Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Everyday Madness

  • On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love
  • By: Lisa Appignanesi
  • Narrated by: Lisa Appignanesi
  • Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (8 ratings)
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.
Everyday Madness cover art

Everyday Madness

By: Lisa Appignanesi
Narrated by: Lisa Appignanesi
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 £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Pay using card ending in
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...

My Father Left Me Ireland cover art
Unspeakable cover art
Follow Your Heart cover art
Only: A Singular Memoir cover art
Broken Verses cover art
The People in the Photo cover art
The Middlepause cover art
The Great Good Thing cover art
Hometown Tales: Glasgow cover art
A Widow's Story cover art
In Gratitude cover art
My Brilliant Friend cover art

Summary

‘The small translucent bottle of shampoo outlived him. It was the kind you take home from hotels in distant places. For over a year it had sat on the shower shelf where he had left it. I looked at it every day.’

After the death of her partner of 32 years, Lisa Appignanesi was thrust into a state striated by rage and superstition in which sanity felt elusive. The dead of prior generations loomed large and haunting. Then, too, the cultural and political moment seemed to collude with her condition: everywhere people were dislocated and angry.

In this electrifying and brave examination of an ordinary enough death and its aftermath, Appignanesi uses all her evocative and analytic powers to scrutinize her own and our society’s experience of grieving, the effects of loss and the potent, mythical space it occupies in our lives.

With searing honesty, lashed by humour, she navigates us onto the terrain of childhood, the way it forms our feelings of love and hate, and steers us towards a less tumultuous version of the everyday.

This book may be short, but life, death, madness, love and grandchildren are all there - seen through the eyes of a writer who is ever aware of the historical and current vagaries of woman’s condition.

©2018 Lisa Appignanesi (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Appignanesi luminously conveys the wayward emotions that make bereavement a language that is hard to understand, yet speaks to us every day when we experience a great loss. You will find all of life in this rewarding, scholarly and entertaining conversation about freedom, Freud, fury, enduring love, and how mythic and modern families haunt each other." (Deborah Levy)

"Keen-eyed, unflinching in her honesty, Lisa Appignanesi carries us down into the depths through an inner landscape of unappeasable turmoil, as she moves towards knowledge of love and the serenity it brings. With piercing insight and many moments of intense poignancy, she illuminates the complexity and costs of a remarkable and passionate journey." (Marina Warner) 

"Wonderful, moving, extraordinary. It is sui generis. I feel enormously privileged to have read it - twice. Its structure is remarkable - an enacting of the last two years. Bravo bravo." (Edmund de Waal) 

What listeners say about Everyday Madness

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

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

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Worth every minute

I've always enjoyed reading Lisa, but there's something poignant about listening to such a personal story knowing it's the author herself who is taking us by the hand and guiding us through it. Many authors fail at being both the author and the narrator of their own story, but Lisa succeeded. Her voice is stern, fierce, it grips you, commands your attention. She certainly had mine all the way.

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

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!