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Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh
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Blue Ticket

by Sophie Mackintosh
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Freya Mavor

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Length 7 hours 47 minutes
Language English
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Brought to you by Penguin.

Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Water Cure

RECOMMENDED READING FOR 2020 by Stylist, Evening Standard, Esquire, Red, Daily Mail, Oprah Magazine, LitHub, and Emma Roberts's Belletrist Book Club

'The cool intensity and strange beauty of Blue Ticket is a wonder - be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes' Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk

'Definitely don't miss the return of Sophie Mackintosh... She's amazing' Stylist, Best Reads of Autumn 2020

Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And, once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back.

But what if the life you're given is the wrong one?

Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood. Bold and chilling, it pushes beneath the skin of female identity and patriarchal violence, to the point where human longing meets our animal bodies.

'Dreamlike, tense, compelling, [with] a pitch-perfect ending' The New York Times

'Gripping, ethereal, atmospheric' Sunday Times

'Thoughtful and haunting' Observer

'Terrifying and enchanting in equal measure' LitHub

'Blue Ticket will worms its way under your skin and haunt your dreams' Red

© Sophie Mackintosh 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

FictionApocalyptic & DystopianFiction - Literary

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of three novels: The Water Cure, Blue Ticket and Cursed Bread. Her debut novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. Cursed Bread was longlisted for the Women's Prize 2023. She has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others.

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Audiobook details

Author:

Narrator:
Freya Mavor

ISBN:
9780241989746

Length:
7 hours 47 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Penguin Books Ltd

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support 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

Definitely don't miss the return of Sophie Mackintosh... Blue Ticket gets to the root of women's ambivalence and confusion around becoming mothers set against an unsettling dystopia; she's amazing Dreamlike, tense, compelling... Blue Ticket adds something new to the dystopian tradition set by Orwell's 1984 or Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale... Piercing moments of wisdom and insight drive toward a pitch-perfect ending The cool intensity and strange beauty of Blue Ticket is a wonder - be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes Even more hallucinatory and spiralled than her first [novel]... Terrifying and enchanting in equal measure The Handmaid's Tale as told by David Lynch... A bona fide chase narrative as well as a polyvalent, dream-like allegory of pregnancy and bodily change - not to mention the vortex of judgement that surrounds womanhood... Mackintosh is part of an exciting generation of writers, including Daisy Johnson and Julia Armfield... Blue Ticket stands apart from the crowd One of the most disquieting novels I've read in a long time, Blue Ticket will worms its way under your skin and haunt your dreams Gripping, ethereal, atmospheric... Mackintosh handles haziness deliberately and with poise, demonstrating the near impossibility of trying to articulate or rationalise maternal desire Mackintosh writes with a language drawn from the body.... Impressionistic and haunting in equal measure Visceral, primal, striking... This is a potent exploration of biology and agency, motherhood and childlessness, which confirms [Mackintosh] as a writer of note Mackintosh is part of a new generation of female writers creating feminist fictions that relate uncannily to our dystopian times... [Her] fiction lives, to an unusual extent, in its musicality, in the rhythm and spareness of its sentences Expand reviews
The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles