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Apple Tree Yard (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

by Louise Doughty (Author), Juliet Stevenson (Narrator)

4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (539 customer reviews)

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Product details

Audio Download
Listening Length: 14 hours and 1 minute
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Canongate Books
Audible.co.uk Release Date: 2 Jan 2014
Language: English
ASIN: B00H5HXESG

Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (539 customer reviews)

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Product Description

Yvonne Carmichael has worked hard to achieve the life that she always wanted: a high-flying career in genetics, a beautiful home, a good relationship with her husband and their two grown-up children. Then one day she meets a stranger at the Houses of Parliament and begins a passionate affair with him - a decision that will put everything she values at risk.

At first she believes she can keep the relationship separate from the rest of her life, but she can't control what happens next. All of her careful plans spiral into greater deceit and, eventually, a life-changing act of violence.

Apple Tree Yard is a psychological thriller about a woman's adultery and an insightful examination of the values we live by and the choices we make, from an acclaimed writer at the height of her powers.

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Customer Reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars

4.2 out of 5 stars

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding! 4 Feb 2014

By Whitestripe71

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

It's a real treat to come across a book as gripping, intelligent and impassioned as this. I'd previously read one book by Louise Doughty - Whatever You Love - which I thought had great strengths, but also some weaknesses (still, I'd heartily recommend it), but with Apple Tree Yard she's delivered an astonishingly accomplished novel that delivers on all fronts. It's brilliantly written, structurally very clever, exquisitely suspenseful. And underneath all of the literary skill and brilliance - and confidence, for LD is a supremely confident writer - this is an angry novel that has many important things to say - about inequality between the sexes, sexism, violence against women, how women are treated in the legal system; and also about the nature of identity, the idealised images we can form of others, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, how we define ourselves. This is a novel of nuance and depth, it sparkles with intelligence, it's angry, but cogent and lucid, and to top it all it's a kick-ass thriller that gripped me from beginning to end. I finished it two days ago and it's still with me; I'm still thinking about it, reflecting on it, and I probably will be for some time. Outstanding.

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38 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping from start to finish... 13 July 2013

By jaffareadstoo TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Sometimes a book you don't expect to like really takes you by surprise and makes you sit up and take notice. Gripping from the beginning this book takes you on a roller coaster of a journey as we watch as Yvonne Carmichael, a renowned scientist, begins an illicit and highly addictive extra marital affair with man who is at first a stranger. This irresponsible liaison which begins with a risky sexual encounter will ultimately spin Yvonne's life out of control.

I think what I found refreshing is that Yvonne is fifty-two, not some inexperienced ingénue, so it could be argued that she should have known better - but what it does prove is that we are never too old to act out of character - and that pushing self destruct buttons is not merely a prerogative of being young and in love.

To say more about this story would be to do the book a complete disservice- it is definitely one of those books which once started you simply can't put down. I started reading it on a sunny day in the garden at about 11:30 and didn't look up, except for food and drink some twelve hours later.

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68 of 79 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Anxious, uneasy and edgy 3 Jun 2013

By Roman Clodia TOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

"The minute you enter an intimate relationship with another person there is an automatic dissonance between your story about yourself and their story about you"

This is a wonderfully slippery text which wrong-foots us repeatedly as we navigate the story. It opens with a trial, but we don't know who is on trial or for what. Gradually the narrator draws us into her world: she's 52, a well-known geneticist, happily married - so how has her life narrowed to the Old Bailey?

This sounds as if it might be another one of those familiar stories where a respectable woman is drawn into an affair and her life spirals out of control and, to some extent, it is. Only this time Doughty's treatment of this scenario is done so well, with such control and lack of sensationalism that it feels completely fresh and utterly believable.

Our narrator's voice is compelling in its honesty, and especially stark as it lays bare the feelings of a still attractive woman in her 50s. A number of times we feel that we know what kind of book this is but somehow Doughty manages to pull off a switch that is so subtle it is almost unnoticeable until we realise this is a different kind of story altogether.

So this is quiet in lots of ways and doesn't indulge in the kind of overt twists and impossibilities that we sometimes find - but, for all that, it builds up into something which is increasingly anxious and uneasy, leaving us apprehensive and on edge. Highly recommended.

(This review is from an ARC courtesy of the publisher)

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35 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping 17 Jun 2013

By J Corbin

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I finished this novel about five days ago and I'm still thinking about it. The twist half way through took me by surprise. It's shocking, frightening and completely believable. So many books at the moment are being marketed as 'This year's Gone Girl.' For me, this really is the best book I've read since Gone Girl. Very well researched and beautifully written. Nothing is over or under done - emotions, descriptions, plot development - are all perfectly handled. Highly recommended.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb novel 14 Mar 2014

By Well really

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This novel took my breath away - for the entirety of the last fifty pages and at many points in between. It is beautifully written, sharply observed, thrilling, emotionally acute, and a needle sharp commentary on marriage, sex, love and the grey areas in between. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Completely gripping 14 Mar 2014

By Macey89

Format:Kindle Edition

‘Apple Tree Yard’ opens in a courtroom, with our narrator in the dock, although we don’t yet know her crime. To explain how she got there, Yvonne takes us right back to the beginning - to the events that set everything in motion.

Yvonne is 52, married, has two children and is a successful geneticist. She could be any one of us. As she takes pains to point out – her life is ordinary. But the choices she makes over the course of a few short months will take her down a road that Yvonne never thought she would travel.

The direction of the book continually changes as it progresses. Every time we think we can see where the story is leading, something shifts, changing with it our perceptions of characters. The end, when it comes, is a tense and anxious experience, all building up to the one moment that has the potential to change her life forever.

The style of writing in this book, as though the narrator is talking directly to her readers while she tells her story, creates an immediate feeling of intimacy. We are thrown completely into Yvonne’s world and her innermost thoughts. She isn’t too kind on herself, instead treating the whole situation with the type of biting honesty and self-criticism that we all have in hindsight. Because of this intimacy and the way that the story unfolds, we feel each betrayal or cutting remark thrown her way, just as we feel alternately vindicated, frustrated or devastated by every decision Yvonne makes.

We don’t find out Yvonne’s name until quite far into the book. Similarly we don’t know the names of her husband, her children, or her co-defendant. In fact, for much of the book, it is just ‘I’ and ‘You’ and ‘my husband’. Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Apple tree yard

I bought this book on the strength of Judy and Richard recommendation. I was expecting so much more. Cant quite decide why it didn't deliver. Read more

Published 9 hours ago by J. Watkins

2.0 out of 5 stars Boring

I couldn't wait to read this after all the rave reviews... what a disappointment!

I kept reading as I was sure something brilliant was going to happen at some point to... Read more

Published 1 day ago by lgd