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    The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History
    Unavailable
    The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History
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    The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History

    Written by Aida Edemariam

    Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    WINNER OF THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019
    AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR
    A CBC BOOK OF THE YEAR

    The extraordinary story of an indomitable 95-year-old woman – and of the most extraordinary century in Ethiopia’s history. A new Wild Swans

    Featuring exclusive archive recordings from the author and her grandmother.

    A hundred years ago, a girl was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar. Before she was ten years old, Yetemegnu was married to a man two decades her senior, an ambitious poet-priest. Over the next century her world changed beyond recognition. She witnessed Fascist invasion and occupation, Allied bombardment and exile from her city, the ascent and fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, revolution and civil war. She endured all these things alongside parenthood, widowhood and the death of children.

    The Wife’s Tale is an intimate memoir, both of a life and of a country. In prose steeped in Yetemegnu’s distinctive voice and point of view, Aida Edemariam retells her grandmother’s stories of a childhood surrounded by proud priests and soldiers, of her husband’s imprisonment, of her fight for justice – all of it played out against an ancient cycle of festivals and the rhythms of the seasons. She introduces us to a rich cast of characters – emperors and empresses, scholars and nuns, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents. And through these encounters she takes us deep into the landscape and culture of this many-layered, often mis-characterised country – and the heart of one indomitable woman.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateMar 1, 2018
    ISBN9780008277147
    Author

    Aida Edemariam

    Aida Edemariam, whose father is Ethiopian and mother Canadian, grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She studied English literature at Oxford University and the University of Toronto, and his worked as a journalist in New York, Toronto and London, where she is currently a senior feature writer and editor for the Guardian. She lives in Oxford.

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    Reviews for The Wife’s Tale

