
Beneath the Cypress Tree
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Narrated by:
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Louiza Patikas
About this listen
A war that could turn friends into enemies, lovers into fighters....
Summer 1935. Best friends Kate Shelton, Ella Tetley and Daphne St. Maur are on the cusp of a new life, having graduated with classics degrees.
Kate is desperate to start work on an archaeological dig straightaway, and she is thrilled to be given a position at the famous Knossos palace site in Crete. However, she doesn't bargain for working with gruff site director Lewis Sinclair - nor for her own complex feelings towards him.
In Yorkshire, Ella's family expect her to marry Sam, her steady friend who is training to be a doctor, but Ella too feels pulled to the Mediterranean by the promise of freedom. When she meets Christos, life as a country GP's wife seems even less appealing....
Daphne, however, throws herself into London's high society, falling madly in love with diplomat and heir Sholto Hertford - but then his work brings them to Crete, and Daphne becomes enchanted by the island as well.
Meanwhile, the threat of war rumbles on, as reports of Hitler's rapid expansion across Europe become impossible to ignore. It seems that nothing can touch the perfect, glittering sea and snow-capped mountains, but Kate, Ella and Daphne know that the island haven they now call home will never be the same again.
©2017 Margaret Pemberton (P)2017 Macmillan Digital AudioThe book’s description led me to believe there would be more of the book set either in the war or more richly drawing on historical detail that would be woven into the story to form the main arc of the book. However, the war was rather tacked on very much towards the latter stages of the book.
I’d like to have learnt more - a personal preference - for any novel rooted in real events.
What was included was indeed interesting and doubtless well-researched, but as with the book overall, it needed a bit more heft to elevate it from nice to lovely. Both words might conjure more that’s saccharine than I intend, or that is fair to this book, which has more body than anything so sickly sweet.
Lovely, was another virtually heretical word teachers sternly guided us from using in any writing. But for all the wish-washy flaccidity of either descriptor, I think both nice and lovely have their place. And this book is, in this reader’s/listener’s opinion, nice, which is one rung down from lovely.
A whiling away pleasant distraction rather than an itching to get back to carry on sort of listen.
Nice
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Worth a listen/read
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Thoroughly enjoyed listening!
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Superb!
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A light summer read
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Sweeping tale of passionate WW2 archeologists!!
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The tree
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As for the narration, not too bad but Daphne's voice was absolutely appalling! True towards the end it had improved somewhat but for too much of the book, rather than a member of the aristocracy, poor Daphne sounded like a coarse, demented fish wife!
Trite and Repetitive
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I really enjoyed this book until...
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