An Unexpected Guest: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “[A] promising debut novel, a political thriller inspired by Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway…Korkeakivi shares Woolf’s flair for making everyday rituals (buying flowers, setting the table) seem profound.”

  — Entertainment Weekly

• “A quietly intelligent novel about a woman who, at long last, learns to be honest with herself.”

  — Christian Science Monitor

• “Captivating…Drawn from the same cloth as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the easy narrative flow, smooth pacing, and interesting characters compel this title about genteel intrigue of both politics and the heart.”

  — Booklist

• “This novel is so adeptly performed that in losing oneself in the suspenseful plot, one completely forgets that just a single actor puts forth so many characters. Ellen Archer’s accents, lovely French pronunciation, vocal range, and perceptive expressions distinctively portray Clare, the story’s chronicler…Archer matches the author’s taut wit and luscious imagery moment by moment.”

  — AudioFile

• “Moving between the starched-napkin ambience of high-level diplomacy and urgent questions of revolutionary activity, this engaging debut novel gently probes both without forcing insurmountable choices on its characters.”

  — Library Journal

• “Beautifully modulated…Korkeakivi produces a knowing comedy of manners, a politically charged thriller, and genuinely moving study of the human heart.”

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• Anne Korkeakivi's writing has all the best qualities of an Ishiguro novel. Clare, a seemingly selfless diplomat's wife, the epitome of restraint and hermetic detachment, unravels before us into a woman of dangerous allegiances, passions, and moral dilemmas, in prose that is both beautiful and razor sharp. Paris is depicted with subtle complexity, a city that reposes as it threatens, full of scorn and grace. Korkeakivi's sense of detail is remarkable while grounded in authenticity. An Unexpected Guest is a feast of a novel.

  — George Hagen, author of The Laments

• A taut tender suspenseful novel, delicately told.

  — Fernanda Eberstadt, author of Rat and The Furies

• Anne Korkeakivi writes wonderfully about embassy manners, food, and Paris, and she writes even better about the darker world that threatens to disrupt not just Clare's seating plan for dinner but her entire life. An Unexpected Guest, like its heroine, is a novel of great elegance, enormous surprises, and unexpected depths.

  — Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street

• Anne Korkeakivi knows her expat life as well as the protocol of diplomacy-from the flowers and trees and markets of Paris to the meetings behind closed doors. Clare is an observant, intelligent woman whose elegant existence includes endless dinner arrangements, to-do lists, and the necessity of irreproachable behavior. Yet she has a secret that seems destined to burst and shatter her comfortable life and that of her family. An Unexpected Guest will draw you in and keep you breathlessly turning pages, even as you admire its intelligence and fine writing.

  — Thomas E. Kennedy, author of In the Company of Angels and Falling Sideways

• An Unexpected Guest is a lovingly detailed account of a day in the life of the wife of a British diplomat in Paris. But what a day! She deals with protocol, place settings and a temperamental cook and at the same time a troubled son, an Irish complication, and a suspected Turkish terrorist. Virginia Woolf meets Eric Ambler - and readers meet a charming heroine who rises to all occasions.

  — John Casey, National Book Award-winning author of Spartina and Compass Rose:

• Korkeakivi creates a Paris as crisp and unruffled as her heroine--and just as likely to surprise.

  — Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes

• Deep private tension animates the perfect ambassador's wife as she manages one of the most important days of her husband's career, the complexities of her surprising past converging rapidly upon the present where an entire emotional life is balancing on a delicate, invisible wire. A beautifully written novel about living with our many selves.

  — Nicola Keegan, author of Swimming