    4/5

    29 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      One of the most exciting voices in young adult fiction, Jenny Valentine succeeds again with this story of a family coping with the death of a child.
    • 5/5
      15-year old Rowan's world is still shaken from the death of her outgoing, lovable older brother Jack. But she's not reeling. She doesn't have time for that. Jack's death has left a hole in her family that has plunged her mother into a deep depression, broken up her parents' marriage, and left her to singlehandedly run the household and care for her 6-year old sister, Stroma. Then something weird happens at the grocery store, and her life starts to change. A guy she's never seen before tells her that she dropped something and hands her a photo negative. It's definitely not hers. She doesn't even have a camera. So she throws it away. But the curiosity of a schoolmate, Bee, who witnessed the exchange compels her to fish it out of the trash and develop the photo. It's really not hers. But it's of her dead brother. Where did it come from? And who was that guy? This is one of the most mature and realistic "journey of healing" type books I've read. It wasn't gimmicky at ALL, and this book had the potential to be extremely gimmicky. It wasn't wrapped up too nice and neat at the end. The 15-year old narrator matures visibly throughout the course of the book. I especially liked the way the romance was handled. Rowan didn't bore everyone by spending page after page pining after her crush when she clearly has other things on her mind, and yet it managed to feel natural, not cheap or tacked on. It was a minor part of the book, but added a nice element. I would definitely recommend this book to teens looking for a realistic read.
    • 4/5
      Rowan is holding the family together, after the death of her brother Jack. Problem is, it's been several years since Jack's passing. Her mother is beyond help at this point and doesn't even realize Rowan and her sister, Stroma are there half the time. While in the store on day, a boy gives Rowan a photo negative. It's not hers and the small piece of film is the first piece of a mystery that leads everyone to some amazing, life altering truths. What will happen with the boy, Harper who gave Rowan the negative too? As everyone holds on to their pieces of Jack, yet tries to get on with life, while not completely losing him. I loved this book. Rowan was a strong character with a terrific voice. I also loved the fact that it's set in London so I get little pieces of the British slang. I guess I should say, "I love this book to bits!"
    • 4/5
      This was one of the more touching YA books I've read. No wonder that it received awards and great reviews.Occasionally, I felt that the style of writing was a bit too distracting, pulling one's attention away from the story to the more stylistic, verbal elements, instead of emphasizing the plot, the characters and the message.The characters in the book are all very memorable. Particularly Rowan with her big heart, tolerance, acceptance and understanding for everything and everyone. She's a much better person than I am and I wished, many times throughout the book, that I could be a bit more like her.Reading this story will leave a mark.
    • 3/5
      In Broken Soup, three freaky things happened to upset fifteen-year-old Rowan?s life. The first thing was that her older brother died from a freak swimming accident in France. As a result, her mother withdraw into herself and her father withdrew from her daily life, moving out of the house, leaving Rowan to care for her mother and her younger sister, Stroma. The second thing was an unknown boy standing behind her at the local coffee shop handing her a photo negative which he said dropped out of her bag. She knew she didn?t drop it.The third occurrence was Bee, a high school senior she never knew or socialized with, coming up to her at lunch and asking about the negative. She was also in line at the coffee shop. This confluence of events and their later unraveling, leads to totally unimagined and unforeseen results. You see, the negative was a photo of her brother, looking extremely happy. The boy, Harper, who gave Rowan the negative, is a New Yorker traveling around Europe (Rowan lives in London) whose current address is an ambulance with all the creature comforts of home. And Bee, well, I?ll let you find out who Bee is.Jenny Valentine has written an intriguing second novel. The main characters are interesting and, in some cases quirky: from Stroma, the precocious six-year-old, to Harper, living in an ambulance, to Carl, Bee?s father who smokes marijuana and is more like a father than Rowan?s own father. There is some intrigue as Rowan seeks more information about the photo and about her brother. There is love on many levels: boys and girls, mothers and fathers, parents and children. And finally, there is the realization that not all burdens should fall on the shoulders of a fifteen-year-old. Broken Soup is a quick but fulfilling read.
    • 5/5
      British teenager Rowan is the glue that is holding her family together after the death of her brother. It's been two years since her brother Jack died, but her sister still writes him letters and her mother remains depressed. Her parents divorce has left Rowan as the caretaker of the family - far more responsibility than a fifteen year-old should have to take on. While this book was written for the teenage crowd, adults will find familiarity with the issues of depression, loss, and first loves.
    • 3/5
      First I should say that I did like the characters and cared about them. That being said, I didn't like much else. The plot varied between being unbelievable (coincidences, etc.) to being way too predictable. Also, the formatting of the dialogue was annoying. I guess I've just read so many books like this that this one doesn't stand out in any way for me, other than the fact they're in London rather than in the US.
    • 3/5
      This is a book that manages to be interesting without actually being terribly engaging. It is an account of the author's grandmother's life, taken from interviews over 20 years. It seems to wander about in tense and in the person, at times grandmother is "she" at others she is referred to by name. In the final portion of the book, the author appears in the first person and starts describing people by her relationship to them. It makes for a book that is hard to follow in places. The chronology is also hard to follow. The books is divided into a number of years, but things like the interval between the children's births is never really described in detail (until the chronology at the end, by which time it;s to late). And I understand that is how you'd discuss life in memory, but it makes for a story that is curiously un-rooted. Then there are the many religious passages, which seemed to have barely any relationship to the events before or after their insertion. I'm not sure what they were supposed to contribute. Having said that, it is a tale from a completely different time and culture and she lives through an awful lot in her 98 years. Married young to a man in his 30s there are hints of abuse, but it's in passing, as if it were normal. Then there are the impact of national and international events on the rural corner of Ethiopia, the Italian invasion, a couple of revolutions, a famine and through it all she survives. I liked the way she embraced technology like the radio and telephone, with delight. It has a lot to interest the reader, I'm just not sure that the execution presents the material in the most engaging manner.
    • 4/5
      And a half star. Started this book in Gondar on my first visit to Africa. It helped bring a depth to my experiences and because I was there in many of the places she spent her life, brought sights and smells and sounds, plant and trees, animals and birds, food and drink, and people - all new to me and all making reading the memoir of Yetemegnu richer and deeper. I loved the structure and poetry of Aide Edemariam's writing and the description of recent (and some more ancient) history of Ethiopia.
    • 5/5
      "Light rains, spots of fresh green grass. Storks fly north. Women prepare fuel for the rainy season: deadwood, and sundried cow dung coated with mud. Caravans hurry home from Sudan. Fishing in rivers. Children sing of the country’s wellbeing to storks, men and women picnic outside, celebrating the birthday of Mary."This was every bit as marvellous as the reviews and prizes suggest it is. The author tells the story of her grandmother, who was married as a child and by virtue of a long life saw huge change in Ethiopia. She lived under imperial rule, witnessed the Italian invasion, and then British bombs. She lived through the takeover of the Marxist-Leninist influenced Derg, and the terrible famines everyone over a certain age will no doubt picture when someone mentions Ethiopia. This isn't a universal picture: the author doesn't hide the affluence of her grandmother's family. But her privilege meant that she travelled and witnessed more than some, and as a woman her experience across the century is now very much of an almost unrecognisable past, and was of the past even to her children and grandchildren. I loved the way the author structured the book around Ethiopian months, with a description of the season and traditional work.
    • 4/5
      Spanning 100 years, this is a fascinating memoir of the author's grandmother, who was born and raised in the city of Gondar in Ethiopia. Married at 8 to a man (a poet-priest) who was over three times her age, this memoir follows her life through the changing world of the 20th century, witnessing Fascist invasion, revolution, civil war and famine, whilst enduring parenthood, widowhood and the death of children. Edemariam's retelling of her grandmother's stories opens up a new world and culture to the reader.