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The Dust That Falls from Dreams

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The Dust That Falls from Dreams

By: Louis de Bernières
Narrated by: Avita Jay, David Sibley
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About this listen

In the brief golden years of King Edward VII's reign, Rosie McCosh and her three very different sisters are growing up in an eccentric household in Kent, with their neighbours the Pitt boys on one side and the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood adventure are shadowed by the approach of war that will engulf them on the cusp of adulthood.

When the boys end up scattered along the Western Front, Rosie faces the challenges of life for those left behind. Confused by her love for two young men - one an infantry soldier and one a flying ace - she has to navigate her way through extraordinary times. Can she and her sisters build new lives out of the opportunities and devastations that follow the Great War?

Louis de Bernières' magnificent and moving novel follows the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters as they strike out to seek what happiness can be built from the ruins of the old world.

©2015 Random House Audiobooks (P)2015 Random House Audiobooks Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Romance War & Military War Royalty
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Great story. Wonderful telling of it. Thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. Felt like I could see the characters.

the beautiful telling of the story

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After the beauty and tragedy that is the wonderful Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, I had high hopes for another soaring story. I was disappointed. The characters are rather wooden, and the priggish, tediously religious Rosie McCosh is hard to like or believe. It’s impossible to see why three men could feel lifelong devotion and love for her. Mrs McCosh is repellant as well as quite unbelievable, and the absurd Sophie and her manufactured lexicon is just ridiculous. None of the characters seem real, and the basis of much of the story line, the loves of three boys for one girl that endure into adulthood and through the decades, is quite unreal. Such a fascinating period in history and yet it has been rendered dully. Even the exploits of an air ace are of passing interest only. The brave Flying Corp are portrayed as entitled public school boys, who get drunk and destroy furniture by way of fun. The very occasional switch to a female narrator is pointless and distracting, although the principal narrator clearly found it hard to give the differing voices their individuality. I struggled to get to the end, and only managed it with a degree of exasperation and irritation or, as Sophie might put it, “irritasperation”. If you haven’t read Captain Corelli, read that instead.

The best thing about the book is it’s title

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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.