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The Line of Beauty
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 17 hrs and 13 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Non-member price: $25.82
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It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.
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depressing even though it was obviously well writt
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Read it for uni
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it is the best book ever I've read till now.
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it is the best book ever I've read till now.
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Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 2008.
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In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio's father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train upends Sami's visit and changes his life forever. Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic. Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the nuances of emotion that are the substance of passion.
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Not Much to add
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The Velvet Rage
- Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World
- By: Alan Downs Ph. D
- Narrated by: Alan Downs Ph. D
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The most important issue in a gay man’s life is not “coming out”, but coming to terms with the invalidating past. Despite the progress made in recent years, many gay men still wonder, “Are we better off?” The byproduct of growing up gay in a straight world continues to be the internalization of shame, rejection, and anger - a toxic cocktail that can lead to drug abuse, promiscuity, alcoholism, depression, and suicide.
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Good advice with dubious overreach.
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Joe Cinque's Consolation
- By: Helen Garner
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In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died.
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Heartbreaking. So touched.
- By Pete Shields on 10-10-2019
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The Sea, the Sea
- Vintage Classics Murdoch Series
- By: Iris Murdoch
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant
- Length: 23 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims in the sea, eats revolting meals and writes his memoirs.But then he meets his childhood sweetheart Hartley, and memories of her lovely, younger self crowd in - along with more recent lovers and friends - to disrupt his self-imposed exile. So instead of 'learning to be good', Charles proceeds to demonstrate how very bad he can be.
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Sheer brilliance
- By Paul on 27-08-2020
Publisher's Summary
With an introduction by Sebastian Faulks.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Line of Beauty is a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s Britain.
There was the soft glare of the flash - twice - three times - a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance?'
In the summer of 1983, 23-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife, Rachel, and their children, Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens' world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.
The Line of Beauty is Alan Hollinghurst's Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. It is a novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man's collision with his own desires and with a world he can never truly belong to.
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What listeners say about The Line of Beauty
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- MISS
- 03-07-2020
Thatchers Britain
The novel gives an insight into Thatchers Britain, through the eyes of the Nick Guest. Nick's observations of the family and the times in an exploration of rich and poor, gay and straight gives a good understanding of living in London in the 1980s.
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- DAVID
- 09-10-2018
Obvious and lusty
I'd heard many good reports of this....but after three hours all I could discern was a flimsy narrative linking the lusty thoughts and dabblings of a young Gay adventurist. Tedious repetition of the words penis, bulge, snog, hole, etc. Bored by the boring. And so it was abandoned.
14 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 26-10-2018
excellent writing and urgent listening
If you want to understand the political landscape of 1980s Britain, this is the novel. If you want to understand the history behind the current media morality panic about trans people, this is the novel. If you want to understand our current government, this is the novel.
6 people found this helpful
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- Gillian
- 27-06-2020
Excellent prose - but do we really need all that detail?
On reflection, I enjoyed listening to this. The narration was excellent - just the right sardonic time for the times. The writing is very beautiful too. The story moves slowly, but everything falls into place at the end, which is satisfying. But there is just too much explicit description of sex... it seems on every page. I do understand that this is an important theme... and I’m no prude, or I wouldn’t have chosen this book at all... but too much detail and too frequently just gets really tedious. If it was a paper book, I’d just skip those sections, but more difficult with audio.
2 people found this helpful
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- Pavarotta
- 12-03-2020
Dull
I had high hopes of this novel as I love this narrator, who can usually bring anything to life, and I liked the sound of the storyline. However, I found it at best unengaging, at worst tedious and mannered.
1 person found this helpful
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- Robert
- 26-12-2018
Boring
Aimed at a limited interest group. Cliche ridden. Hardly of interest to a wide audience.
2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 24-02-2020
Holds your attention
Well crafted story from a good author. Very good reader. Enjoyable commentary on the 80's.
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- "adam_gc"
- 15-04-2019
A masterpiece!
Exquisite writing. Not a short book, but I was left longing for more! Highly recommended
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