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Red Joan

By: Jennie Rooney
Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
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Publisher's Summary

Joan’s voice is almost a whisper. ‘Nobody talked about what they did during the war. We all knew we weren’t allowed to.’ Joan Stanley has a secret. She is a loving mother, a doting grandmother, and leads a quiet, unremarkable life in the suburbs. Then one morning there is a knock on the door, and suddenly the past she has been so keen to hide for the last fifty years threatens to overturn her comfortable world.

Cambridge University in 1937 is awash with ideas and idealists, yet unworldly Joan feels better suited to a science lecture and a cup of cocoa. But a chance meeting with the glamorous Russian-born Sonya and her charismatic cousin Leo blurs the edges of the things Joan thought she knew about the world, and about herself. In the post-War world of smoke and mirrors, allegiance is a slippery thing. Working in a government ministry with access to top-secret information, Joan is suddenly faced with the most difficult question of all: what price would you pay to remain true to what you believe? Would you betray your country, your family, even the man you love?

©2013 Jennie Rooney (P)2013 Random House Audiobooks

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Annoying, whining protagonist undermines what is probably a very interesting story

I persevered with this book because I enjoy Juliet Stevenson (I’ve listened to several of her performances). But even she could not lift this piece out its self-indulgent, self-pitying narrative. The main character, Joan of the title, is such a drip! There’s just no other way I can describe her. She witters on through the years of this story alternating between being pathetic and silly. A simpering nitwit who wastes her life being in love with a totally unlovable man. I’d like to know the real story of the woman on whom this book is based. Because it seems completely unlikely that the character in this book could have been such a successful Soviet spy. Don’t waste your time on this book.

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amazing

a must read before seeing the movie. so we'll written and very factual. well worth buying

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