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    Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village
    Unavailable
    Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village
    Unavailable
    Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village
    Audiobook8 hours

    Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village

    Written by Louis de Bernières

    Narrated by Mike Grady

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Casting his mind back to the village where he grew up, Louis de Bernières brings us a forgotten England: where a lady might dress in plus fours, a retired general might give up wearing clothes and a spiritualist might live with her sister and the ghost of her husband. Here we find the atmosphere of those times as it was in the countryside, and the people whose lives are worth celebrating.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateFeb 1, 2011
    ISBN9781407467900
    Unavailable
    Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village
    Author

    Louis de Bernières

    Louis de Bernières, who lives in Norfolk, published his first novel in 1990 and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer, with his novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel in 1994. As well as writing, de Bernières plays the flute, mandolin and guitar. He was born in London in 1954.

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    Reviews for Notwithstanding

    4/5

    98 ratings17 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Quirky short portraits about the eccentric inhabitants of a small British town. Nicely written, nicely dovetailing into an overall portrait of place, it taps into a well of nostalgia without running over into soppy sentimentalism. Beautiful, sad, funny, solid.

      Advanced readers copy provided by edelweiss, but I don't know if it hasn't been published in the US or if that's for the paperback or what.
    • 4/5
      Absolutely delightful. Recollection of his life in the village he grew up, more a collection of vignettes than linked stories, each a glimpse of the wonderful characters that live within. A young boy, Robert who befriend an injured loon, nun who are such had drivers the villagers know to stay put of their way, a pit man, a mole man, an older gent losing his marbles who often forgets to put on his pants. Amusing, sad, humorous and all wonderful. An amazing amount of dogs, cats who specialize, you will have to read this to understand what I mean, some not so friendly things happen to rabbits, but well life anywhere is not always kind. Characters are mentioned constantly in other characters vignettes, some get a look at the people from many angles. Loved this one, it is wonderfully written, the prose outstanding, a few surprises, people are all so different and the author did a great job of showing us this. I found myself wondering how my neighbors would feel if I wrote about my glimpses of their lives in my small town. Believe you me we have several people here who would provide some raised eyebrows to say the least. Anyway read this one for a small glimpse into an English village of the past.ARC from publisher.
    • 5/5
      ‘Notwithstanding’ is the name of a mythical English village, the name picked because the village life is notwithstanding. A set of interconnected stories show us the lives of the various village eccentrics as their way of life dies off. Some have the feel of fairy tale or fable; others are vignettes. Several characters show up multiple times; the most common is the boy Robert, who rescues and rehabilitates injured and orphaned birds, including a talking rook named Lizzie, and catches a legendary pike. Among the other villagers are the widow who goes everywhere with her husband’s ghost, the aging general whose mind is slipping and now goes to town with no pants on, a woman who realizes she’d best try and get on with folks, a Sixth Sense style ghost story, a maid who is seduced by her employer’s son, a ghost who summons the Rector, and more. The thread that binds them together is the erosion of village life by new people; people who complain about roosters crowing in the country, about ponds that aren’t fenced off, and the like. It’s nostalgia (de Bernieres grew up in just such a village and is most likely Robert) and it’s sweet in places, sad in many places, and funny in others. I don’t tend to go for ‘sweet’ or ‘cozy’ books but this one hit me just right.
    • 5/5
      In his afterward, deBernieres says "Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum...we believe in the right to eccentricity." Notwithstanding is the name of the village that is actually the main character of this novel. This is a collection of interlocking vignettes about various residents of the village, fictionalized stories that the author remembers from his youth. The author's affection for these quirky people shines through, and the reader can't help but enjoy his celebration of the times and characters described. Of course, the writing is masterful and lovely and absorbing.
    • 5/5
      Quirky, Interesting, Charming StoriesThese are not what I would call cozy stories. Most of them have a dark twist. Some are heart-breaking. Nor would I call them stories about the quintecential English village. No village would be this British, nor would its residents be this eccentric. “Notwithstanding” is a collection of quirky, amusing, and often charming short stories. The town of Notwithstanding is a conglomerate of all that is an English village, as is Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon is all that is small town Minnesotan. Although, de Bernières states that he drew from his hometown of Wormley, in Surrey, and the surrounding villages.Eleven of the 22 stories were previously published in magazines, newspapers and on radio. At 360 pages, de Bernières gives the reader lots of entertainment for the price. The tales are well-written and sprinkled with interesting, uncommon words, such as palaver, costive, mashed neeps, tench, rudd. The stories could be stand-alone, but do reference events occurring in earlier tales.The characters are singular. My favorite is Obadiah Oak, known as Jack, who is the village’s last peasant. Jack lives in a tiny cottages handed down through seven generations and smelling of two hundred years of peasant life. His teeth are like tombstones, his stubble like a filecard, his lips like kippers.Evidence of the quality of “Notwithstanding” is that my husband, a very discerning reader, picked it up when I had barely turned the last page and began reading it with chuckles and occasional grimaces. It does not disappoint.
    • 3/5
      A pleasant read but not one of the LDB's best. I came to him through his south American trilogy which I still think are his best work.
    • 4/5
