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The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories Audiobook
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A glimmering collection of new short fiction from the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author of How It All Began In such acclaimed novels as The Photograph, Family Album, and How It All Began, Penelope Lively has captivated readers with her singular blend of wisdom, elegance, and humor. Now, in her first story collection in decades, Lively takes up themes of history, family, and relationships across varied and vividly rendered settings. In the title story, a Mediterranean purple swamp hen chronicles the secrets and scandals of Quintus Pompeius's villa, culminating with his narrow escape from the lava and ash of Vesuvius. "Abroad" captures the low point of an artist couple's tumultuous European road trip, trapped in a remote Spanish farmhouse and forced to paint a family mural and pitch in with chores to pay for repairs to their broken-down car. Other stories reveal friends and lovers in fateful moments of indiscretion, discovery, and even retribution-as in "The Third Wife," when a woman learns her husband to be a serial con artist and turns a house hunting trip into an elaborately staged revenge trap. Each of these delightful stories is elevated by Lively's signature graceful prose and eye for the subtle yet powerfully evocative detail. Wry, charming, and keenly insightful, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories is a masterful achievement from one of our most beloved writers.
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“Davina Porter’s elegant and measured delivery is a perfect match for this collection…Porter’s ability to present Lively’s wonderfully shifty points of view gracefully helps listeners stay on track.”
— Library Journal (starred audio review)
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“Lively writes with an astringent blend of sympathy and detachment, emotional wisdom and satiric wit.”
— New York Times -
“The stories are compact yet often novelistic in scope, deftly alighting on the seemingly trivial moments that determine the direction of relationships and lives.”
— New Yorker -
“Her stories reinvent the world.”
— San Francisco Chronicle -
“Reveals the challenges and secrets in domestic relationships, as well moral and emotional qualms and the unexpected arc of unsung individual lives.”
— Seattle Times
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About Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively is an award-winning novelist and author of children’s literature. She received the Booker Prize for her novel Moon Tiger and the Carnegie Medal for British Children’s Books for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of PEN and the Society of Authors. In recognition of her contributions to British literature, she has been appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
About Davina Porter
Davina Porter has been enthralling listeners for over twenty-five years with her ability to mine the psychological depths of the characters she reads and bring them convincingly to life. In 2006, she won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Female Narration and in 2004 for Best Inspirational Literature Narration. She has been honored as an AudioFile Golden Voice and has won nineteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. As an actress, she has appeared on stage at the Vineyard Playhouse and the Square One Theater, among others.