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My Lover's Lover

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About this listen

A compulsive and haunting tale of the passion, betrayal, sensuality and ambiguity at the heart of shifting metropolitan lives.

From the Costa Award winning Maggie O'Farrell comes the Sunday Times top 10 best seller My Lover's Lover, an intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love, with all the frisson and psychological intensity of Rebecca.

When Lily moves into Marcus's flat and plunges headlong into a relationship, she must contend not merely with the disapproval of flatmate Aidan, but with a more intangible, hostile presence. Could it be that Sinead, Marcus's ex, is trying to communicate with her? When Lily begins to 'see' Sinead, first about the flat and then on the streets of London, she must question not merely her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or indeed ought, to live with at all.

©2002 Maggie O'Farrell (P)2012 Headline Digital Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

"A quietly dramatic dissection of the way past loves can haunt the present." ( Daily Telegraph)
"This Rebecca-esque ghost story puts at its heart the gnawing insecurities that any act of intimacy soon invites." ( Independent)
"O'Farrell's writing has a crystalline precision of idiom - there isn't one image that fails to ignite recognition." ( Independent on Sunday)
All stars
Most relevant
Lily livered Lily was the most annoying character, amongst all the other characters. I love all other Maggie O’Farrell books.

I couldn’t say

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This is supposedly a love/loss type of story with a bit of ghostliness thrown in but it doesn't really work. I have to empathise with characters and in this I find them thinly written and unconvincing. The idea might work with a short story but this one is stretched far too thinly. Not seeing why anyone would fall in love with them! O'farrel is better than this. Well narrated thought to be fair.

A disappointment from a fine writer

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For me the narration spoiled the book. It was overly dramatic, often with unnecessary and inappropriate emphasis, spoiling the subtleties of the writing.
Read by Julia Stevenson or someone of her talent it would have been much more enjoyable.

Disappointing

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well written and well read.... language is quite masterful but found to be an overwinded story which, in the end, was not so satisfying

evocative writing

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I've listened to a few of Maggie O'Farrel's books now and enjoyed them, especially Hamnet, but this was awful. I really disliked Marcus from the start, partly because of how the reader voiced him. it made him sound so arrogant. it gave me the impression he was in his 50's with a beer belly and that Lily was a timid, unintelligent young girl. I thought there wasn't enough description of them and that bits were missed out. I thought the story lacked substance and the characters were unlikeable. I didn't enjoy it at all

Not Great

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