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Title: The World Before Us
Author: Aislinn Hunter
Narrator: Fiona Hardingham
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-31-15
Publisher: Random House Audio
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 18 votes
Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
In the tradition of A. S. Byatt's Possession, a hauntingly poignant novel about madness, loss, and the ties that bind our past to our present.
Deep in the woods of northern England, somewhere between a dilapidated estate and an abandoned Victorian asylum, 15-year-old Jane Standen lived through a nightmare. She was babysitting a sweet young girl named Lily, and in one fleeting moment, lost her. The little girl was never found, leaving her family and Jane devastated.
Twenty years later, Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As a final research project - an endeavor inspired in part by her painful past - Jane surveys the archives for information related to another missing person: a woman who disappeared over one hundred years ago in the same woods where Lily was lost. As Jane pieces moments in history together, a portrait of a fascinating group of people starts to unfurl. Inexplicably tied to the mysterious disappearance of long ago, Jane finds tender details of their lives at the country estate and in the asylum that are linked to her own heartbroken world, and their story from all those years ago may now help Jane find a way to move on.
In riveting, beautiful prose, The World Before Us explores the powerful notion that history is a closely connected part of us - kept alive by the resonance of our daily choices - reminding us of the possibility that we are less alone than we might think.
Critic Reviews:
"...a powerful balancing act... It is a novel of considerable beauty, threaded with violence and pain, a melancholic book with moments of grace and joy. It is a thought-provoking novel, haunting and haunted, rooted in the power of history and of the individuals within it, and outside it... it is the sort of novel which forces you to look at the world... in a different light."(Globe and Mail)
"Intricately composed and gripping... With The World Before Us, [Hunter] has created her most ambitious and original work." (Quill and Quire)
"Once in a rare while a novel comes along to remind us of what great fiction can do: creating a world so sublimely felt that, for the hours we spend reading, we are lifted out of our own lives, and when we return we find ourselves immeasurably altered and enriched. The World Before Us... is such a novel. It is a brilliant work of humanity and imagination, artful and breathtakingly beautiful, and it will continue to haunt long after you have finished reading." (Helen Humphreys, author of The Lost Garden and Coventry)
