Skip content
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
Pentatonic by Jonathan Coe
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Pentatonic

A Story of Music

$6.83

Narrator Jonathan Coe

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 33 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Pentatonic, written and read by Jonathan Coe, is a daring and original story about family and memory, originally inspired by the accompanying music from Danny Manners.

When a family celebrates the prize-giving day at their daughter's secondary school, thoughts turn to their own childhoods. The father remembers his living room piano recital, recorded on a well-worn cassette tape. The mother remembers her own father's war tragedy. As the father searches for the physical reminder of his past and the mother longs to forget her own, they confront the breakdown of their marriage in the present.

In Pentatonic, Jonathan Coe movingly explores the memories that unite us and the experiences that drive us apart.

This story is also available as a Penguin ebook.

Text by Jonathan Coe
Music by Danny Manners
Produced by Ken Brake at Regal Lane Studios

Jonathan Coe (Author, Reader)
Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen (both for Middle England).

Jonathan Coe (Author, Reader)
Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen (both for Middle England).

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

Coe has huge powers of observation and enormous literary panache Jonathan Coe's a fine writer who seems to try something new with every book There are bits that make you laugh out loud and others which make your heart ache Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting