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    Apple Tree Yard: A Novel
    Apple Tree Yard: A Novel
    Apple Tree Yard: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    Apple Tree Yard: A Novel

    Written by Louise Doughty

    Narrated by Juliet Stevenson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    An intelligent, erotically charged thriller with deep moral implications

    Yvonne Carmichael, renowned geneticist, public authority, happily married mother of two, sits in the accused box. The charge is murder. Across the courtroom, not meeting her eye, sits her alleged accomplice. He wears the beautiful pin-striped suit he wore on their first meeting in the Houses of Parliament, when he put his hand on her elbow, guided her to a deserted and ancient chapel, and began to undress her. As the barrister’s voice grows low and sinuous, Yvonne realizes she’s lost herself and the life she’d built so carefully to a man who never existed at all.

    After their first liaison, Yvonne’s lover tells her very little about himself, but she comes to suspect his secrecy has an explanation connected with the British government. So thrilled and absorbed is she in her newfound sexual power that she fails to notice the real danger about to blindside her from a seemingly innocuous angle. Then, reeling from an act of violence, Yvonne discovers that her desire for justice and revenge has already been compromised. Everything hinges on one night in a dark little alley called Apple Tree Yard.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 14, 2014
    ISBN9781480577534
    Author

    Louise Doughty

    Louise Doughty’s novel Whatever You Love was short-listed for the Costa Book Award and long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Doughty is the author of several other novels and a book of nonfiction, A Novel in a Year, based on her hugely popular newspaper column. She also writes plays and journalism and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio 4. She lives in London.

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    Reviews for Apple Tree Yard

    3.5/5

    264 ratings35 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The voice was great ! Storie line was interesting I wish this could have turned out different ?⚡️
    • 5/5
      Yvonne Carmichael is sensible. She's married with two grown up children and has a career in science. However one day she meets a man and then from that moment shes no longer sensible and the fatal attraction begins.This book is so good I that I cannot praise it enough. The story is Yvonnes and how things tumble out of control from that moment she meets X. I would say its a womens book so it will be interesting to see what the male members of the book group think.With the usual cliché, the book is a page turner and I wanted to see how it was going to end . From the very beginning the story holds the readers attention and keeps it till the end. What I enjoyed was the court case and because of this it reminded me of some of Jodi Picoult books. Had I have been on the jury I don't know what I would've thought myself, which way I could have gone. Just like JP books it did ask the question of what would you do in the same situation.A roller coaster of a read, with a sexy, thriller element of a fatal kind that keeps the reader on tenterhooks till the end.
    • 5/5
      This was a good story and the narrator was fabulous
    • 5/5
      A really great read. Highly recommend this book! Very immersive
    • 4/5
      Listened to the audiobook. Great story and brilliant narration by Juliet Stevenson.
    • 2/5
      I finished it, to see how it turned out, but I did not love the journey to the end.
    • 3/5
      Well-written thriller/courtroom drama.
    • 5/5
      Seldom has it happened that a television production I watch ends up leading me back to the novel adapted for that video presentation. Although this is happening more than ever right now because of the semi-isolated lifestyles so many of us have been forced to adopt in recent months, it still comes as a pleasant surprise to me when it does. I recently came across Louise Doughty’s 2013 Apple Tree Yard as a four-part television series that was originally broadcast by the BBC in early 2017, and I didn’t notice the book-credit until I began the second episode. The series stars Emily Watson, Ben Chaplin, and Mark Bonnar, among other familiar faces. I noticed, too, that Doughty was not the screenplay writer, and that made me more curious about how the book and the television adaptation would compare.I enjoyed the BBC production, but I’ve found that despite their overall plot similarity, Doughty’s novel is much the better of the two. In the BBC version, most everything unfolds in its natural, chronological order. One thing happens, and that leads, to the next, etc., and the viewer is right there to see it all happen. In the novel itself, things only happen as they cross the mind of the book’s narrator and central character, Yvonne Carmichael, as she holds an internal conversation with the book’s other central character. As Yvonne ponders something that has happened, or she wonders what would have happened if she had done “this” instead of “that,” everything is slowly revealed in the manner of jigsaw puzzle pieces falling into place. The novel, in fact, begins near the end of the story, so as Yvonne thinks back about her life and reveals more to the reader, we already know that all of this is not going to end particularly well.“And after the imagined drama that made our daily lives bearable, we got a real drama, more of a drama than we could handle, and then we wanted our daily lives back, but they didn’t exist anymore. We discovered that safety and security are commodities you can sell in return for excitement, but you can never get them back.”Note: Anything that follows is also revealed by the novel’s book jacket - no spoilers.As Apple Tree Yard begins, Yvonne Carmichael and a man she hardly knows have been charged with murder and their trial is reaching its climax. The wonder of the story is how someone of Yvonne’s stature could have ended up where we find her in the novel’s prologue. She, after all, is a middle-aged woman who has been married for decades to the man who fathered their two adult children. She is a well-respected geneticist who at one point was involved in some groundbreaking work regarding the mapping of DNA. She is so good at what she does that she is often called in as an expert to advise special Parliament committees on ethics matters and potential legislative fixes. But now, her reputation, her future, and her very life hinge on one disastrous moment of sexual attraction and reckless behavior that led her to do something so out of character in a London alley called Apple Tree Yard that she can’t explain what happened even to herself. Or can she? She certainly tries hard enough to rationalize everything that happened before and after that encounter, but can we trust her to tell us the truth? Bottom Line: Apple Tree Yard, the novel, is brilliant. Its pacing is so perfect that, even after already having watched the BBC series, I could hardly wait to get to the next chapter. There are differences in the endings of the BBC show and the novel, mainly, I suspect, because the television series needed more dramatic visuals than the novel provided at the point in the storyline, but the novel is still the hands-down winner of the two. In Yvonne Carmichael, Louise Doughty has created one of those fictional characters I don’t think I will ever forget. I highly recommend this one.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book; had me hooked from page 1.

