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The Lost Child

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The Lost Child

By: Caryl Phillips
Narrated by: Julia Franklin
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A sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves. At its centre is Monica Johnson, cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner, and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Intertwined with her modern narrative is the ragged childhood of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, the antihero of Wuthering Heights and one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys.

©2015 Caryl Phillips (P)2015 W F Howes Ltd Caribbean Creators Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction
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Out of the way first, Julia Franklin puts in a good attempt, with what are clearly well-practiced accents and voices, but poor, hissy mic and an inattentive editor who clearly let a lot of mispeaking errors slide totally let her down.

For the novel, Phillips presents an ill conceived pastiche on Wuthering Heights which fails to really get going or stop being anything but utterly miserable.

Every time I came away from this one, I was always in a really foul mood.

My favourite critiquing rule of thumb is this "stupid on purpose? stupid by accident? who cares, it's still stupid"... Just switch the word stupid out for 'depressing'.

Dismal, overrated

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Believable characters and contexts. I we heard more recent mother’s story than I needed. I was more interested in the boys and the father just vanished.

Not much has changed for the boys since Brontë days.

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