Fayne
Read by
Ann-Marie MacDonald
Release:
10/18/2022
Runtime:
30h 55m
Unabridged
Quantity:
A reinvention for the bestselling author. . . . MacDonald is wildly successful in creating a rich Victorian world as seen through a young person’s eyes. . . . With its tenderness and twists that recall Charles Dicken’s Bleak House and the upstairs-downstairs dynamics of shows like Downton Abbey, MacDonald’s fourth novel is a paean to the act of storytelling and a triumph that challenges the constructs of gender.
Quill and Quire (starred review)
“[An] impeccably atmospheric Gothic masterpiece. . . . [Fayne] is deeply perceptive, a story of sharp turns and blurred boundaries which negotiates Victorian fears about the loss of power and meaning while also illustrating MacDonald's contemporary concerns about nature. . . . The story is enticingly tight, which makes its hairpin twists and turns even more impressive.
“[An] impeccably atmospheric Gothic masterpiece. . . . [Fayne] is deeply perceptive, a story of sharp turns and blurred boundaries which negotiates Victorian fears about the loss of power and meaning while also illustrating MacDonald's contemporary concerns about nature. . . . The story is enticingly tight, which makes its hairpin twists and turns even more impressive.
Winner of the 2023 Quebec Writers' Federation Literary Award's Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Winner of the 2023 Quebec Writers' Federation Literary Award's Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Winner of the 2023 Quebec Writers' Federation Literary Award's Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
THE INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
ONE OF CBC’S BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magic, love and identity.
In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte’s brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her older brother, Charles, the long-awaited heir, died soon afterwards at the age of two. When Charlotte’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter “as you would my son, had I one.” But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.
WINNER OF THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
ONE OF CBC’S BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magic, love and identity.
In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte’s brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her older brother, Charles, the long-awaited heir, died soon afterwards at the age of two. When Charlotte’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter “as you would my son, had I one.” But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.
Release:
2022-10-18
Runtime:
30h 55m
Format:
audio
Weight:
0.0 lb
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780735276666
Publisher:
Penguin Random House
Praise