Under the Wide and Starry Sky
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Kirsten Potter
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By:
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Nancy Horan
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
From Nancy Horan, New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank, comes her much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny.
At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated “belle Americaine.”
Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writing—and who would eventually pen such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson’s charms, and the two begin a fierce love affair—marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness—that spans the decades and the globe. The shared life of these two strong-willed individuals unfolds into an adventure as impassioned and unpredictable as any of Stevenson’s own unforgettable tales.
Praise for Under the Wide and Starry Sky
“A richly imagined [novel] of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice . . . [Fanny Osbourne] kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson’s heart.”—USA Today
“Powerful . . . flawless . . . a perfect example of what a man and a woman will do for love, and what they can accomplish when it’s meant to be.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Spectacular . . . an exhilarating epic about a free-spirited couple who traveled the world yet found home only in one another.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Horan’s prose is gorgeous enough to keep a reader transfixed, even if the story itself weren’t so compelling. I kept re-reading passages just to savor the exquisite wordplay. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelist’s art.”—The Dallas Morning News
“A classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Nancy Horan has done it again, capturing the entwined lives of Fanny Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson so uncannily, it reads like truth.”—Sarah Blake, author of The Postmistress
“Horan has a distinct knack for evoking the rich, complicated lives of long-gone artists and the women who inspired them.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Fanny and Louis are wild-hearted seekers, and Nancy Horan traces their incredible journey fearlessly, plunging us through decades, far-flung continents, and chilling brushes with death. Ambitious and often breathtaking, this sweeping story spills over with spirited, uncompromising life.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
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"Fascinating...a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance." (The New York Times Book Review)
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- By dallas on 12-08-09
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Varina
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
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Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
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Grand Central
- Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion
- By: Melanie Benjamin, Amanda Hodgkinson, Pam Jenoff, and others
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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Grand Central: Memories
- By ZacharyKindle Customer on 05-03-17
By: Melanie Benjamin, and others
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The Women in the Castle
- By: Jessica Shattuck
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
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Skating On The Thin Ice Of Life
- By Sara on 04-29-17
By: Jessica Shattuck
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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Claude & Camille
- A Novel of Monet
- By: Stephanie Cowell
- Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the mid-19th century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his fathers nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his fathers will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.
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As a painter
- By janice hedwall on 03-08-16
By: Stephanie Cowell
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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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The Irishman's Daughter
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.
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Wasted a credit
- By Emily Coonce on 05-26-19
By: V.S. Alexander
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The Mayfair Bookshop
- A Novel of Nancy Mitford and the Pursuit of Happiness
- By: Eliza Knight
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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1938: She was one of the six sparkling Mitford sisters, known for her stinging quips, stylish dress, and bright green eyes. But Nancy Mitford’s seemingly dazzling life was really one of turmoil: with a perpetually unfaithful and broke husband, two Nazi sympathizer sisters, and her hopes of motherhood dashed forever. With war imminent, Nancy finds respite by taking a job at the Heywood Hill Bookshop in Mayfair, hoping to make ends meet, and discovers a new life.
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Perfectly Voices, Upliftingly Fun
- By Syd Young on 04-15-22
By: Eliza Knight
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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Now, Voyager
- Femmes Fatales
- By: Olive Higgins Prouty
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Boston blueblood Charlotte Vale has led an unhappy, sheltered life. Lonely, dowdy, repressed, and pushing 40, Charlotte finds salvation at a sanitarium, where she undergoes an emotional and physical transformation. After her extreme makeover, the new Charlotte tests her mettle by embarking on a cruise and finds herself in a torrid love affair with a married man which ends at the conclusion of the voyage. But only then can the real journey begin, as Charlotte is forced to navigate a new life for herself.
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The Inspiration for The Movie Classic
- By Susie on 12-17-12
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Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
What listeners say about Under the Wide and Starry Sky
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mollie
- 12-09-16
Determined to stick it out
It took me more than a month to finish this book. I wanted to read it because I visited the Writer's Museum in Edinburgh in May where I learned a lot about Robert Louis Stevenson. RLS is one of Scotland ' s "big 3." I liked the book, but it drug on and on at times. The narration was slow, but it helped put me to sleep each night.
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- Vicki
- 07-09-15
Difficult to put down!
Thoroughly enjoyed this story! Performance was excellent. The writing was beautiful and thought provoking; providing a most pleasant experience!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Erika Shaffer
- 06-09-15
good performance, story goes on a little LONG
Would you try another book from Nancy Horan and/or Kirsten Potter?
Yes I would. I felt this went on a bit long but that is more because of the lives these people led rather than the storytelling. Was pretty amazing to go from Paris to Monterrey to the south pacific. I knew nothing of RL stevenson's life at all and was really interesting!
Have you listened to any of Kirsten Potter’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I had just listened to Station 11 and the content was so different that it was an odd experience frankly!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Margaret R. Gravelle
- 10-30-22
Beautiful
Start this book and be transported to a time a place no longer. Enjoy takes off a great story treller and the tour de force behind him. Discover the magic of dreaming bigger than big. I loved the book!
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- Christine
- 05-26-14
Fan of Nancy Horan
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. It provides some literary history with some texture from the era they lived in and their personal lives.
What did you like best about this story?
I don't know how Nancy Horan does it but she transports the reader to the lives and times that she is writing about. "Loving Frank" is still my all time favorite audiobook.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Christina Pickard
- 06-27-23
Interesting story
Interesting to learn more about the life of Robert Lewis Stevenson. It seemed weird that the focus was on his wife, not on him. Wasn’t my cup of tea.
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- Larry Settle
- 03-13-15
Masterful!
Marvelous insight into RLS's life and times. Bravo to the narrator for her masterful voicing particularly her male Irish brogue! Astonishingly convincing and nuanced.
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- Lisa B.
- 01-07-20
Historically Interesting
Historically interesting, and although slow at times, I kept listening. Lovely, varied point of view & comprehensive character development.
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- Hank Harper
- 07-03-22
Interesting Story with gaps
Well written except for gaps in time without explanation. Great narration. I still recommend reading.
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- cindy
- 03-28-14
Not your typical love story adventure
Finally, a love story that doesn’t end happily or tragically. Horan is able to portray Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fannie as they really are, human. They both make mistakes, act impulsively and drift apart, which really happens to couples. It wasn’t love at first sight and happily ever after. I really began to under Fannie and her moods towards the end when Louis had his revelation when she was ill. It takes a lot for person to step back and see the situation for what it really is and how they got there. Louis was accountable for his part in their hectic lives and was big enough to own it and tell Fannie so. A part of me hopes that Louis really did understand how much work Fannie put into keeping him alive and what a toll it took on her and her children. As far as Fannie, I understand how other viewers may say that Fannie is all about herself and to a certain extent that’s true but who isn’t? I think Fannie was a woman before her time, a woman willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
Overall, I enjoyed the audio book very much. I thought the narrator did a fantastic job differentiating the characters and their accents. I was very sorry that the book ended sooner than I felt like I knew each of the main characters so well by then. Even though the two parts of the audio book total about 16 hours, it sure didn’t seem that long. However, if I had read the book, I can’t say for sure that I would have finished the book eagerly. I have to admit there were chapters during the book that I thought the author could have hurried through.
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4 people found this helpful