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What to expect
In a spellbinding narrative of sacrifice and survival, chaos and connection, four characters are caught up in the tides of history over three centuries and drawn to the sacred White Rock of San Blas off the coast of Mexico.
In 2020 an Englishwoman travels to give thanks for her child, a singer in 1969 runs from the law, from his rabid fans and an America burning with the fever of the Vietnam War, two Yoeme sisters are torn from their homeland at the start of the twentieth century, and in 1775 a Spanish Lieutenant prepares to set sail from the White Rock to continue the conquest of the Pacific coast.
The White Rock is a breathtaking novel about what happens when the stories we have lived by can no longer keep us safe.
Critics Review
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Precise and perceptive ... Deeply satisfying ... We may struggle to find hope, Hope tells us, but it is there in the landscape, in faith and memory and ritual, in the ancient unchanging silences that persist'
Guardian
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An eco-novel you actually want to read ... She's an assured author with a knack for an arresting image ... It leaves you with a gentle sense that things keep going
The Times
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Its narrative sweep is capacious ... It has ambition to match, musing on freedom and reciprocity, on the redemptive power of storytelling and the sustaining force of ritual ... Demonstrating impressive stylistic verve
Observer
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Mesmerising ... Imaginative ... Among its many impressive elements is Hope's handling of the past ... Her greatest talent is in getting under the skin of her characters ... There is a subtle plangency in this powerful portrait of human folly and ferocity
The Herald
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Deeply moving ... I, for one, hope we hear plenty more from her
i news
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Full of wisdom about the blink-and-you'll-miss-it nature of our lives
Good Housekeeping
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Lyrical and timely
Stella
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Mysterious and beautiful. It reminded me of Cloud Atlas, but it's very much itself: so bold and wild, but controlled and fierce. It's stunning writing and it has left me with hope, that we can tell stories like these even as the carbon builds, and that imagination and ideas remain powerful and valid
Russell T. Davies, writer of It's A Sin
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Perfectly crafted, evocative prose which effortlessly transported me through two hundred and fifty years of history
Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground
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Brilliant. A stunning book of extraordinary, audacious scale
Sadie Jones, author of The Snakes
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Anna Hope
- Narrator
- Naomi Wirthner, Kyle Soller, Anna Hope
- Duration
- 9 hours 1 minute
- Release Date
- 25 August 2022
- ISBN
- 9780241995860
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Family life fiction / Stories about family, Narrative theme: sense of place
Synopsis
In a spellbinding narrative of sacrifice and survival, chaos and connection, four characters are caught up in the tides of history over three centuries and drawn to the sacred White Rock of San Blas off the coast of Mexico. In 2020 an Englishwoman travels to give thanks for her child, a singer in 1969 runs from the law, from his rabid fans and an America burning with the fever of the Vietnam War, two Yoeme sisters are torn from their homeland at the start of the twentieth century, and in 1775 a Spanish Lieutenant prepares to set sail from the White Rock to continue the conquest of the Pacific coast.The White Rock is a breathtaking novel about what happens when the stories we have lived by can no longer keep us safe.
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