The List

By: Martin Fletcher

Narrated by: David Thorn

Length: 14 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Winner of a Jewish National Book Award for his previous book, Walking Israel, NBC Special Correspondent Martin Fletcher uses meticulous research and his own family’s history in this stunning novel.

Dramatizing explosive events in London and Palestine in the years directly following World War II, The List follows the lives of Edith and Georg, Austrian refugees who are expecting their first baby in a world unfriendly to Jews. Anti-Semitism sweeps across the streets of London even as the world learns of the atrocities of the Holocaust. As Edith and Georg desperately search for surviving family members, they struggle to stay afloat in a world riddled with terrorism, assassination attempts, and fear.

©2011 Original Material, Martin Fletcher. Recorded by arrangement with Thomas Dunne Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. (P)2011 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

" The List is an elegantly written and evocative story of Holocaust survivors and what they faced after the war. Martin, always the journalist, dug into his family’s past to give us a novel that is at once instructive, darkly comic and ultimately inspiring." (Tom Brokaw)

Painful at Times to Listen

I was so looking forward to this book by Martin Fletcher and then had to force myself to finish the book. I have discovered that the voice actor's performance either makes or breaks an audible book-- so true here. I finished the book because I wanted to know what happened. However, at times I could not stand listening. The interpretation of female voices was ghastly and sometimes Edith came across as totally unlikable. I wish a female would have been used for the female characters. Also, the accents were atrocious. This was my first experience with the voice actor and I think I will steer clear from his works in the future.

Too Slow For My Mood

There are 2 storylines in this book that intertwine in various ways.

One starts on V.E. day and is the story of a young Jewish couple living in London. They are awaiting the birth of their first baby while trying to uncover the fate of their relatives. Just about everyone died in the camps, except for maybe her father… the search begins…

The second is about a group of Jewish terrorists in Palestine. Try as I might, I just could not get into this plot, I was just not interested. (I kept expecting Gabriel Allon to make an appearance! LOL)

What I did find interesting was the storyline about how the local Londoners wanted to expel the Jews in order to make room for their troops returning home. They were seen as usurpers by some people and there was a lot of negative sentiment towards them. I never considered that before and I found it particularly relevant. That kind of sentiment is still alive and well today: consider foreign workers in the food industry like Mexican fruit pickers in the United States or Eastern Europeans waiting tables in Western Europe and the UK.

I found the book just ok overall and it was too slow moving for my mood.