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Staying On

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Staying On

By: Paul Scott
Narrated by: Paul Shelley
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Summary

Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pankot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their imposing landlady threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days. Both funny and deeply moving, 'Staying On' is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair.

©1977 Paul Scott (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction
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I loved every second of the reading of Paul Scott’s truth telling of The Raj and the emotional and pecuniary toll it left behind. Such a brutally honest account of how life, once the British had gone, panned out for Indian society and Colonel Tusker and his long suffering wife Memsahib Lucy. While the basis of the story is painfully sad , it is also hilarious and made so by Paul Shelley’s brilliant,brilliant narration. Best book I have ever listened to on Audible. I won’t stop thinking about it.

Lives the British stole

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Slow to start but more engaging as the story developed. Empathy, sadness and regrets all in one short novel.

Very poignant and very sad

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Is there anyone likeable in this book - I don't think so and really should have stopped listening early on, finding it very very sad. A story of many people who had started out with ambition but who have been either ground down by life or are about to be. None of them seem to like the others very much and such a small number of characters examined in such detail became very claustrophobic. I read this as from a list of 'timeless classics'. Not one, in my opinion, and a book which I wish I had never come across.

Very sad, depressing even

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