    • 4/5
      Domestic crime... is that a genre? Story set mainly in central London, Westminster and the law courts, as well as suburbia.
    • 3/5
      This was a very compelling book to listen to, even though the middle part bogged down a bit. A successful female geneticist is on trial for a unnamed crime at the beginning. We learn that she has been "lured" into an affair with a mystery man, even though she has been happily married and has two adult children. When she is raped by a colleague at the university where she teaches, she cannot recover from it and tragedy ensues. Details are gradually revealed which kept me reading, even though I found many of Yvonne's decisions and her lover's actions annoying.
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed this a lot. 4.5 stars. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating & unsettling psychological thriller. Yvonne, an unreliable narrator, reveals her story in unsent emails to her lover, of how she, a married career woman, embarked on an obsessive & strange affair, was assaulted, and ended up in a court room drama.Well plotted & tantalisingly slowly revealed, with not likeable but believable characters
    • 4/5
      I have mixed feelings about this book. It's written in first person, which can feel a bit odd... and throughout, the main character is 'talking' to another character... which also feels odd. As the reader, I felt like I was eavesdropping, which is also odd.
      But the story was interesting and unique, and kept me coming back for more.
    • 4/5
      Louise Doughty writes a taut thriller. The story is narrated by Yvonne Carmichael, a scientist with successful career, 50 something, married with grown up kids, nice house etc etc. who starts an affair with a man she meets while at the House of Commons - a series of events follow leading to both ending up on trial for murder at the Old Bailey. Doughty has plenty to say about female desire in older women & how women's sexual behaviour is judged- although as a 50 something woman I can't imagine how a quicky in a broom cupboard or in an alleyway is in any way sexually satisfying - these acts felt more like a plot device for the horrific events that follow and for commenting on the punishment that is meted out to Yvonne for impulsive sexual behaviour and infidelity. Nonetheless a gripping story.
    • 1/5
      Something is just off for me and rather than struggle and squirm I just put it down.
    • 4/5
      The novel opens with Yvonne on trial at the Old Bailey and being questioned by her co-defendant's barrister. All we really know at this stage is that she has been having an affair. The story of the period leading up to the trial is (very) gradually revealed and is interspersed with scenes set in court. This novel was engrossing and intriguing, although I found Yvonne's character (and she is really the only person we get to know from the inside) rather difficult to grasp - she was a reasonably convincing scientist, but I never believed in her as a mother, despite the fact that she repeatedly referenced the career sacrifices she made for her children. The choices she made and in particular the head-in-the-sand approach she took to her lover's secrecy seemed odd. The dilemma she found herself in in relation to reporting George Craddock was well-done and those scenes very upsetting. Thought-provoking and with an excellent twist at the end
    • 5/5
      Apologies, no time to write a full review. Suffice to say that I just loved this book. Cliché time - I just couldn't put it down. I'm looking forward to reading the more of her books. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      This was a mixed bag. The central core of the story (I won't spoil what it is) was very well written. The intrigue and court drama that surrounded it was a little far fetched, a little slight. The central core really affected me emotionally. The rest of it irritated me.
    • 5/5
      Louise Doughty gives Yvonne Carmichael such a strong reasoned voice, and this tale of an illicit affair (is there another sort?) is all the more visceral for it.
      The book opens with a scene from her trial, so we know that something has gone wrong, and we know that her mysterious nameless lover is in the dock alongside her.
      We hear of how the affair begins, and how Yvonne tries to keep it separate from her "real life", but when Yvonne is attacked by a colleague, and realises that her affair will prevent her reporting the attack to the police, things fall apart.
      Compelling, just like the picture of the chimpanzee described by her barrister...
    • 3/5
      This is an ok book, Bit slow but well written and researched.Yvonne Carmichael a scientist embarks on an affair with a mysterious man This book starts with a court case then the story is revealed. Yvonne is raped by her colleague George she doesn't report it or tell her husband she tells her lover. He pays George a visit it all goes wrong that's why there is a court case. This book could have been 100 pages shorter. Worth reading though.
