Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Get this deal Try for £0.00
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Leaving Home cover art

Leaving Home

By: Anita Brookner
Narrated by: Joanna David
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Brief Lives cover art
Fraud cover art
Latecomers cover art
Strangers cover art
Undue Influence cover art
Hotel du Lac cover art
A Friend from England cover art
Falling Slowly cover art
The Rules of Engagement cover art
A Closed Eye cover art
A Family Romance cover art
The Next Big Thing cover art
The Bay of Angels cover art
Swann in Love cover art
Sodom and Gomorrah (Cities of the Plain), Part I cover art
The French Perfumer cover art

Summary

When cautious Emma Roberts goes to France to carry out research into 17th-century garden design, she finds a reliable diversion from her studies in her unlikely new friend Francoise Desnoyers, in whose beautiful house she is welcomed as a guest. She is not too dazzled to ignore the tensions that exist between Francoise and her formidable mother, or between Mme. Desnoyers and her other guests.

London recedes into the background as life in France becomes more significant in every respect. It is not until the horrifying episode that puts an end to this fascination that Emma is reconciled to her duller but safer life at home and to the compromises that she comes to accept.

Anita Brookner was born in south London in 1928, the daughter of a Polish immigrant family. She trained as an art historian, and worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art until her retirement in 1988. She published her first novel, A Start in Life, in 1981 and her 24th, Strangers, in 2009. As well as fiction, Anita Brookner has published a number of volumes of art criticism.
©2005 Anita Brookner (P)2014 Audible, Ltd
Literary Fiction
Show More Show Less

Critic reviews

"Enthralling...so beautifully observed...as captivating as any thriller.” ( Marie Claire)
“Spare and devastating, powerful. Brookner is an unflinching novelist who writes beautifully and fearlessly.” ( Independent) “Elegiac...its magnificent final sentence is among the most moving of Brooknerian conclusions.” ( New Statesman)
“Clever and elegant.” ( Sunday Times)
“Brookner is brilliant...readers will not be disappointed. Her women are very real, more recognizable and more human than any obviously loveable character could hope to be.” ( Sunday Herald)
“So well done - so carefully is the novel wrought - that reading it offers deep and enduring pleasure.” ( Scotsman)

More from the same

Author

Narrator

What listeners say about Leaving Home

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    12
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Bee

Lovely Writing

Delicate, evocative description of an 'ordinary' life, spiced up with a brief funny, gothic episode towards the end
An uplifting book for me because its message that you don't have to be special or have a wild social life to live a good ( enough) life appeals in this time of FB and instagram (especially as I've just put yet another load a load in the washing machine).

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful