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    Peculiar Ground
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    Peculiar Ground
    Unavailable
    Peculiar Ground
    Audiobook17 hours

    Peculiar Ground

    Written by Lucy Hughes-Hallett and Maggie Ollerenshaw

    Narrated by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Juanita McMahon, Leighton Pugh and

    4/5

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    Unavailable in your country

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    About this audiobook

    ‘One of the best novels of the year so far’ The Times

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateMay 18, 2017
    ISBN9780008126513
    Unavailable
    Peculiar Ground
    Author

    Lucy Hughes-Hallett

    Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike, a biography of Gabriele d'Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction, the Costa Biography Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Paddy Power Political Biography of the Year Award. Her other books are Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is also a respected critic and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London.

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    • 5/5
      This is a wonderfully quirky and clever novel. The main character is the house and grounds of Wychwood in Oxfordshire and the central theme is walls. The story begins in 1663 when a wall is built around the house to keep those inside 'safe'. The tale then leaps forward in time to 1961 when the Berlin Wall suddenly appears almost over night, and then time hops again to 1973 and again to 1989 when big changes are occurring in the world and walls are broached.There are a lot of allegories and parallels in this enchanting, shall we call it, parable. Walls can keep us safe or divide us, even isolate us to a certain extent. We can also build a wall around ourselves. I think it is quite relevant to the present time, too. It has a lot to tell us. There are usually chinks in walls and we should bear in mind there is a whole wide world out there waiting to be explored and bridges to be built!It is beautifully and vividly written. Some of it is told almost like a fable. The grounds of Wychwood are so easy to imagine. It has a magical and otherworldly feel, a peculiar ground indeed. What a fabulous place to live or visit! I love the map at the front of the book. It really helps with visualising where everything is. There are some brilliant characters and, as in a lot of country estates, the families seem to stay through the generations, the same name recurring. I found this story so captivating. I absolutely loved it! I was very sorry to turn the last page. Wychwood and its peculiar ground is well worth a visit!Many thanks to Lovereading.co.uk for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.