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Learning to Talk: Stories Audiobook
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Publisher Description
"The multiple performances in this audiobook are uniformly adept, providing listeners the disarming experience of adults unflinchingly looking back at childhood." -AudioFile on Learning to Talk Learning to Talk is a dazzling collection of short stories from the two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Wolf Hall Trilogy. With a new foreword by Hilary Mantel. In the wake of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall Trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village “scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.” For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In “King Billy Is A Gentleman,” the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. “Curved Is the Line of Beauty" is a story of friendship, faith, and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In “Third Floor Rising," she watches, amazed, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity. With a deceptively light touch, Mantel illuminates the poignant experiences of childhood that leave each of us forever changed. “A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat...Mantel’s narrators never tell everything they know, and that’s why they’re worth listening to, carefully.” —USA Today “Her short stories always recognize other potential realities...Even the most straightforward of Mantel’s tales retain a faintly otherworldly air.” —The Washington Post A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.
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"Those who’ve delighted for decades in Mantel’s fiction revel in her chameleonlike facility with language, her ability effortlessly to evoke wildly diverse characters, settings, and atmospheres . . . . The stories here enable us the more fully to appreciate Mantel’s wide-ranging gifts . . . . The overall effect of the collection is of a palimpsest, the powerfully atmospheric evocation of an unhappy mid-twentieth-century childhood in northern England."
— Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine
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“Mantel brings England alive, writing with detail and intellect.
— Time -
“Mantel’s short-story collection is all about growing up—and in the Booker-winning author’s universe, there’s nothing sweet about childhood.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Mantel’s writing is cinematically exquisite…you can’t help but get sucked in.”
— Chicago Tribune -
Part of her consistent brilliance lies in her attention to ghosts and mortgages, the light on the moors and 1980s educational policy, adolescent self-discovery and irregular accounting. These stories hold worlds as wide as those of her longest novels.
— Sarah Moss, The New York Times Book Review -
It’s a testament to Mantel’s brilliance as an author that even though the moments in these stories are subtle, the book somehow feels epic in its own way…And the result is magnificent. Learning to Talk is a lovely book, quiet but intense in its own way, and it proves—once again—that Mantel is one of the finest English-language authors working today.
— NPR -
Mantel brings England alive, writing with detail and intellect.
— Time -
Elegant, pitch-perfect sentences…Here is a writer who can do anything, anytime, anywhere.
— Oprah Daily -
Although best known for her long novels, Mantel has also excelled at short, intensely atmospheric books…and here that economy shines, as when she homes in on the telling detail with surgical precision…Mantel was born a poor Northern girl, but she was raised to be a writer who would destroy kingdoms.
— The Boston Globe -
Wish Mantel’s Wolf Hall (award-winning, bestselling trilogy) had never come to an end? You’ll enjoy her new collection of short stories.
— CNN -
Puts all of the author’s skill and style on display…
— Town & Country -
She is our literary Michelangelo.
— O, The Oprah Magazine -
Every page is rich with insight...soul-deep characterization and cutting observational skill.
— USA Today -
Deep, suspenseful, chewy, complex and utterly transporting—truly a full banquet.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Wall Street Journal Magazine -
Sumptuous prose.
— The New Yorker -
A treasure on every page.
— The Times (UK) -
Majestic and often breathtakingly poetic…the writing comes as close to poetry as prose ever may.
— Simon Schama, Financial Times
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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Among longlisted titles for Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2022
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Among longlisted titles for Library Journal Best Books of the Year, 2022
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About Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel (1952-2022) was a #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time winner of the Booker Prize for her bestselling novels, Wolf Hall, and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The final novel of the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and won critical acclaim around the globe. She wrote more than a dozen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, and the memoir Giving Up the Ghost.
About the Narrators
Anna Bentinck is a British actress who trained at Arts Educational Schools and has worked extensively for BBC Radio. Winner of four AudioFile Earphones Awards, she has provided voices for many audiobooks and such animated series as 64 Zoo Lane. Her film credits include Alice in Wonderland and To the Devil a Daughter.
Jane Collingwood is an actress, voice-over artist, and audiobook narratior.