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Peculiar Ground

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Peculiar Ground

By: Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Narrated by: Juanita McMahon, Leighton Pugh, Adjoa Andoh, Peter Noble, Jake Curran, Rachel Atkins, Maggie Ollerenshaw
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About this listen

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘Unlike anything I’ve read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It’s wonderful’ Tessa Hadley

‘I just enjoyed it so very much’ Philip Pullman

It is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate.

Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all.

Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood.

From the multi-award-winning author of The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.

©2017 Lucy Hughes-Hallett (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction War Witchcraft Magic Users
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One for listeners who like a challenge

If you could sum up Peculiar Ground in three words, what would they be?

challenging evocative overcomlex

What did you like best about this story?

The evocation of the early restoration peraiod from the perspectiveof a returning landowner, dispossessed under the previous commonweaklth regime and t5he sights, sounds and smells ofclothes,landscape, food, everything.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

The is distyinctyive character tiof the minor players in the narrative ,You get a better picture of the minor characters than yoou would by just reading it,, especially those of lower social status

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I nearly criedboth when LordWoldingham's son drowned and when Cecily revkeale dher plsguee symtoms to Norris through a window

Any additional comments?

I had two problems: the first was t he multiplicity of the characters in the twentieth century sections: they ir individual characters emerged too slowly and I couldn't see the point of some of the female chasracters.There were too many themes: the borders theme came over clearly but thereee alkso seemed to be sdome significance in the action of water, which I didn't quite grasp.Overall I preferred the 1660s s sections and I was tempted to skip .

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating and complex historic novel

Loved it, multi-character, 2 major historic periods (17th century restoration and 1950s to1980s. Beautifully read, a perfect audio book.

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