    • 3/5
      A highly successful female scientist (Yvonne), happily married, is seduced by a complete stranger (Mark, whose name we don't even find out until page 222). She then carries on an affair with this man even though he controls her, acts disdainful and ridiculously mysterious, and really doesn't treat her that well - in fact she falls in love with him and calls him "my love" even up until the end of the book when she is standing trial for being an accomplice to murder, which is his fault. Can a woman really be this stupid? I found it disgusting that Yvonne accepted all of Mark's behavior, acting like an insipid, lovestruck idiot when she should have kicked him to the curb immediately - she got no sympathy from me whatsoever! And what about Yvonne's husband? He is still with her at the end of the book with no conversation between them about her affair. I kept wondering why he stayed and how he now relates to his wife, but the author didn't see fit to reveal that to us. Annoying.
    • 3/5
      This was OK but I also found it sordid - which it is meant to be but I don't read for sordid. All the characters are unlikeable. I liked the bit where the husband holds a knife to the lawyer's smarmy throat to make a point - found that very effective. And the court scenes are very accurate if you've ever experienced it - jury comes in, sits down, 10 mins later has to leave for legal arguments, comes back in, 10 mins later, time for break - yep it's just like that. Just OK as a read.
    • 4/5
      "Apple Tree Yard" (ATY) is a very well written novel about a sordid affair and its consequences. The quick pick-up and even quicker to follow sex is a bit of a dance, reminiscent for me of the opening scenes in the movie "Dressed to Kill" also executed in a rather prestigious backdrop, NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art vs. London's Westminster in ATY. In both scenes the dye is cast and what follows is catastrophic for ATY's Yvonne as it was for Angie Dickinson in DTK. Contrary to what blurbs claim for ATY I did not find the story sexy nor erotic, rather it was a bit sordid and for that reason it was a very slow read for me. The plot was very interesting but the characters were nothing special, and I kept thinking this isn't going to end well. The English court room scenes were interesting and informative, but there is a key moment when Yvonne responds to a critical question with a one word answer - the honest one, but the wrong one. I didn't buy the reason for her response. I thought this could have been a "5" but the author made some choices I absolutely did not agree with. A haunting story, I'm sure it will stay with me for a few days. Maybe a 4.5 would be a more accurate grade....Certainly a 4.99 for those who like 'psychological' mysteries. Close but no cigar.
    • 4/5
      Middle-aged woman has sordid love affair.I had previously read Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty and loved it, I gave it 5 stars. I admired the author's way with words and was totally absorbed by the book. Apple Tree Yard was also beautifully written, but I was not grabbed by the subject matter. A middle-aged woman who spontaneously decides to have sex with a complete stranger and then discovers it comes with a price, did not generate my sympathy at all.Yvonne Charmicael is in a somewhat staid marriage with a husband who she loves, but has grown bored of. She has a satisfying career as a geneticist but is reducing her hours towards semi-retirement. Her daughter is in a stable relationship, but her son has psychological problems and I'd have preferred the book to have been more about him.Yvonne's love interest does not sound particularly sweep-you-off-your-feet-handsome. He is also married but that doesn't seem to stop him from chasing women for sex; I just couldn't understand how he was so successful at this!I'm not a great fan of courtroom dramas and a large part of this book does take place in a courtroom. However, the psychological observations planted throughout the court case did make it somewhat more interesting. Still, the book slowed at this stage and I was ready for the end when it finally arrived. I did care what the verdict was, I hadn't completely lost interest in the characters by then, but I was definitely ready to move on to my next read.In my opinion, not Louise Doughty's best.
    • 5/5
