to watch out for the middle of the court where players can most easily win a point by dividing their opponents with a good shot down the middle. It’s a common strategy in doubles tennis. THEN when Susan and Casey go to bed together soon after, Susan whispers, “Never forget, the most vulnerable spot is down the middle.” This rings true at the start of their relationship and proves to be a potent symbol of a weakness in it later on: the space between them, the differences between them. And I laughed when, on their very first sexual encounter, as they look down at the bed in front of them, Susan says, “ Which side do you prefer? Forehand or backhand?” I’ll remember that one ☺
I do think Barnes is a good writer! One technique in this book that I loved is how he starts out the book from the first person perspective of the young man, Casey Paul. Barnes writes, “And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realize that there are other persons, and other tenses.” In the second section, Barnes writes in the second person. It’s almost like the story is becoming so tragic and complicated that the writer is retreating to the second person as a way to show distance that is developing between the two lovers. And then by the third section, there is a further retreat to the third person. The author writes, “But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person. Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed." I appreciate how the writer’s voice echoes the deterioration of the relationship. Interesting.
The relationship between Susan and Casey should have been a fling. The fact that they kept it going on and on seems to have ruined both of them! That is the tragedy. In the beginning, Casey likes the idea of the relationship because it was so against what his parents and society would condone. He condemns people like his parents as “furrow dwellers” living out a boring existence for decades from which there is “no escape, no turning back.” By continuing his relationship with Susan for decades, he ironically succumbs to the same fate in a sense, although his fate is really more tragic in its outcome. Still Casey says about himself and Susan toward the end, “… still they hadn’t been defeated by practicality.” Hmm. Better to be practical than to end up with the fate of those two, in my opinion.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tami
- 05-03-18
An ok book
While I enjoyed this book, it was a bit long in parts. However, worth reading.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Maria Herrera
- 01-27-19
Not just a love story
I would find myself putting the book down and thinking is this a book about a love affair or is it a book about the many things of love? He strips some of the platitudes our culture decorates love with and poignantly admits its difficulties and the unsung heroism of allowing love. The moral portrait of the times is also treated fairly.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Folantin
- 02-07-23
amazing
This is an incredibly painful philosophical tale regarding the nature and meaning of love. The plot concerns a 19 year old youth who falls in love with a married woman who is 30 years older. The story charts their relationship avoiding cliche. Perfect narration with just the right touches of narrator self doubt
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joe Kraus
- 01-15-20
One of the best, at this best
I’m tempted to quip that this one is The Graduate meets Weekend in Vegas. And, at a basic plot level, it is something like that. Nineteen-year-old Paul falls in love with 42-year-old Susan, and they embark on a multi-year affair. Then, sometime later, Susan becomes an alcoholic, and Paul works in vain to “save” her from herself.
Barnes is a powerful writer, and describing the book as those stories well told does begin to do it justice. As this goes on, though, it becomes all that and something more.
Above all, this is a novel exploring the way the world looks to someone who has lived it. The frame narrative here comes from Paul, looking back on his own long life, and recalling what he has experienced. Early in their affair, Susan explains to him that everyone has a love story. It may be a failed one, it may even be one that never happened outside private imagination, but everyone has one such story. And it is, for everyone, “the only story,” the private and powerful experience of reaching out to someone else in a love he or she can’t then understand.
So, while the original love story comes with real grace and detail – their “court”-ship takes place over tennis and her husband is a three-dimensional boor – and her descent into alcoholism works as a powerfully sad story, what elevates this to the status of top-tier world literature is Barnes’s capacity for reflecting on the nature of story as self-definition.
It’s striking that this begins and ends in the first-person yet, for a stretch toward the end, it lapses into third-person. That feels like breaking the rules, but it works. And it works because Barnes insistently pushes us to consider the experience of how we narrate our lives to ourselves.
There are parts here that might be condescending in the hands of a lesser writer. Paul reflects on how, as an older man, he understands things he could never have understood in his youth. That could so easily be banal, but here it’s subtle and earned. As an older man, Paul is unfulfilled and idiosyncratic. He could not be the man he is without having experienced Susan. Susan is largely gone for him, though, and he can understand the relative disappointments of his later life only through story – as the titular only story.
It’s hard to say much more than that Barnes is justifiably one of the great writers working in our time. I understand him as one of those Booker-prize regulars, someone the British recognize as the best they have. I have admired a number of his earlier novels, and now I realize I have a real pleasure in front of me as I catch up on some of the others.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- chad404
- 05-03-18
by far the most unremarkable book I ever heard
Narration is fine so no fault there. As the first 15 minutes unfolded I thought/hoped this book might read like the diary of an old man that you find tucked under some books at a garage sale, you know a real treasure. You give it the benefit of the doubt for the first 30 minutes because you respect your elders and you think/hope they can share something wise with you. However, after you have totally zoned out for 7 hours as this book literally has gone nowhere and at the speed of water freezing into lava (makes no sense just like the book) you sadly realize that it is fact not a sage old man's diary but actually the uncompleted coloring book of 3 year old that had only 2 crayons (both made of slightly different shades of grey).
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Story
- Linda Bigelow McCue
- 04-30-18
worst book ever. painful to listen to til the end.
one of the most boring books ever with a non ending and chapters that seemed to drag on
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Elizabeth
- 07-20-18
Sorry, Julian. Not this time.
Pretty bad all round. I love British fiction of all periods, and have been reading Julian Barnes since the days of Flaubert's Parrot. This was just plain dull and repetitive, lacking dramatic tension or any kind of depth of character. I couldn't finish it, and the annoyingly maudlin voice the narrator gave to the female characters was off-putting. I kept wondering whether it would be better to read this than to listen to it, but the story itself didn't have enough to recommend it. I see what Barnes was trying to do, but he didn't do it. The novel was neither a meditation on love nor was it an exploration of the uses and failures of memory; the framework of the book allowed for either of these possibilities, but it didn't come to fruition. I kept wondering what a writer like Ian McEwan could have made of this very basic and shopworn plot.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!