Putney audiobook

A remarkable book with all the hallmarks of a modern Greek tragedy, including the pitiful hero at the centre of this book. Everything about this book builds up to a poetic and dramatic crescendo. The ending was so fitting and was a true hallelujah moment, I felt the story ended perfectly with not such a neat and flawless ending but with an epic symphonic conclusion! I loved it!!

Engaging!!!!!An abuser- a victim - and a witness - deliver dangerous narrative.That’s all I’m saying!

Putney is a highly controversial novel that explores illicit behavior and how a person justifies it and makes it a beautiful memory in their mental scrapbook. It's also about consent, the protection of the vulnerable and the underage, what constitutes a sexual assault, the importance of exposing wrong doings by coming forward, and what justice does and doesn't look like.I am uncomfortable saying how engaging this book was for me. Watching an inappropriate relationship play out while having access to multiple POV's and an alternating timeline was a fascinating case study of sorts. It's also stomach-turning and horrific, and it puts it all in your face and makes you think, feel, and question. It should be noted there are significant trigger warnings associated with this story, and if you are a reader sensitive to the subjects of sexual grooming/abuse, then please proceed with caution. An incredibly timely novel that mirrors recent/current events in the US, and a story that is unfortunately timeless in its relevance. You'll either absorb its messages and use the gained perspective to prevent, educate, and support, or you won't make it through the book at all. Either way, prepare yourself. This is one of those things you won't be able to unsee. My favorite quote:"The whole episode lasted maybe a minute. But that is long enough, she thought. You can kill a person in a second. Why should it take much longer to complete a sexual assault?"

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5Full blog tour post at https://readingbetweenwinessite.wordp...Instagram Giveaway for book at https://www.instagram.com/p/BnUC-k4lq...If you can get past all of the triggers, Putney by Sofka Zinovieff is going to be THE book you will want to read this year. What it's about: Ralph is a 27 year old up-and-coming composer when he meets with novelist Edmund Greenslay who wants to do a stage adaptation of Ralph's most famous piece. Ralph is welcomed into the laid back, extremely free-spirited Greenslay household where people come and go as they please from the sprawling mansion in Putney, London. It is basically 'lust at first sight' when Ralph meets the Greenslay's 9-year-old daughter Daphne, and he ends up beginning a decade long relationship with the young girl that turns physical when she is just 13 years old to his 31 years. Putney basically covers what happens when Daphne realizes as an adult that what happened to her as a child was actually sexual abuse and not the pure love she thought it was; and the ensuing confrontation with Ralph and her past. The book is told mostly in present time, with consistent flashbacks to the past by our 3 character viewpoints - the abuser (Ralph), the abused (Daphne), and a bystander to the abuse (Daphne's childhood friend Jane). I loved the style in which Putney is written, and it is a very provocative look at illicit relationships. This was definitely a slower read for me, but I found Zinovieff's writing style very eloquent and detailed. The subject matter makes it rather hard not to put this book down for breaks, but that is simply due to how hard it is to read.Final Thought: This is a brilliant novel that fits in nicely with the #MeToo movement of today. Triggers abound though, so if you have a hard time reading about consent and/or grooming you may not want to read this one. However, if you can stand the triggers, this book will be an incredibly frustrating but rewarding book to check out. I also appreciated that Zinovieff was very tasteful with the scenes of abuse and did not choose to be graphic. Overall this book should spark quite the conversation, and I am very open to reading more from this author!

4.5, rounded down.One would think Nabokov already had cornered the market on obsessive pedophiliac love for nymphets with Lolita, but there have recently been a surfeit of new books limning the same fertile ground. Two of the books - The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World and Rust & Stardust - stem from the same story that Nabokov based his magnum opus on, but Zinovoeff invents her own sordid tale from scratch.... and comes up with a compelling, at times maddening, but nonetheless riveting novel.The story is told in alternating chapters by the three principal players: Ralph, a burgeoning composer, who at 27 falls inexplicably in love/lust with the 9 year old daughter of a compatriot; Daphne, said daughter, whose deflowering at 13 comes via her older paramour; and Jane, Daphne's best friend, who serves as something of an Iago figure throughout the novel. Most of the story is told in retrospect, when the 50-ish Daphne begins to examine whether her affair with Ralph was the lighthearted and harmless romp she had always thought it to be - or a monstrous abuse of childhood innocence, perpetrated by a demented bastard. The book never quite goes exactly where you expect, and that is both its strength and, if one can use the term for such a harrowing topic - charm. Zinovieff is in firm control of both her subject and her exquisite prose throughout, and I dare say this would have been a better Booker nominee than fully half of what DID make the list (especially the execrable and boring 'Milkman', which covers much the same themes).It is dispiriting that the execrable My Dark Vanessa has 100 times the number or readers than this much superior tome on the same subject - since it is 1,000 times better!

