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Clock Dance

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Clock Dance

By: Anne Tyler
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Clock Dance by Anne Tyler, read by Kimberly Farr.

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was eleven and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at twenty-one, the accident that would make her a widow at forty-one. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others.

So when she receives a phone call telling her that her son’s ex-girlfriend has been shot and needs her help, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the moment decision to look after this woman – and her nine-year-old daughter, and her dog – will lead Willa into uncharted territory. Surrounded by new and surprising neighbours, she is plunged into the rituals that make a community, and takes pleasure in the most unexpected things.

A bittersweet novel of hope and regret, fulfilment and renewal, Clock Dance brings us the everyday life of a woman who decides it’s never too late to change direction, and choose your own path.

©2018 Anne Tyler (P)2018 Penguin Audio Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

"She is and always will be my favourite author." (Liane Moriarty)
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thoroughly enjoyable and very skilfully performed. brought me to tears of sorrow as well as laughter.

heartaching and humorous.

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I've been an Anne Tyler fan for decades. This novel was well-written but as dull as the one - dimensional character it almost portrayed. I listened to the end always hoping that she'd wake up and live. The ending was an atrocious after-thought. Though Tyler may have planned it from the start one can't have faith that the character knew what she was doing. To dismiss her future life in a couple of sentences after making us wade through her non relationships was a bit disappointing. No. It was incredible and disappointing.

Underwhelming use of Anne Tyler's skills.

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This gentle yet steering story invited us to understand minor people with small lives. Yet they matter. The sadness of family distance and the joy of love . The longing for family closeness. How men and women are divided by walls. The clockwork dance is subtly feminist liberating women from the traditional shackles of compliance and expected subservience. Yet honours the nurturant of their souls. Captures the internal struggle of an ageing woman in middles America.

Anne Tyler always succeeds in gently moving the reader

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Absolutely adore anything written by Anne Tyler. Narration was very good as well. Recommended.

Another Anne Tyler Masterpiece

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.