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    The Western Wind
    The Western Wind
    The Western Wind
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Western Wind

    Written by Samantha Harvey

    Narrated by Nyasha Hatendi

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can't? Moving back in time towards the moment of Thomas Newman's death, the story is related by Reve - an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and a man with secrets of his own to keep. Through his eyes, and his indelible voice, Harvey creates a medieval world entirely tangible in its immediacy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 13, 2018
    ISBN9781980017097
    The Western Wind
    Author

    Samantha Harvey

    Samantha Harvey has published two novels, The Wilderness and All Is Song. She has been short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award, and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. She has also won the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize. One of The Culture Show's 12 Best New British Novelists, she has contributed to Granta (print and online), has held a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, and is a member of the Academy for the Folio Prize. She lives in Bath, England, and teaches creative writing in the master's program at Bath Spa University.

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    Reviews for The Western Wind

    3.5/5

    93 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      What a beautiful, brilliant book!Told in the first person by the priest of a hamlet that has found the body of its leading citizen/benefactor drowned. Starts on Day 4 Shrove (also Pancake) Tuesday 17th February, 1491 and moves backward in time, one day at a time.When I finished, I cleared my reading deck and took the time to read it backwards: Day 1 to 4. Just as brilliant.
    • 4/5
      Shrovetide, 1491. In an out-of-the way English village, its wealthiest resident has drowned. The village priest, John Reve, dutifully reported the death to the dean, who has come to the village to inquire into the death. The dean proposes to offer a 40-day pardon for anyone who makes confession before Lent begins in three days’ time. Reve will hear many confessions over the course of these days, as he also thinks about the state of his deceased friend’s soul and his own priestly calling.The author plays with time in the circular telling of the story, backwards from Shrove Tuesday to Shrove Saturday, the day of Newman’s death. Each chapter in the first half of the book is mirrored in reverse in the second half of the book. It’s no accident that the book is set as the Middle Ages were giving way to the English Renaissance. Narrator Reve ponders existential questions of the life and death of individuals, of civilizations and ways of life, of sacred and profane. The book’s structure begs for multiple readings.Why can’t time go backwards as well as forward? If time’s not a river but a circle, and if you can travel round a circle one way or another and end up where you started, why can’t it go this way and that?...If time could go backwards, why didn’t it? If God could undo what was done, why didn’t he?
    • 1/5
      I finished this book and I still don't know what it was really about. Didn't care about the characters and found the ending confusing.
    • 4/5
      A medieval Memento-meets-Rev whodunnit. The structure cleverly leads you to draw certain conclusions, but things are never that simple, are they? Critics have fairly pointed out there’s a missed opportunity to reward rereading by smuggling in more clues, but it’s fun enough all the same.