The Sunlight Pilgrims
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The Sunlight Pilgrims
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Narrated by:
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Steven Cree
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Written by:
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Jenni Fagan
About this listen
Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter - it is snowing in Jerusalem, the Thames is overflowing, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to arrive off the coast of Scotland - The Sunlight Pilgrims tells the story of a small Scottish community living through what people have begun to think is the end of times. Bodies are found frozen in the street with their eyes open; midst economic collapse, schooling and health care are run primarily on a voluntary basis.
Dylan, a refugee from panic-stricken London who is grieving for his mother and his grandmother, arrives in the caravan park in the middle of the night - to begin his life anew. Under the lights of the aurora borealis, he is drawn to his neighbour Constance, a woman who is known for having two lovers; her 11-year-old daughter, Stella, who is struggling to navigate changes in her own life; and elderly Barnacle, so crippled that he walks facing the earth.
But as the temperature drops, daily life carries on: people get out of bed, they make a cup of tea, they fall in love, they complicate.
The Sunlight Pilgrims, the thrilling follow-up to The Panopticon, is a humane, sad, funny, odd and beautiful novel about absence, about the unknowability of mothers. It is a story about people in extreme circumstances finding one another - and finding themselves.
©2016 Jenni Fagan (P)2017 Audible Studios LtdWhat the critics say
"The Sunlight Pilgrims evokes a chillingly plausible near-future...intimately imagined." (Paraic O'Donnell, The Spectator)
"Fagan's vivid, poetic-prose style injects the book with energy. She writes at the pace of thought, sentences like gunfire.... She has a poet's affection for precision and image." (Sophie Elmhirst, Financial Times)
What listeners say about The Sunlight Pilgrims
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Diane4000
- 2019-01-26
Wonderful setting and pleasant story
If you like the notion of Scottish highlands, winter weather, and non-conformist/slightly outside of the mainstream characters you will enjoy this as I did. It’s pondering rather than “deep”, but it dips into issues of climate change, paganism (kind of) and gender norms.
If you also enjoy a Scottish accent you’ll love the reader here who does a great job with voice modulation for different characters and maintains authentic-feeling natural tone and inflection throughout. Charming characters too.
My only critique would be that there are some pretty heavy storylines that are never brought to any real conclusions- such as the apocalyptic winter, we never learn if it worsens and continues indefinitely and we don’t get to learn how Stella fares through puberty which is a critical time in her identity formation. This is deliberate I imagine to keep it open-ended or perhaps there will be a sequel (I would read/listen to it). Some readers may not mind the inconclusive ending. Also, this may just be me, as I don’t care for repetition unless it’s intentional for narrative structure or style, but it bugged me how Dylan, the male character/narrator would “get a hard on” every time the “object of his desire” did something appealing (nothing wrong with getting turned on or having lustful pangs, but a variation of expression would have been nice).
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