9780062959256
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Sudden Traveler audiobook

  • By: Sarah Hall
  • Narrator: Mary Jane Wells
  • Category: Fiction, Literary
  • Length: 3 hours 9 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: October 08, 2019
  • Language: English
  • (83 ratings)
(83 ratings)
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Sudden Traveler Audiobook Summary

“Sarah Hall is one of those rare writers whose short fiction has the same luminosity as her novels. But the short form allows her more room to probe and roam, to experiment with form, to sink her fingers into the earth.”–The Observer (London)

Featuring her signature themes of identity, eroticism, and existential quest, the stories in Sarah Hall’s third collection travel far afield in location and ambition–from Turkish forest and coastline to the rain-drenched villages of Cumbria.

The characters in Sudden Traveler walk, drive, dream, and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journeys through life, death, and love. Science fiction meets folktale and philosophy meets mortality.

A woman with a new generation of pacemaker chooses to shut it down in the Lakeland, the site of her strongest memories. A man repatriated in the near east hears the name of an old love called and must unpack history’s dark suitcase. From the new world-waves of female anger and resistance, a mythical creature evolves. And in the woods on the border between warring countries, an old well facilitates a dictator’s downfall, before he gains power.

A master of short fiction, Sarah Hall opens channels in the human mind and spirit and takes us to the very edge of our possible selves.

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Sudden Traveler Audiobook Narrator

Mary Jane Wells is the narrator of Sudden Traveler audiobook that was written by Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria. She is the prizewinning author of six novels and three short story collections. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award, Edge Hill Short Story Prize, among others, and the only person ever to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice. 

About the Author(s) of Sudden Traveler

Sarah Hall is the author of Sudden Traveler

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Sudden Traveler Full Details

Narrator Mary Jane Wells
Length 3 hours 9 minutes
Author Sarah Hall
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date October 08, 2019
ISBN 9780062959256

Subjects

The publisher of the Sudden Traveler is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Fiction, Literary

Additional info

The publisher of the Sudden Traveler is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062959256.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Sharlene

December 31, 2019

“We are, all of us, sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.”Reviewing a collection of short stories isn’t an easy task. With a few exceptions, short story collections tend to feel like they need to be read over a longer time than it takes to read a book. For example, read one story, take a break and go read something else. Then come back to another story after that breather.And in a collection such as this slim volume by Sarah Hall, a lot of breaks are needed, as the stories take on such varied settings, some weird and otherworldly and a bit experimental, some more rooted in the every day. Is that why the title is such? That as we read the stories, we are, too, “sudden travelers”, having to switch our perspectives completely?For these stories are set in Turkish forests, Cumbrian villages, some that seem more like dreamscapes with weird transformations.There is no doubt that Hall is a great writer. The stories are full of beautiful writing. For myself, as I am not much of a reader of more experimental turns, I was more drawn to her more ‘real’ stories like Orton and, especially the penultimate story, Sudden Traveler. And her writing pulled me in deep to those stories, tears falling, even, for one of them.So while I stumbled during a couple of stories, unsure of where these pieces were leading me, the end result was worth it.

