Coastliners audiobook

Having read a few books by Joanne Harris, I knew a bit of what to expect. A great love of travel, and some wonderful setting in France would be a background to the tale, and a heroine in search of herself to pull us through the story. Coastliners only exception is the fact that rather than set in France proper this story finds a home on an island still part of France, but not connected by anything but nationality. These islanders don’t even connect with the different sides of the island. One has modernized and has tourists, while the other is sleepier and has faded through the last few decades. When our heroine Madeleine returns her quiet coast is almost completely fallen asleep. There are no jobs to bring in money and no one really seems to care. This is of course only the surface story. Madeleine has inner demons seeing her father who has never gotten over the loss of a brother, and then there is the mysterious gentleman in town. Who may be a help in the trouble going on and may be a hinderance, and then again may be related somehow. Some how Mrs. Harris makes all the coastal manipulations work, she allows us to pull for these islanders, and feel their joy and pain. Candy and wine may not be dripping through this story as it was for some of her other works, but her catholic roots and strong french heritage keep me enthralled without being overwhelmed.

Há tantos anos que andava para ler este livro. Finalmente comprei-o num alfarrabista por uma bagatela, este ano, na feira do livro. Sou uma grande fã desta senhora, já li grande parte da sua obra, um dos meus livros favoritos foi escrito por ela, e sem dúvida que ela tem romances deliciosos. Este é um deles. Traz-nos a história de Mado e da forma como todos nós, melhor ou pior, pertencemos a algum lado. E de que como somos capaz de tudo para defender a nossa casa. Onde está o nosso coração e aquilo que somos por dentro. O livro perfeito para ler nas férias. Uma história leve mas muito bem escrita.

Its been ages since i read a Joanne Harris book, why I have no idea, because by can she write a good novel. I read all her early ones, Chocolate, of course, Three quarters of an Orange and my favorite Blackberry Wine - which has one of the best depictions of childhood in my opinion. Coastliners carries on her French traditional context and makes youu really feel what it is like to live in a small community with all its tensions, troubles, gossip, stories, monotony, festivals and interwoven lives. The crux of the story is who is Flynn? And I am not going to spoil that. But suffice to say just when you thought you'd worked it out something happens - good storytelling! The title is interesting - clearly the story focusses on wwhat is happening along the coast line and to the people who live thereby, but it also touches on the coast of people's own life and how that to is buffetted by the environment of other people, their lives, actions and attitudes. Neat. I came away thinking of the island communities I know and wanting to be back there. Good story, pretty evocative of place and character. Must read her later books

I have read many of Joanne Harris' books and have not been disappointed in any of them. I loved the atmospheric setting in this one so very much! I "read" via the audiobook which I found excellent. Not only is the story engaging, but I found the characters quite interesting. I don't understand the reviewers who disliked them so. Their character flaws were exactly what made them interesting to me. The themes of home and of sibling rivalry and of the misunderstandings behind those rivalries were what was important. Even the minor (not so minor) characters like the two nuns were delightful. I would definitely recommend this book.

I have read many negative reviews about Coastliners that made me a bit nervous and afraid to read it. Maybe it's because I'm biased, since Joanne Harris is my favorite author so far, but I enjoyed this book more than I was expecting to. There's something about her books that draws and keeps me obsessed with them to the point I can't put them down for a second. I never thought that a story about an island and its inhabitants could be so interesting. Some people wished that the story would flow faster than it does and I disagree. I hoped that this book would last forever, that it would never end. Most of the action and drama happen near the end, that's true, nevertheless, I think the book is perfect the way it is. Again, maybe it's because I love Joanne's writing way too much.

This had been sitting on my shelf forever. It ended up being one of those books that you kick yourself for not reading earlier because you really enjoyed it. Writing this review 3 weeks after having finished it, I am still thinking about Les Salants and brisk, foggy mornings. This book solidified that there is a certain atmosphere that I really enjoy in books. While this wasn't a page turner (until the end, maybe), there is a setting you won't soon forget, depth of characters, and a development to the story that keeps you with it.

I enjoyed this book though I can see from reviews here many did not. Yes, it's slow and not a lot happens but I liked the characters and, especially, its island setting off the French mainland south of Nantes. I am a Francophile and in the middle of a pandemic armchair travel is our only option. It was a delight to immerse myself in a little bit of France, the kind of place I choose for holidays- I need the sea, a beach, quaint, rustic charm so I'm exactly the target tourist for the rejuvenated island community featured in Harris' novel. I listened to the audiobook version, often while enjoying walks along our stretch of Scottish coastline, an area that while not an island does share issues and concerns raised by this book, with colourful characters, resentment of prosperity and greater attractions in nearby communities more favoured by tourists while at the same time cherishing its 'hidden gem' lack of overcrowding and other less desirable aspects of mass tourism. Self-reliance breeds lack of trust and repression, family dynamics, well kept secrets, jealousy and rivalry, a potent brew for engaging fiction, drawing in human strengths and weaknesses, our need to feel loved and to belong. The pressures of economics, coastal development and vulnerability to fickle fortune- sand comes and goes, fishing communities know too well how dangerous the sea can be, young people need jobs and opportunities while those older and more settled don't want change if it threatens a way of life they feel worth preserving. So, though set in a very particular location, the novel raises questions with global relevance. For me it worked.