      This is a somewhat nostalgic set of short stories set in a Surrey village of de Bernieres' youth. The stories link together to some extent, with the same people appearing in some tales. Also in some cases you have a second story providing added information, or a different perspective, on events in an earlier story. Things are never quite what they seem though. At times tales are told set in a misty past, but it's not always clear that is the case immediately. There is a nostalgic feel to these, but it's not a rose tinted glasses nostalgia, there is a hard edge to them, or un undercurrent of something darker. A lot of them are quite sad and concern the passing of a way of life, or the passing of an older generation. The afterward makes clear that this feeling is how the author feels about the rural village of his youth - that it no longer is. Very different from his other work, but that's no bad thing - it works well.  
    • 4/5
      Whimsical, somewhat magical, and superbly written. A collection of affectionate stories about an English village, which whilst not over sentimental, still glows with warmth and compassion. Light but delicious.
    • 5/5
      Louis de Bernieres has always been drawn to far-flung locations: Latin America, the Australian Outback, Greek islands. But in this beautiful collection of short stories he focuses his attentions closer to home, recalling the English village life of his childhood. Yet this work is no less exotic, strange and wonderful than his earlier books, featuring a whole cast of eccentric, melancholic and enjoyable characters. These stories twist between amusing tweeness and heart wrenching sadness. There are many funny moments but the overall tone is one of nostalgia for a world we have lost. Melancholy creeps in as the stories progress and the final tales deal with the loss of old village life: the death of the Notwithstanding's 'last true peasant' and the way in which second-home owners have now made it impossible for children to buy houses and settle in the village where they grew up.Having grown up in a rural village myself I found myself nodding at many of the quirky details such as the way that people are known simply as "the owner of (insert dog's name here)" and the way, as De Bernieres writes in his afterword: "those who grow up loving the countryside do so in the same way they grow to love their parents" - frustrating at times but an irrevocable part of who you are. In fact, I've never known a writer capture the way I feel in that respect quite so perfectly. This a return to form for De Bernieres after the slightly lacklustre Partisan's Daughter. A bitter-sweet collection of stories to savour.
    • 5/5
      A book that portrays an English country village and its slightly barmy characters. Beautifully written - funny and nostalgic but doesn't hide away from the sometimes cruel reality of rural life. Reminded me of the village where I grew up! The author has entwined memories of his own childhood village with fictional stories centred around particular characters. Louis de Bernieres manages to portray aspects of his home country just as well as he has done in other books about foreign and exotic places.
    • 4/5
      This is a collection of short stories, loosely connected, all set in the same fictional village (the ‘Notwithstanding’ of the title) where the same characters pop up in different chapters, but each chapter could stand alone if it had to. Many have apparently been published previously in various magazines and newspapers.Easier to read than Louis de Berniere’s other work, but with the same tendency to skip backwards and forwards in time and shift the focus around, this novel has a pleasant 3-D effect to it. With all the quaint eccentricities of the villagers it felt a bit like an Alexander McCall Smith novel.Whilst the tone is light hearted and quirky, the overall feeling is one of dignified sadness. Death features in some form in pretty much every story, and a character who survives one chapter unscathed may very well meet their end in another, so no room for complacency. And in a broader sense there is a feeling of sadness for an era and a type of community that has passed into history.
    • 4/5
      Short stories about a small village in the UK. Very nice characters, each of them the main character of one of the stories. You become a part of the village as you go through the book.
    • 4/5
      I want to live in a world populated by these batty characters, punctuated by all the funny, bizarre and touching moments which de Bernieres skillfully embroiders into his most recent book. The English village of Notwithstanding is a long way from the hills of Kefalonia described in [Captain Corelli's Mandolin] but it is a testament to de Bernieres' skill as a writer that he has made both places equally real and equally intriguing in my mind's eye. He has a clever way of interspersing the funny and the tragic into his writing so each washes over you quite unexpectedly, and I'd definitely recommend this. He does, however, present English people as uniformly interested mainly in fishing and farming, and I'd like to present a word in my countrymens' defence; we also like mocking the Royal family. That is all.
    • 3/5
      This is an enjoyable book. The stories start off being really quite short and get a little longer as it goes on. The stories don't fit together, apart from the fact that all of the people live in the village of Notwithstanding, and so a character you might like might disappear for the rest of the book. It's a nice little book that I would probably think best described as a pleasant read on an autumnal Sunday afternoon.
    • 5/5
      When I started reading this book of short stories set in a quaint English village peopled by quaint English characters, I imagined it was going to be tea,cucumber sandwiches and sausage rolls,compared with the other books I've read by Bernières (the South American trilogy, Capt. Corelli's mandolin and Birds without Wings) which were more comparable with raw slabs of beef or tough barbecued goat. But in Notwithstanding there is an underlying unquietness, a delightfully sensitive yet unsentimental hint of nostalgia; the tea tastes of cat pee and an old lady walks on the snow without leaving footprints. I loved it from beginning to end. I would have liked more - a story about the background characters such as the ditching and hedging man, the nuns, and Mrs Rendall. I was wiping away tears as I read the Afterword, and resonated with the statement "Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum". The Britain of my childhood and the one that I miss.
    • 4/5
      A delightful series of vignettes of English village life in the 1950s. As always, de Bernieres has the ability to enthral.
    • 4/5
      A collection of linked short-stories set in a fictionalised version of the village in which the author grew up. De Bernieres writes with affection about rural England, without succumbing to a belief in any mythical golden age of village life. As is generally the case with short stories, I liked some of the tales and characters a lot more than others and as a result I would say that I liked this book rather than loved it. One of my favourite observations was the character who, thinking herself out of touch, wondered whether "with it" was still "with it" or has gone out of fashion. It is difficult to answer that query because, whilst they all seem to occur between the 50s and 80s, it isn't always clear when some of the stories are set. It is also difficult to answer because I'm not "with it" myself, though I suspect the answer is "no".