Jo

January 22, 2020

There are several recurring themes in the seven stories that make up Sarah Hall’s latest short story collection. These include death whether natural or otherwise, female oppression and its consequences, migration, and loss, either of self or of others. Other than these shared themes though these stories are pretty diverse, some containing fantastical or folkloric elements, others simply stories of broken hearts and broken people. As such, your enjoyment will probably depend on your preference for these different kinds of writing but even then, there is something to admire in all of them. The opening story M is a mind bending story to open with in its story of revenge and metamorphosis which is swiftly followed by the far more straight forward, but still emotive, The Woman the Book Read. Whereas the endings of the first two stories left me thinking and wanting to go back and reread with a different perspective, something I think is a positive of short stories, the ending of The Grotesques left me confused so in this sense didn’t succeed. Who Pays? is short and effective but perhaps too short but is followed by one of my favorite stories, Orton, featuring an older woman looking back and ruminating on the nature of death and the ‘brilliance of human invention’. Sudden Traveler also very much features death with the narrator sitting in a car, nursing her baby thinking about the death of her mother. This one touched me the most as Hall really captures that feeling of grief and the aftermath of someone dying and had some beautiful lines. The collection ends with Live that you may live, again too short to make much of an impact, it felt more like a writerly indulgence in its imagined dreamscape although perhaps parents would get more out of it.Overall, the best stories made up for the less so and I’m keen now to read Sarah Hall’s longer fiction to see if she as talented a writer as this collection seems to indicate.Some favorite lines‘She felt a bit of lovely pain, remembering. It never went away altogether, that kind of loss, but sat about you like weather, changing, getting up a gale from time to time.’ (Orton)‘Nobody warned you about this part-suspension from the world. Waiting to rejoin. The baby is some kind of axis, a fixed point in time, though her grows every day, fingers lengthening, face passing through echoes of all your relatives, and the other relatives, heart chambers expanding, blood reproducing. It is like holding a star in your arms. All the moments of your life, all its meanings and dimensions, seem to lead to and from him.’ (Sudden Traveler)‘Then you began to see they were, in fact, comforting her, better than you could. Dying: like having a wash, like stirring sugar into tea, or laying out cutlery. It was the first instructions of what would become a vital list of instructions, bringing the experience close, feeling its cool brush against your skin.’ (Sudden Traveler)Time: the most unrelatable concept. If you stepped off this planet, you’d need no such identifier; everything would bend and fold, repeat, or just release. You’d have no age. You’d cease to be definite.’ (Sudden Traveler)‘We are, all of us, sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.’ (Sudden Traveler)

Mark

March 08, 2020

Another fine collection of short stories. They just keep rolling out.

Sandra

November 08, 2020

'Dilly sometimes thought that Mummy was like a truffle pig, rooting around and unearthing ugly, tangled thoughts in people.'(From 'The Grotesques' )I found this collection of short stories stirring, surprising, edged with beautiful prose, full of shades and big stirs of whimsy and filled with longing.'So it goes. People as fundamental as the sky, gone before they can be shared by future generations. '(From 'Sudden Traveller')'But I made her, in a womb once cut apart, stoned, and sewed. Cells, and strings and hope. I made her bed - eight bolts, twelve screws, five panels of false mahogany - foolproof for skill less artisans, unbreakable when she jumps.'(From 'Live That You May Live')

JacquiWine

January 28, 2020

An excellent collection of short stories from one of our most highly-regarded practitioners of the form. Here are tales of family ties, sex, vengeance, mortality, grief and loss, all conveyed in Hall’s characteristically lyrical prose.To read my review, please visit:https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...

Have Coffee Need Books

October 21, 2019

I received this ARC from TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.Sudden Traveler is a beautiful collection of short stories interwoven by the delicately threaded narrative that speaks the language of feminine identity. Each story is an exploration of the essence of female embodiment. Not focusing on sex as gender but rather the classification, agency, violation, sorority, disambiguate, and celebration of what makes a being a woman. These short stories range in tone by the narrator of each tale. Written in a way that a mother might tell her daughter or a sister to her own; every story is told as one would hear them mouth to ear. Spoken. Some of the voices are broken and distant as they describe the defilement of their innocence. Other voices burn with fervor as the woman is forged into a weapon of her defense. And some are the soft murmurs of affection, if not acceptance.‘The greatest betrayal of all is to disaffiliate.'Hall has created a council and sisterhood in Sudden Traveler. Sometimes we are crushed beneath the boot of the world we are born to and the only saving grace is knowing that those who were walked on before us know the way to survive. In these lovely accounts, one woman might learn the lesson but she is a symbol for each of us, and each of these women's suffering and joys are that of all women. This collection highlights the fact that we women don't keep our secrets to save ourselves, we share them to save others.‘...I am not this; she could tell him everything, or nothing because the present is in each millionth moment remade and unstoppable, forgiveness, war, cause, cure, all moments, all selves, possible.'Each of these anecdotes is uniquely random but universal. As a female reader, I can sense that these characters are people I have known or who I could understand becoming. Sometimes I am the voyeur of the life I might once have lead. While other times I am so deeply sunken into the bland anonymity of rote motion that I become a victim of my own sense of contentment. I could easily be or become an Ara or a Dilly.‘We are all sudden travelers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold.'This book is beautiful. I highly recommend it. If you enjoy these stories I suggest you also check out Anatomy by Simon Travers; it is a collection of stories and poems expressing the beauty of unflinching intimacy.Anatomy

