The Children's Bach
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The Children's Bach
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Narrated by:
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Helen Garner
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By:
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Helen Garner
About this listen
A captivating and deeply personal novel from one of Australia’s most respected authors.
Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world to their doorstep. And Athena finds herself straining at the confines of her life.
Helen Garner portrays her characters with a clear eye for their dreams, their insecurities and their deep humanity in this intimate and engaging short novel, which was first published in 1984.
©1984 Helen Garner (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing Pty LtdListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I spans a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip.
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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Living with a powerfully ambitious writer who is consumed by his work, and trying to find a place for her own spirit to thrive, she rails against the confines. At the same time, she is desperate to find the truth in their relationship—and the truth of her own self.
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 6
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MG
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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3 out of 5 stars
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I liked this.
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- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
This House of Grief is a heartbreaking audiobook by one of Australia's most admired authors. Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Riveting
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By: Helen Garner
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Yellow Notebook
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- Narrated by: Helen Garner
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I spans a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Helen Garner offers a treasure trove of everyday life and experiences.
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By: Helen Garner
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How to End a Story
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- Narrated by: Helen Garner
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Living with a powerfully ambitious writer who is consumed by his work, and trying to find a place for her own spirit to thrive, she rails against the confines. At the same time, she is desperate to find the truth in their relationship—and the truth of her own self.
By: Helen Garner
-
Monkey Grip
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- Narrated by: Helen Garner
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story3 out of 5 stars 4
Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living, drugs, music and love - Garner captures the fluid relationships of a community of friends. Helen Garner’s gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics on its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece - the novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs and sex.
-
4 out of 5 stars
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MG
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By: Helen Garner
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The Spare Room
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- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
The Spare Room tells a story of compassion, humour and rage. The two women - one skeptical, one stubbornly serene - negotiate an unmapped path through Nicola's bizarre therapy, stumbling towards the novel's terrible and transcendent finale.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I liked this.
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- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
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-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Shuggie Bain
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,755
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,741
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1 out of 5 stars
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There’s far too much real pain and sadness in the world to spend any time listening to this tale of woe
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- Unabridged
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 92
October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A True Story Artistically Written
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Too Close
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- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,058
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,735
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,736
Working as a dedicated forensic psychiatrist for many years, Emma is not shocked so easily. Then she is assigned to work with Connie, a wife and mother accused of a despicable crime. Connie is suffering from dissociative amnesia - or at least seems to be. Now it is up to Emma to decide whether Connie can stand trial for her sins. But there is something about Connie that inexorably pulls Emma into her orbit. Too Close is a masterfully written riveting listen about the powerful - yet dangerous - closeness between women.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely worth it!
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The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot
- A Novel
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- Narrated by: Sheila Reid, Rebecca Benson
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,723
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3,299
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,279
Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives on the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. Though the teenager has been told she’s dying, she still has plenty of living to do. Joining the hospital’s arts and crafts class, she meets the magnificent Margot, an 83-year-old, purple-pajama-wearing, fruitcake-eating rebel, who transforms Lenni in ways she never imagined. As their friendship blooms, a world of stories opens for these unlikely companions who, between them, have been alive for one hundred years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Must Read (Listen)
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By: Marianne Cronin
Critic reviews
"This is the power of Garner’s writing. She drills into experience and comes up with such clean, precise distillations of life, once you read them they enter into you. Successive generations of writers have felt the keen influence of her work and for this reason Garner has become part of us all." (The Australian)
"Garner wears her mastery lightly – the novel never draws undue attention to its own modernist tricks. Unfolding, as the title suggests, like a halting piece of music, its effects are subtle and unexpected." (Harper's Bazaar)