Gosto muito da maneira de escrever desta autora, até agora cada livro que leio vou ficando viciada na sua maneira de narrar as histórias que tão bem cria.Uma autora muito descritiva, mas que cada descrição é uma verdadeira poesia, que me leva a ficar presa nas suas histórias sempre fabulosas.A Praia Roubada é um livro que nos fala sobre a união que liga a populacão de uma pequena ilha com costumes e rituais antigos, e que vivem com ressentimentos antigos, mas que irão unir-se nas horas mais difíceis que irão viver. Mado que nasceu e viveu na ilha na sua infância, vai regressar para também tentar fazer as pazes com o seu passado e rever o seu pai que não via desde criança. Também ela vai viver intensamente os dias que vai passar na ilha, onde irá passar por muitas emoções e revelações.Um livro com uma bonita história, com personagens fascinantes, e de leitura viciante.Gostei bastante.

Mado regressa a sua ilha natal, depois de alguns anos a viver em Paris.Ao regressar a Les Salants, descobre que o tempo não curou todos os problemas pessoais e familiares. A apatia generalizada foi o principal motivo da fuga mas, será contra ela que Mado terá de lutar.

Who says you can't go home again? For the narrator of Joanne Harris's charming new novel, "Coastliners," you can't do anything else. Even when you're not wanted.Home for Madeleine is a tiny island off the coast of France called Devin, "the single place for which there can be no substitute." Her mother wrenched her away from this dot of land when she was a little girl, leaving behind a husband and a town sinking fast into depression. Now, a decade later, Madeleine has buried her mother and returned to reclaim her father, who never answered her letters or fulfilled her dreams.Harris leapt to stardom three years ago with "Chocolat," a creamy feminist novel that inspired an even sweeter Hollywood movie starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. With "Coastliners," she's moved away from the food themes of her earlier works, but she's still interested in how a determined woman can invigorate a stagnant community."Le Devin is no beauty," Madeleine confesses, with its "rough primitive look." It's suffering from two corrosive forces: First, a long-standing feud between the rich end of the island and the poor end, where Madeleine's father still lives, renders any cooperation impossible. Second, a devastating shift in the tides is gradually sweeping her hometown into the sea.Harris is something of an expert on how a community's beliefs conspire to limit its citizens' actions and prospects. These poor people practice a kind of "naturalized Catholicism" that makes them fatalistic and passive. As their homes and graves slowly wash into the sea, the residents have grown ever more devoted to charms, symbols, incantations, and rituals.(No doubt the inevitable movie version of this cinematic book will caramelize the role of religion into something more palatable, just as the repressive priest was replaced by a stern nobleman in Hollywood's "Chocolat.")Madeleine returns home during the annual festival of Sainte-Marine-de-la-Mer, when the townspeople carry a statue of their patron saint down to the shore for baptism. It's a last-ditch effort for a community desperate to turn the tide, but Madeleine's appearance startles her father and causes the statue to fall into the sea. This is a sure omen of another Black Year, hardly the homecoming she wanted.Harris takes some interesting risks with this plot. The most daring is her long delay of the reunion between daughter and father, a man so depressed that he can no longer speak. Even when they finally do meet, their reunion is surprisingly muted and anticlimactic, yielding none of the joy and certainly none of the resolution Madeleine was naive enough to hope for. The novel remains painfully honest to the conflicted feelings of exasperation and love inspired by caring for an odd, difficult parent who must now be parented.But Madeleine isn't particularly honest with herself. She thinks of herself as jetsam, tossed about on the waves, but in fact she has a deep-keeled will. Her father may not respond to her prescriptions for recovery, but she's determined to save the town by transforming it into a tourism attraction.While these well-drawn curmudgeons whine bitterly about their inevitable decay, Madeleine argues for strategic sandbags and breakwaters. These are people intimately involved with the sea, but it's taken too many of their loved ones for them to be in love with it. And their thought is too deeply invested in miracles to do anything to save themselves.Finally, Madeleine turns to a shadowy beachcomber who eschews her direct assault on the town's beliefs for a more effective, if decidedly unethical, manipulation of their gloomy superstitions.Of course, even hard-won victories over the tide are bound to be temporary. But if sandy shores can't be reformed for good, grains of thought prove more malleable. Madeleine, meanwhile, must consider if there's an undertow beneath her civic activism, a deeper, more selfish motive for saving these people's homes and businesses. By the end, the plot is awash in enough last-minute twists and familial revelations for a Gilbert and Sullivan opera.The death of small towns is a worldwide anxiety in this age of globalization. Back in April, Kate Grenville released, "The Idea of Perfection," a romantic comedy about a tiny Australian town determined to save itself by promoting its Bent Bridge as a must-see tourist destination. Ironically, isolated communities rendered economically irrelevant in the new marketplace are finding salvation by clinging to their peculiarities and marketing them to a world of numbing homogeneity. Good novelists deliver a far more complex examination of this phenomenon than economists ever could.Harris is fast becoming one of the most reliable writers of appealing, idea-driven fiction. This affecting story about community resilience blends environmental and social themes with her signature wit and élan. By the end, when Madeleine cries, "This was how it feels to be an islander; this is how it feels to belong," we know just what she's talking about.http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0905/p1...

I remember the summer of 2003 very clearly and the incredible fun of reading about some prototypes of all the people I met in my daly life since moving to Brittany.A wonderfully humourous book, masterfully written.