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Desire Lines

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Desire Lines

By: Felicity Volk
Narrated by: Abbe Holmes
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About this listen

 'Deftly embroidered, the narrative is perfumed, with plants and flowers, signifiers of life, of love...a vivid and sometimes harrowing tale of yearning' - The Weekend Australian

'accomplished and devastating' - The Saturday Paper

'From the outset, the novel captures the attention of the eye and the mind with its exquisite sensory observation, its breathtakingly exact expressions of feelings and sensations.' - Australian Book Review

Are you still a liar? The crafting of those five words, even without dispatch, left her chilled.

Arctic Circle, 2012. On a lightless day at the end of the polar winter, landscape architect Evie Waddell finds herself exhuming the past as she buries Australian seeds in a frozen mountain vault - insurance against catastrophe.

Molong, 1953. Catastrophe is all seven-year-old Paddy O'Connor has known. Shipped from institutional care in London to an Australian farm school, his world is a shadowy place where lies scaffold fragile truths and painful memories. To Paddy's south in Canberra, young Evie is safe in her family's embrace, yet soon learns there are some paths from which you can't turn back; impulses and threats that she only half understands but seems to have known forever.

Blue Mountains, 1962. From their first meeting as teenagers at a country market, Paddy and Evie grow a compulsive, unconventional love that spans decades, taking them in directions neither could have foreseen.

Set against the uneasy relationship society has with its own truth-telling in history, war and politics, DESIRE LINES is an epic story of love and the lies we tell ourselves to survive - and a reminder that even truths which seem lost forever can find their way home.

'Felicity Volk is the real deal' - NIKKI GEMMELL
'Epic, tender, heart-rending - a story resonating in its spectacular landscapes' - INGA SIMPSON
'Genuinely tender, passionate and devastating' Books+Publishing Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

Review to come.
Desire Lines is an elegant novel. Volk shows sensitive insight into love and the human heart. She understands the flaws we all bear
Review to come.
Review to come.
This book was epic. A truly spectacular read.
This novel will appeal to devotees of literary historical fiction, for Volk has executed a solid example of the genre - reminiscent of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda and, more recently, Stephanie Bishop's The Other Side of the World.
All stars
Most relevant
An engaging story with interesting characters and a good pace - I loved how it was set in Canberra. It kept us listening on a long road trip even though the narrator was annoying - a real testament to the story and how it works really well as an audible book. Once you get through the first half hour when the narrator seemed to be at her most "breathy" and "over-acting" the story draws you in and you forget about her performance. Recommended.

Great story

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