Audra (ouija.reads)

November 13, 2019

What a strange, wonderful, unclassifiable set of stories! Sarah Hall has captivated me with her unusual worlds and I only found myself wishing the collection, only seven stories at 128 pages, was longer!Hall has a fluid, wandering style of writing that immediately creates an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue around her work. The stories are on the quieter side; not a lot always happens in each story, but each still had the effect of leaving me wondering and wanting more—just like good stories should.I love especially how these stories look at and comment on women, femininity, perceived gender roles, and the male gaze. Hall has an astute eye for political and social commentary even as she shrouds her message in shades of genre fiction.Dark and wonderful, thought-provoking and entertaining.I'll definitely be looking for the rest of Hall's work to supplement this small snack of writing.My thanks to Custom House/HarperCollins for my copy of this one to read and review.

Owen

August 28, 2022

Sarah Hall is one of our best modern short story writers. She employs magic realism, invented technology and a sense of calculated menace to draw the reader into an uncertain world.In the first story, "M", written in the present tense, a lawyer becomes a harpy. The short sentences give a sense of urgency which underlines the violence. In "The Woman the Book Read", a man in a Turkish resort follows a young woman who reminds him of a child he once knew. Being a Sarah Hall story, there is tension from the expectation that something unpleasant will happen. Read it to find out.In "The Grotesques", a young girl on a birthday outing to Cambridge feels frustrated because her mother will not listen to her. She wants a scone for her tea and to tell her mother about the homeless man who students have covered with fruit and who will eventually suffer a tragic fate.In "Who Pays", a Turkish village family feast turns into an unforeseen and unnecessary tragedy owing to a foolhardy attempt to cool bottles of beer. The event is foretold in the vivid description of cold well water.Perhaps the warmest and most engaging story is "Orton". An elderly woman, fitted with a pacemaker which the wearer can turn off when they want to die, travels without luggage to a village where she will reimagine a sexual encounter from her youth. In "Sudden Traveller", a woman and her baby watch as her father and brother dig her mother’s grave. During this isolated moment, she realises that ‘we are all of us sudden travellers in the world, blind, passing each other, reaching out, missing, sometimes taking hold".In "Live that You May Live", a young mother tells her sleepless daughter magical tales to warn of what an unknown future may hold.The writing in this collection is precise and economical. Several stories benefit from a second reading to fully grasp the nuances.

Ann Marie

November 13, 2020

This is a fascinating book of short stories, each one very unique, written in a dreamy, poetic way. Hall has given us a book of seven sprawling short stories that dive deep. Each one is incredibly rich, with much to think about at the end. There are many thought-provoking themes in these stories, especially death and new life, revisiting the past but not fearing the future, all while weaving in mythical elements. This is a relatively short book at 124 pages, but it feels longer, in a good way. As easy as it would be to sprint through these stories in an afternoon, these are the kind of short stories to savor and read over a period of time. There were even a couple that I re-read to get a fuller sense of the story. The cover of this book is simply gorgeous and I can’t stop staring at the beautiful bird on the front. It’s pretty perfect imagery for the cover because I couldn’t help but notice all of the avian references while reading through the stories.If you are fond of short stories, definitely give this one a read! Thank you so much to @tlcbooktours and @customhousebooks an imprint of @williammorrowbooks for sending me this book and giving me the opportunity to review it.

Megsbookclub

October 14, 2019

Today I’m excited to feature the new release by Sarah Hall, Sudden Traveler! It is a collection of short stories that are so very different than anything else you have read. Even though it’s only about 125 pages long, the stories are not fast reads. She is such an in-depth writer and totally pulls you in that you have to slow down so you don’t miss anything. She is an award winning author so yes she is very good at what she does! Thanks to @tlcbooktours, @customhousebooks and @williammorrowbooks for this review copy! .Here is the book description without going in to each story: 
Featuring her signature themes of identity, eroticism, and existential quest, the stories in Sarah Hall’s third collection travel far afield in location and ambition—from Turkish forest and coastline to the rain-drenched villages of Cumbria.The characters in Sudden Traveler walk, drive, dream, and fly, trying to reconcile themselves with their journeys through life, death, and love. Science fiction meets folktale and philosophy meets mortality. .So if you are looking for something completely different with the most beautiful cover pick this one up! It’s out now! .

