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The Life to Come

A Novel

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The Life to Come

Written by: Michelle de Kretser
Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio
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About this listen

Set in Australia, France, and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies, and as nations. Driven by a vivid cast of characters, it explores necessary emigration, the art of fiction, and ethnic and class conflict.

As Hilary Mantel has written, "I so admire Michelle de Kretser's formidable technique - her characters feel alive, and she can create a sweeping narrative that encompasses years and yet still retain the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail."

Pippa is an Australian writer who longs for the success of her novelist teacher and eventually comes to fear that she "missed everything important." In Paris, Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka, but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time and can't commit to his trusting girlfriend, Cassie. Sri Lankan Christabel, who is generously offered a passage to Sydney by Bunty, an old acquaintance, endures her dull job and envisions a brighter future that "rose, glittered, and sank back," while she neglects the love close at hand.

©2017 Michelle de Kretser (P)2018 HighBridge Company Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction World Literature France Hinduism
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…to some wonderful writing and talented narration. No wonder de Kretser is so well regarded. Even while skewering her characters’ pretensions with skill and wit, she shows them as complete, complicated people with fraught histories. Especially good on the “first world problem” idea, and pretty clever on aspects of the literary world and on liberal do-gooders’ self-regard. Lovely attention to buildings, flora and fauna.

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