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/'She couldn’t have known what I was feeling but I wanted to lie down before her and let her walk on me.'That ‘she’ is a child! This novel is one of my favorites of 2018, having read it months ago it was killing me to hold back on posting a review per the publisher’s request.A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s beautiful activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his nine-year old daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse.Muse and so much more. It really begs the question, do more carefree times really excuse illicit relationships, forbidden ‘love’, seduction of an innocent? What is interesting are the different answers people of all ages give you! Make no mistake, Daphne is groomed however ‘pure’ Ralph swears his intentions are and it begins for her at the tender age of 9. Oh but there is no touching, no spoiling, nothing so vile as that, not yet anyway. Nothing illicit in his train of thinking, which seems to be off the tracks! Her father is Edmund Greenslay, famous novelist living a bohemian life with his gorgeous Greek wife Ellie, an activist whose not always present. How could a child surrounded by the energy of such parents not be enchanting, intelligent and wildly imaginative? He is beyond enraptured! She becomes an obsession, in a different home maybe his access to Daphne would have been less easy but it’s so hard for Ralph to keep away from this extraordinary creature. Soon he has treasures for her, the attention she sorely needs in a home where her artistic parents are always entertaining, working, traveling after all it’s the 1970s, and their parenting is carefree. They have important endeavours that don’t always make room for raising their offspring. They are so trusting of their circle, it never crosses their minds to wonder why a grown man is so attentive of their darling child.Children love secrets, and what’s more exciting to a lonely yet adventurous little girl than a secret that’s ‘just for us‘? This becomes the theme of their relationship. Ralph is convinced it’s pure, feels he is behaving so long as it’s not sexual until she turns 13 and everything alters.Daphne now calls her past the ‘Dark Ages’, where in the wreckage lies a broken marriage, drug abuse in her twenties, trying to reclaim herself, create a stable life in her thirties and presently trying to prove to Ralph that she is okay, that she is healthy and good, that she has made a life worth living. With her teenaged daughter Libby by her side Daphne has returned to London, stepping back into her childhood best friend Jane’s life. Jane was the one person who kept Daphne and Ralph’s secrets, possibly to her own detriment. If Daphne holds her love for Ralph in some charming bubble, Jane is there to burst it with the seedy, ugly reality. She wasn’t always so immune to his ‘compelling’ nature, our Jane. How could she be when even the adults seemed to hum with excitement in his presence. More than her friend, it could well be through mothering her daughter that Daphne begins to see just how much she was hunted, abused. But how will everyone feel when she confronts the truth?Ralph deludes himself, and the reader’s feelings may well sour more and more with the reading, he gets darker and darker. Instead of being a sinister, dark foreboding presence, though at the start and through much of the novel he is human, we like our monsters to be completely dark so we can spot them don’t we? But Ralph truly is the skin such threats walk around in. Charming, trustworthy to the adults, a friend of the family and wise enough to know what makes a little girl’s heart tick. Smart enough to dodge being found out ‘sniffing around’ her. Daphne is fragile (as all children are) and has no understanding of the adult world, in fact is exposed to it far too soon with a bohemian upbringing. Love is a fairy tale to little girls, a grown man is exciting! We are meant to trust and like Ralph sometimes and that is the nail in the coffin. He inserts himself in young Daphne’s life, happening upon her everywhere she goes feeling surely that, oh its fate. “He was Dog; always waiting for her..” full of promises, educating her on Stravinsky, a gravitational force in the space where one’s parents should be. I spent so much time reading this novel angry at their lax attitude. There are girlfriends for Ralph, but Daphne has his heart, will always be the one. Loved by her mother and father, she forgives them their absences when really, should she? How will they feel much later, when Daphne faces the rot of it all?Jane has felt for a long time that Daphne’s ‘chaos might be contagious.’ There is a lot of trepidation in Daphne’s return, their last encounter during her wedding was of a wilder friend. Yet she is as intrigued by Daphne as she was when they first became friends. Soon, they are on the phone making plans to meet up. Jane is pushy as an adult, she knows her friend was victimized even if Daphne doesn’t own that reality and she is going to convince her of this, she is there to take the ‘rosie tinted glasses’ off of her friend, who still holds Ralph on some pedestal. She knows full well what went on at 7 Barnabas Road wasn’t pure and had nothing to do with love. It is sick, Jane knows all of it is sick, but at the back of the reader’s mind one wonders, what exactly is driving Jane’s rage? The shifting perspectives are wildly different. Daphne’s strolls through memory lane are haunting to read, disturbing because she holds Ralph in a special place in her heart even now. “Although her memories of being with Ralph as a girl were tender, she knew they could not be talked about openly. It had always been a secret, but not a dirty one.” This is how victims are made. What Daphne romanized Jane sees as poison, just how far-reaching was Ralph’s desires?What about time, surely if enough time has passed you can’t accuse someone, destroy the life of a gifted, talented beloved man? What if that man is tied, still, to your family? The times… those seventies were all about dissolving boundaries, free love… At least, that’s what Ralph feels. How strange, being in the mind of an abuser and how they justify it to themselves or the victim who sees their situation as different, special. This is perfect for a book club, so many directions to go, so much to debate. All the enablers…Yes, read it!Publication Date: August 21, 2018Harper

