Listening Still

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What to expect

The new novel by the bestselling author of When All is Said.

From the bestselling author of When All is Said comes a delicious new novel about a young woman who can hear the dead - a talent which is both a gift and a curse.

Jeanie Masterson has a gift: she can hear the recently dead and give voice to their final wishes and revelations. Inherited from her father, this gift has enabled the family undertakers to flourish in their small Irish town. Yet she has always been uneasy about censoring some of the dead's last messages to the living. Unsure, too, about the choice she made when she left school seventeen years ago: to stay or leave for a new life in London with her charismatic teenage sweetheart.

So when Jeanie's parents unexpectedly announce their plan to retire, she is jolted out of her limbo. In this captivating successor to her bestselling debut, Anne Griffin portrays a young woman who is torn between duty, a comfortable marriage and a role she both loves and hates and her last chance to break free, unaware she has not been alone in softening the truth for a long while.

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Critics Review

A wonderfully unexpected tale of love, death and everything in between
Graham Norton, Sunday Times-bestselling author of Keeper and Home Stretch
Stunning - a book that surpasses all expectations and thoroughly cements Anne Griffin's place on the short but venerable list of writers whose work is always a must-read. A delicately-hewn delight from first sentence to last
Billy Callaghan, Irish bestselling author of Life Sentences
Absorbing and heartwarming . . . There are deep thoughts sown beneath the light and charming surfaces of Griffin's novels. Her books are fable-like, deep musings on life, mortality, and what makes a life worth living, philosophy for everyday readers, cleverly disguised as a good old-fashioned story
Irish Times
Carries many of the winsome Irish signature traits we expect of Griffin
Irish Sunday Times
Ireland's long line of magical storytellers is further enriched by Anne Griffin, who follows her poignant debut When All is Said with another outstanding read . . . Griffin explores the tension between instinct and duty in a powerful, moving novel, deftly weaving the strands of the story to create a masterpiece that lingers long in the memory
Sunday Express
The setting and its supernatural undertow allow Griffin's humour to sparkle . . . there is a lesson in this quirky account of duty shirked and freedom tasted
Irish Independent
Some surprising twists and turns . . . kept me engaged to the end
Sunday Independent
Listening Still marries rural realism with the supernatural very convincingly and beautifully highlights the small, but important, moments of life and death
Irish Examiner
A warm and funny read, full of lovely characters and poignant moments.
Good Housekeeping
There's bags of charm here
Daily Mail
Tender, gentle and warm-hearted
Best
An emotional, funny look at human relationships in all their forms.
My Weekly Special
Listening Still is very good and I would recommend it . . . It's a really exciting story and . . . highly interesting . . . actually quite enthralling, and even though it sounds wild, as you read the book it seems entirely feasible
Athlone Advertiser
A highly original story about a family-run undertaking business
TheGloss.ie
Griffin sensitively explores Jeanie's struggle for self-fulfilment in an assured second novel.
Observer

User Reviews

Book 2.5
Narration 4.5
4.0
5.0
I really loved the ending of this novel! Jeanie figuring out what she actually wants her life to look like without all her obligations pulling her back from it, made me realize that there is always time to start over. Also, the narration was just perfect!
hjung 19/11/2023
1.0
4.0
Now I quite like a 'wordy' book...but boy was this wordy. It seemed to go nowhere very fast and every turn of the page was a chore.
The female protagonist just came across as a moaning Minnie, and many a time I said out loud "Just be quiet, love!"
I thought from the premise that there would be more around her being able to communicate with the dead.
My first AG book😕
Julie7 30/07/2023

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