Colin

February 08, 2020

There are some authors whose every book is a must read for me, and Sarah Hall is definitely one of them. I've loved all of her novels, but her short stories are exceptional and she must have a claim to be considered one of the best exponents of the form writing today. Sudden Traveller contains seven new stories, each told in Hall's beautiful, sinewy prose. Their settings range from her native Cumbria to Cambridge, Turkey and beyond. The title story is an achingly beautiful account of motherhood and bereavement, and to my mind is the best story in the collection. The final story, Live That You May Live, reminds me of Helen Dunmore's wonderful poem, All the Things You Are Not Yet in its mother's eye's view of a child's possible life reaching far into the future.

Jade Cormack

February 04, 2021

The short story is such a technically challenging genre so I applaud Hall for this sophisticated piece of work. For me, Sudden Traveller really nailed the technicalities, the conventions, the stuff that literature students and academics will relish in. In every story, time felt neatly contained and linear, voice was authentic and setting was evocative. But, in its literary prowess and complexity, I felt something got lost. Like other readers, I often found myself confused. Some of the endings were lost on me and I found myself needing to reread them for greater comprehension. Sudden Traveller and Orton were my favourites in this collection. A great read overall.

Carol

January 05, 2021

Incredible collection of short stories. Full of surprises and packed with the visceral, the sensual, the mythical, the surreal and the grotesque.My favourite story is ‘The Grotesques’. Set in Oxford, it opens with a description of Charlie Bo, a once brilliant scholar who has fallen asleep and been decorated with fruit like an Arcimboldi painting by the ‘gowns’ on the town. But the award-winning ‘grotesques’ are the hapless Dilly and her power-crazed and self-glorifying family members.Tremendous variety of characters, settings, and themes. A slim but rich volume. I became immersed in the detail but the overview kind of escaped me. I understood less than I enjoyed, if that makes sense?

Caroline

January 30, 2020

4.5 starsNothing better than really enjoying a book and realizing you already have one of the author's other books on your TBR shelf :P. It's definitely moving up in the pecking order now!But yes, this short story collection is fantastic. The title story is especially exquisite. I checked this book out from the library, and now I want to buy it just to be able to re-read that story from time to time. I was also particularly moved by "The Grotesques." Lots of sharp insights about female power, grief & dying, and regret, often seen through a lens of fabulism.

Jesseka

July 19, 2020

What to say about Sudden Traveller? Sarah Hall's writing is exquisite as always. Some how she captures the flux and multitudes of what it means to be human, our various meetings and partings. Some of these stories left me breathless with the beauty and pain within them. A couple will require a second reading to help me pull strands of meaning from their layers. I'm not sure if this is the book I would recommend as an introduction to Sarah Hall but I would urge anyone who hasn't read her to so so.

Shahira8826

August 20, 2020

"Sudden Traveller" by Sarah Hall is a collection of lyrical, surreal stories about life and death, sex and love, and most of all about what it means to be a woman.I'm not usually a fan of short stories, but this particular book has totally captured me and moved me with its beautiful, limpid language and its enthrancing prose.Although short, each one of these powerful stories has transported me to different worlds and immersed me in different characters.The echo of these amazing narratives will stay with me long after finishing the book.

Ron

March 01, 2022

Sarah must be my favourite contemporary author. She is so varied, so powerful, so economic with words. Some say she's a better novelist than short story writer; others say the opposite, but it's irrelevant as she is brilliant at both.Which of these tales did I like best? Well, I guess it would be the title story: such an evocative account of the effects a death in the family can have on you, but more than that: it draws you in immediately and keeps you in to the last paragraph. It's a gem. But the rest are excellent too.This collection of short stories is unmissable: just read it.

Ruth

November 11, 2020

It took me a long time to read these stories because I wasn't as gripped by them as I have been by previous wrings of Sarah Hall's. On rereading and analysis ng for the Reading group I found much excellence. However the major themes of vengeance, home and family continuity did not mean so much to me personally. I am more interested in ending abuse, relating to all places and making human links with all sorts of people. Somehow the power seemed a bit overcwrafted to me. There was even at points something verging on the sentimental.

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