I could not put this book down. Does that mean I liked it? I was horrified, disgusted, and frightened as I read Putney. Does that mean I didn't like it?This was a tough one for me. Do I think this is a good book? Yes, the writing is extraordinary. The story is told from three different perspectives and each character's voice is so clearly define. But, the subject matter is difficult. I'm not spoiling anything when I saw this is about a nearly 30 year old man (Ralph) who has a sexual relationship with 9 year old girl (no, that is not a typo), Daphne, the daughter of a good friend. Decades later, Ralph, Daphne, and Daphne's friend Jane, who witnessed the abuse, must come to terms with what went on and what should be done.I found Ralph repulsive and his explanations of his behavior (which we later find out goes far beyond his abuse of Daphne) repugnant. There were times that I could not believe what I was reading. This is the first time I've read a book and want to go back and take notes, just to document everything that made me angry. The scenes that depicted their physical relationship made me sick to my stomach. But, in the end I think because the book evoked such strong reactions from me, it did what it was supposed to do. Inspire thoughtful conversation.

Crucial scenes in Putney are set not in London, but in Greece, especially the sexual consummation of the ill-starred relationship between the thirty-something Ralph Boyd and the thirteen-year-old Daphne Greenslay and their final encounter aboard a ferry boat whose name appropriately translates as Holy Nectar. This story is very much a Greek tragedy. Ralph re-enacts the pattern Aeschylus described: hubris attracts Nemesis, and though vengeance is slow – taking thirty-seven years – her aim is sure. We even have a Fury in the person of Daphne’s girlhood BF, who urges her to prosecute Ralph for this ancient crime. Daphne herself, now a recovering drug addict working as a travel agent specialising in Greek holidays, had seemed unaware of any psychologically damaging after effects of this crime till she noticed how her own thirteen-year-old daughter was developing her sexuality.Britain is practically unique amongst civilized nations in having no statute of limitations for sex crimes. In most American states it varies between ten and twenty-one years (though not in Maryland, as many of us have become very aware recently). Even so, with a long history of drug abuse, Daphne would not be the most convincing witness against Ralph, now a distinguished composer, though diagnosed with cancer. Daphne’s parents, Edmund and Ellie (for Eleftheria – why can’t modern Greeks pronounce an upsilon?), a writer and an activist lawyer, certainly put the SOUCE in insouciance; neither of them seemed to pay any attention to what must have been obviously a most unhealthy interest in their daughter on Ralph’s part. Which raises a problematic issue with this story. While the relationship between Ralph and Daphne is criminal and totally sick, for the story to generate pathos it also has to have a kind of terrible beauty. I had feared Putney might read like Lolita, but for me it didn’t. Ralph isn’t a usual paedophile – unlike Humbert Humbert he is not fixated on nymphettes. All of his other sexual relationships seem to be either with adult women or teenaged boys. I find him a full-blown victim of Aphrodite at her most careless. There may be undertones of the story of Daphne and Apollo as well, as Ralph is a musician and his first encounter with Daphne occurs in a treehouse. It’s not Daphne’s age that attracts Ralph, it’s her soul. Though he is totally selfish – especially in his treatment of his wife Nina – and utterly sleazy, he seemed to me perfectly to exemplify the contemporary expression ‘eyes wide shut’. Because the liaison began in the mid ’70s, when the antinomianism of the later ’60s was still prevalent, it is easy to accept a bohemian like Ralph imagining he could get away with anything. Not even imagining; starkly insensible that there was anything wrong even though he has to go to a lot of trouble to disguise the relationship.There is a school of criticism that holds Sophocles’ Oedipus actually knew his mother’s identity even before the events of the play. I do not believe that. But I am very taken with the parallels between the story of Oedipus and Putney, especially the denouement in Greece, that in several respects (including a visit to Thebes) is reminiscent of Oedipus at Colonus. In both cases we have an old man pursued by guilt for an unnatural relationship. Different readers will surely have quite varying responses to the fate of Ralph. Some will feel he gets off too lightly; others that the ending is appropriate and we can close the book with the sense that justice was done and perhaps the name of the boat wasn’t entirely ironic.Because I love classical tragedy and the early potions of the book took place in London at the time in my life I felt most at home there (including the famous hot summer of ’76, the setting of so many marvelouslly moving stories including My Summer of Love and The Ladybird), I was reluctant to put this book down. If you’re not too repulsed by theme, you should find this a gripping read that will leave you with lots to consider.