      Although Louise Doughty is a well-established novelist, this is my first outing with her.The scenario of the novel is interesting, and I surmise that most female readers in their 50s or older have actually "been there", although we may not have taken the action that Yvonne Carmichael does. Yvonne finds that her well-ordered life has become a bit predictable and a tad boring. Her husband has become sexually undemanding and their relationship is complacent. It makes her a surprisingly willing partner to a serial predator.But things go seriously wrong when another man whom she doesn't find attractive decides to get in on the act.Much of the novel is concerned with the trial that Yvonne becomes embroiled in, and the tension mounts as she tries to conceal damning truth from the court. Much of the focus is on whether she can actually recognise what has happened to her.
    • 5/5
      Wow what an outstanding book. It grabs your interest with a glimpse of the later stages, and an intriguing second-person narrative. After a short while you realise that those early stages – good as they were – were no more than the initial manoeuvres of a roller coaster as it prepares to take its first breathtaking plunge. A point is reached where it becomes unputdownable. I stayed up late into the night reading the final sections. Brilliant writing – an author who knows exactly how much information to hand out and how much to withhold, an exciting and thought provoking plot, and a tense courtroom drama. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
    • 3/5
      Just finished listening to Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty and dashing off a quick review. I did not like it at all. I'm giving it a three-star rating though because it's a well told story, but the topic of sex and adultery is one that doesn't appeal to me in the least, and I found the story very grim and depressing. A respected researcher and scientist, Yvonne Carmichael, is happily married and with grown children when she meets a strange man wearing a snazzy suit one day while at the house of commons. He takes her down to the crypt to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft (I did not know there was a church in the house of commons), where they have quick sex in a broom closet. From there they begin a sordid love affair, sordid because her unnamed lover is addicted to risky sex in unlikely places. This is supposed to be a smart woman in love with her husband and with everything to lose, and she nearly does when a work colleague rapes her when she gets drunk at a university party, which lead to even more dreadful consequences. I almost dropped it toward the beginning, but then stuck to it only because it was one of my favourites, Juliet Stevenson narrating and I knew things were bound to get interesting since it's a thriller. But I almost wish I hadn't read it, because I feel dirtied by it now. Wondering whether I should ask Audible for my credit back. I would certainly be in my rights, but then I guess it wouldn't be morally acceptable for me to publish a negative review in such a case, would it? I got this originally because of the narrator, as not infrequently buy books I know nothing about when they are read by someone I really like, and also because none other than Hilary Mantel and Helen Dunmore were among those who gave it rave reviews. I'm sure others who aren't turned off the topic of sex like I am will find it quite good. I blame the antidepressants for preventing me from fully enjoying it, but then I would need antidepressants anyway after finishing the book, so it all evens out in the end.
    • 4/5
      A gripping and readable story spoiled only by the "If only we had known then..." bits.
    • 3/5
      There is absolutely no doubt that Doughty is a talented writer, nor that this book is well written. I willingly followed where the author led, and in the beginning of the novel, alternately tried to understand Yvonne and at times even pitied her. In her fifties, having raised two children, one who has bi-polar disorder, a husband who she had forgiven for having his own affair, a career as a geneticist at which she is very successful, but she is willing to throw it all away over a sexual affair. Okay, maybe she is bored, wants to shake up her life, add some spice, yes I am still on board, I can understand this. Yet, somehow she goes from this, to this supposed affair that is basically sexual, to acting like this is the great love interest of her life. Manages to fool herself that he quite possible feels the same? This is where I am beginning to not quite get on-board to wherever this novel is going. A smart successful woman, a crime, a cover-up, lies and this woman manages to fool herself the whole way. Is she innocent? How and why did this happen? I avidly read this train wreck of a woman's life to the very end. I did however, lose all sympathy and understanding of Yvonne, and that is the thing that is crucial to this story. If one can not continue to relate to Yvonne, find her understandable and likable despite the silly things she does, the story looses its oomph! That is what happened with me, that is why despite the wonderful writing in this book I could not really give it a higher rating. Read it yourself and see what you think.