He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?
Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Aibileen is a black maid raising her 17th white child. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is the sassiest woman in Mississippi: a wonderful cook with a gossip's tongue. Graduate Skeeter returns from college with ambitions, but her mother will not be happy until she's married. Although world's apart, Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny's lives converge over a clandestine project that will change the town of Jackson forever.
This is a story about a brother and a sister. It's a story about childhood and growing up, friendships and families, triumph and tragedy, and everything in between. More than anything, it's a story about love in all its forms.
Wolf Hadda's life was a fairytale - successful businessman and adored husband. But a knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later Wolf begins to talk to the prison psychiatrist and receives parole to return home. But there's a mysterious period in Wolf's past when he was known as the Woodcutter. Now the Woodcutter is back, looking for truth and revenge...
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Book of the Year, 2007. Shortlisted for Audible's Listen of the Year, 2006. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2006. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2006. Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941...
This is a lovely book both funny and moving and brilliantly read by Anna Bentinck. It charts a period of 20 years in the lives of two friends revisiting their lives on the same date in each successive year and with alternating (often contrasting) viewpoints of the same events. It sounds gimmicky (but then so did The Time Traveller's Wife) but works well and by the end of the novel you will feel as if you are leaving old friends behind. Anna Bentinck inhabits both characters convincingly and if you enjoy her reading then try her version of Hilary Mantel's "Beyond Black" - another funny and moving book with a dual narrative structure.
This is not the sort of book I would normally read, but it was going for a song in the Audible summer sale, so I thought I'ld give it a whirl.
I'm glad I did so. It is an engaging and bittertsweet story, and with the book comprising as it does largely of dialogue or inner monologue, it is perfectly suited for audio. And the narration is just superb - beautifully paced and with the characters brought brilliantly to life. In fact it is for me one of those books that works far better as audio than reading for yourself.
Thank heavens there are some negative reviews as this was one of my least favourite downloads. In the end, I got hold of a copy of the book and sped read the last few chapters as I couldn't take any more. Two dreary people for whom I had no sympathy and would quite happily have ditched after Year 1. I am so much in the minority as there are millions of fans of this book - just not me! Sorry!
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.
"emotional roller-coaster of a book"
ByMaha(Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom)Jul 27, 2010
I just finished this emotional roller-coaster of a book. The idea of revisiting the lives of the main characters on the same day every year for almost 20 years was so well done, all the important gaps filled so well that you feel you knew all there was to know about them... this was a very difficult book to put down and I became very emotionally and intellectually invested. It made me question my life choices, and I cried with Dex and Em when they were sad, I yearned when they were yearning.
The narrator is very good, although I liked her Em voice much more than her Dex voice (although this may also be because Dex is not as immediately likable as Em).
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
"Absorbing and Charming"
BySharon(Cranbrook, Kent, United Kingdom)Mar 25, 2011
I Loved this audio book - the narrator very skilfully portrays each of the main characters in the book and you find yourself with a crush on both Dex and Em and the story of their friendship. If you ever made a life long friend of the opposite sex, you will relate to this story. And just when you think you know where the story is going, it stops you in your tracks and makes you shout out 'NO!'
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
"Fab Read"
ByChristine(sandy, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom)Nov 3, 2010
I don't generally pick novels about relationships, but I loved this one. Emotionally, it has it all, I laughed and cried throughout, but my favourite element was the sharp dialogue between the key characters. I would seek out more novels by David Nicholls after listening to this one. Grea stuff|!
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
"Excellent listen."
ByJill(Tattingstone, Suffolk, United Kingdom)Oct 5, 2010
This was a great listen and I was sorry when I had finished it. I felt I knew the characters so well. I sometimes struggle with books where there is only one reader doing a multitude of voices. There were times when I confused the characters because the voices were so similar, however, the reader did a great job of doing all the different voices and what a challenge it must have been. I heartily recommend this book of our era.
Life is sweet and cruel in unequal measure and this book captures a little of this. It's the kind of book that brings us closer together through shared experience and dispels a little of the existential loneliness that creeps in when we don't talk. It helps that I'm from the same generation and background as the main characters. I feel as if I've found and lost two new friends.
This is a really interesting and exciting book. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. It does have a slightly predicable twist but it holds the story well.
I have just finished this book and I am quite disappointed. Firstly I'm afraid I really never got used to the narrator, it took me months to struggle through this book and every time I listened all I could focus on was the narrator rather than the words she was saying. I feel I therefore missed a lot of what was going on through the book. I agree with other reviewers also as I didn't really like either of the characters, Dex needed a slap most of the time and Emma just needed to stop feeling sorry for herself. That said however now that I have finished it I am thinking about the story and am quite moved by how it all turned out. I feel I may take a second look but this time unfortunately I'll have to read rather than listen and hope that there may be some endearing moments that I missed while over analysing the narrators every utterance!
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![One Day | [David Nicholls]](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20110918022903im_/http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YHZ%2BWLiqL._SL175_.jpg "One Day | [David Nicholls]")