"You remember how Hansel and Gretel ends?" Her voice was calm and sly."Uh, yes. They kill the witch and escape back home?""Exactly. It's Gretel, the little girl, who outwits the witch and shoves here into the oven, saves her fattened-up brother from the cage, and finds a way out of the dark forest. It's never too late to kill the witch, Daphne. Think about it. There's a natural balance in getting justice, even if it's much later. The witch should't get away with it. I know you think your case is unique, but you can bet there were other children tempted by the candies...."I felt every single emotion under the sun as I read Sofka Zinovieff's brilliant book, Putney and it easily secures a spot on my list of top reads of 2018. Please mind your triggers on this one so before you read any further, if grooming and sexual assault are triggers for you in any way, then I would proceed with great caution with this review and this book. Never before have I experienced a novel that so powerfully addressed the manipulation of adults over children, or that provided such an eye opening look at the many forms that complicity can take. Told in alternating view points from the perspectives of the perpetrator, the victim, and the witness, Zinovieff delves deeply in to the issues of consent and grooming, and provided a reading experience for me like no other.I was totally repulsed when reading Ralph's chapters and I am grateful to the author for keeping the sexual portions of the book brief and not gratuitous in any way. The first time Ralph sees Daphne he is 27 and she is 9. He immediately begins grooming her for what will turn out to be an almost decade long affair. When Daphne turns 13, their physical relationship begins and to my shock and horror, the adults in Daphne's life are not at all concerned that this older man has taken such an unusual interest in their child. It isn't until years later, when her friend Jane pushes Daphne about the things that Jane saw occur between she and Ralph that Daphne slowly comes to the realization that what happened to her was not love and it was not ok."The girls were all done up... and then I saw the peculiar disconnect that happens when young girls play with sexiness. I do realize it's normal - what they all do- what we all did. But it's like a game, like practicing before the real thing. And I thought about me at eleven or twelve and about Ralph. And sleeping with him when I was only thirteen. And it was like being punched in the stomach. I mean Libby's going to be thirteen soon.... It was such a strange sort of shock - the sort you've known about all along but haven't understood. I thought that if an older man did to Libby what Ralph did to me, I'd"....Daphne stopped and then said very simply, "I'd kill him." Daphne wrestles with the justifications she has told herself for so long and the roller coaster of emotions she experiences over what happened to her left me holding my breath... waiting for Daphne to grasp the severity of the situation and do something. ACT. SPEAK OUT. I found myself silently urging her along as she worked through their relationship and begin to see it for what it truly was. Zinovieff's ability to convey how terrifying it is for Daphne to come forward after all this time - to speak what she has endured out loud, to call it by it's name and stand before her parents, her community and her perpetrator and say " I was abused. You did this to me, and you and you and you knew about it and no one did anything to help me or to stop it" is an incredibly powerful thing to read. It is a monumental moment in the book and the entire time I was reading I kept thinking about all of the women who have been touched by the Me Too movement, who have bravely stepped forward and spoken out about the horrible things that have been done to them at the hands of adults that they trusted. I could not turn the pages fast enough, so powerful was Daphne's story.This book will not be for everyone and that is certainly understandable. I feel like it is an important catalyst for hard and necessary conversations and that it will be something that readers return to time and again for a myriad of reasons. I have never read anything like this, and I can assure you, you haven't either. Thank you Sofka for telling this story, for taking me on such an explosive and visceral journey and for writing a book that will no doubt inspire others to come forward and know that they do not need to be ashamed. I am humbled to be included on the blog tour for this significant and provocative work. Thank you so much to Harper Books and to Jen for allowing me to take part.