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Shop nowThe Porpoise
A Novel
Narrator
Tim McInnerny
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Length
10 hours 50 minutes
Language
English
Summary
In a bravura feat of storytelling, Mark Haddon calls upon narratives ancient and modern to tell the story of Angelica, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship with her father. When a young man named Darius discovers their secret, he is forced to escape on a boat bound for the Mediterranean. To his surprise he finds himself travelling backwards over two thousand years to a world of pirates and shipwrecks, of plagues and miracles and angry gods. Moving seamlessly between the past and the present, Haddon conjures the worlds of Angelica and her would-be savior in thrilling fashion. As profound as it is entertaining, The Porpoise is a stirring and endlessly inventive novel from one of our finest storytellers.
Reviews
"Staggeringly ambitious, innovative, beautifully written. . .The Porpoise has the pace of a really good thriller, combined with a subtlety and depth that few thrillers possess."--Pat Barker, author of The Silence of the Girls and the Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road
"A full-throttle blast of storytelling mastery. Ancient and modern overlap in exhilarating ways, it's like romping through a literary Netflix: an episode of something historical and bloody, then something slick and contemporary, then something really weird and unnerving. . .The Porpoise is a joy to read.
--Max Porter, author of the International Dylan Thomas Prize-winning Grief is the Thing With Feathers
"Mark Haddon cuts down to the grittiness of humanity every time he writes. The Porpoise is a beautiful, unputdownable, ancient tangle with its own sweeping tides and dangerous depths."
--Daisy Johnson, author of the Booker Prize finalist Everything Under
"An artfully crafted story of layered lives. . .Haddon’s ambitious tale captures the ethos of tragic Shakespearean vibrations and the tangle of lives that magically intersect. The prose is exquisite and elevates this story that blends reality and mythology to great effect."
--Publishers Weekly
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