Here Is the Beehive
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Here Is the Beehive
Buy Now for £11.22
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Crossan
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By:
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Sarah Crossan
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents Here is the Beehive written and read by Sarah Crossan.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARD
What would you do if you lost someone the world never knew was yours?
For three years, Ana has been consumed by an affair with Connor, a client at her law firm. Their love has been consigned to hotel rooms and dark corners of pubs, keeping their relationship hidden from the world. So the morning that Ana’s company receives a call to say that Connor is dead, her secret grief has nowhere to go. Desperate for an outlet, Ana seeks out the shadowy figure who has always stood just beyond her reach – Connor's wife Rebecca…
'Utterly gripping' RODDY DOYLE
'A triumph – crackling with psychological and sexual ambiguity' JULIE MYERSON, OBSERVER
'This book is just sublime… I loved every page’ CAITRIONA BALFE
'Unmissable ... Incredible' STYLIST
‘Amazing ... I read it in one sitting, completely swept up in Ana’s fragmented narrative' EMMA HEALEY
'Dark, riveting, powerful' ELIZABETH DAY
It's written in verse, but had I not seen the little extract of the printed page online, I wouldn't have realised although I would have responded to the jumbled impressionistic cameos from past and present times, the lyricism, the 'poetic' imagery, the mellifluous sounds of the words, the repetitions like refrains... How different reading the lines would have made, I'm not sure but I certainly don't think it loses any of its power on audio, partly because Sarah Crossan herself reads it and she knows her own nuances, moods and totally real dialogue.
Ana, a solicitor and mother of two small children and wife to Paul, has been having an affair with Conor for three years. And for these three years of shared intensely torrid sexual passion snatched in weekends and hours away from his wife Rebecca and his children, Conor has promised he'll leave them for Ana. Ana's own fraught childhood is beautifully recreated with few words, the deft economy of poetry. Her sister tells her 'You're an accident. Mummy didn't want you'; her father's temper is frightening. There is no judgement of either Ana or Conor for their betrayals, but a visceral portrait of the pure ecstasy of their relationship - and the hideous realities of its manifold ripples of destruction of themselves and others.
The poetry-form is a clever way of purifying the essence of the whole affair. Can a woman with a husband and two small children and a fulltime job as a solicitor REALLY have the TIME for a 3 year affair with a heavily-married man? The poetry form is so enveloping that such thoughts are irrelevant, as are the lovers' children.
I've listened to it twice - I'm sure 3rd or 4th listenings would yield fresh detail. Don't miss it!
The agony and the ecstasy
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a sad tale, well told
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Excelled
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Beautifully read. Made the story come to life
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