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Hope Farm

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Hope Farm

By: Peggy Frew
Narrated by: Ailsa Piper, Taylor Owynns, Various
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About this listen

It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start. But here, at just 13, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world, and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences.

©2015 Peggy Frew (P)2015 W F Howes Ltd Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction

Critic Reviews

"Elegant, tender and very wise.... Hope Farm is beautifully written, acutely observed and, best of all, completely absorbing... A great novel." (Chris Womersley, author of Cairo and Bereft)
"An original tale.... Peggy's voice is contemporary, her observations sharp and sensitive." (Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep)
All stars
Most relevant
Really good story - great characters, and the narration was also perfect - except someone forgot to do a last “proof” listen before releasing it. Oops!

Complete with bloopers!

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Good book and well performed except for several obvious blunders in Chapter 6. I was surprised that these mistakes made their way into the finished recording, and would recommend that this chapter be rerecorded.

Interesting story and generally well read

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Peggy Frew is a gorgeous writer. Playing with language so beautifully that it causes you to actually recall to mind, the “…downy pierced ear…” of a child.
And interwoven betwix’d this prose that makes a fictional Gippsland “hippy farm” come to life, so clearly in one’s mind; is the achingly touching tale of Mother and Daughter.

One note to AUDIBLE: The audio quality is poor, particularly in Chapter 6!
❗️My hastily written notes, taken as I listened to the editing errors: “Ooh Chapter 6 could do with some editing! (Read someone didn’t do *any* editing at all!)”.❗️
A real shame that distracts from an otherwise wonderful book.

Hope Farm - Peggy Frew

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I loved this book. You need to really engage with the protagonist when it's written in the first person and I wanted to immerse myself in the experience all the way through. The narration is delicate and perfectly paced. This author is wonderful at highlighting and describing small details and this leads beautifully into a child's perspective, which blooms into adolescence and adulthood seamlessly. Peggy Frew also has a lot to say about the experiences of mothers and daughters and women generally across a vibrant changing landscape of these particular generations. She also evokes Australia of this time with perfection. I think to those who have been critical I would ask: Have you ever had a go at writing such erudite and delicate prose? Frew deserves the recognition she received for this novel.

Compelling, tender, engaging, beautifully written

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Much ado about nothing. The author must have had difficulty with her own mother. The voice of Silver is far to adult for a child. It seems to be at the same level of understanding all through her childhood.

Overwrought

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