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The Scent of Lemon Leaves
- Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Sean Baker
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
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The Scent of Lemon Leaves
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Summary
Five months pregnant and facing difficult decisions, 30-year-old Sandra leaves her job and her boyfriend to take stock of her life in her sister’s beach house on the Costa Brava. She befriends an elderly Norwegian couple, Karin and Fredrik, who provide her with stimulating company and take the place of the grandparents she never had. However, when she meets Julian, a former concentration-camp inmate who has just returned to Europe from Argentina, she discovers that all is not what it seems and finds herself involved in a perilous quest for the truth.
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What listeners say about The Scent of Lemon Leaves
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Barbara
- 11-04-13
It'll make you think.
A very interesting take on the war. It is read in a two person dialog which to begin with, confused me. But the story was compelling, I though after the first hour I would just listen - just a little longer. The afternoon went by with me willing both characters on and my hoovering still waiting to be done!
There are many very good books about the war but fewer about what happened to those who did the atrocities. Did the survivors find a way to bring them to justice? how many were found? what did post war lawyers and courts call justice. It is good to know that some brave men and women who survived did keep the hunt up. But many of my questions cannot be answered here.
This is a story but has a very serious undertone. As a woman who like the girl in the story was not alive to witness these years (thankfully). It made me think. What would I do in that situation? How would I respond if I saw that or heard this or found myself with these people? Have I unknowingly been in the company of people like this? How could she? what! Wait what would I do?
It is well read and well worth a listen. It will make you think - I hope.
This is not a fluffy book that makes war look like a fun day in the park. It is a book about a war in the past that is still affecting people today. A war that destroyed human life. A war we all know about and the millions of people who's lives were changed, who's characters where hardened and who where never the same again.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Pagann
- 15-02-14
Why Such Strange Accents
Sadly after a promising beginning this story loss pace and some of the accents were so ridiculous it also lost reality. I listened to the end but was totally underwhelmed by the conclusion.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Stella
- 07-04-13
The Scent of Lemon Leaves.
Having lived through World War 2, I found this story extremely poignant and totally believable.
The narration could not be bettered, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to both voices.
At no time did I feel my interest wain and I would recommend this book to anyone.
It is a story of the need for revenge, but totally understandable given the circumstances.
Whether or not you have personal experience of the war, I feel sure you will enjoy listening to the story and the gentle voices of the narrators.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 26-05-13
Moving
Wasn't sure where this story was going at first but I soon got hooked into the twists and turns. Very believable and yet novel. Very well read.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Florin
- 26-12-12
Good story, great characters
This was my first book written by Clara Sanchez and I was really enchanted by her writing style. It is a book about morality and principles, about how we can find justification to all our actions even when it's clear that we've done wrong. The characters are very well constructed and little by little they become "part of your life". This aspect make the story believable and the overall experience one that you regret when it ends.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Mrs. G. M. Burnie
- 02-06-13
Did not hold together
It looked like a promising tale. It did not deliver. The ending feels truncated. the emotions and reactions were not true to life. Author not a student of human nature obviously.
So many events and reactions of the female protagonist felt picked out of thin air.
I kept thinking, no one would do this, this does not add up. The ending left me cheated and as if she had run out of idea at the end and just thrown it together.
Having said that, the woman can write and very often would confer beautiful images adn feelings, but they just, to my mind, did not belong to this tale.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
- MS REBECCA WARREN
- 05-01-13
Lost In Translation
I was disappointed as the plot was good. However I found this book disappointing and tedious to say the least. I wonder if it would be better read in the language in which it was written. I found Sandra an irritating and tediously boring person and this may have been exacerbated by the narrator’s portrayal of her character. The way in which the narrators portrayed the voices of other characters nearly drove me bonkers. I truly think that if I had read rather than listened to this book I would have enjoyed it more. Bad narration of what could have been a good story.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
- SDY
- 12-03-13
Underwhelming
When a book rises to international fame, one would expect it to be something extraordinary in one way or another. This book, despite an interesting promise, fails to deliver on all accounts. The story remains rather flat and dull throughout, the prose never lifts from the ordinary and the end drags on as if the author hadn't noticed the story has ended. The actors do a great job infusing life into the characters, and particularly the female narrator manages to make Sandra a little less frustratingly stupid than what her actions show her to be. One last point- don't let the title draw you in: there's very little poetry in this book, or inspired moments.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
- R. Gladwin
- 01-12-12
Slow and unsatisfying
The split narration is lovely and the translation adds quite a pleasant extra degree of surrealism as some of the turns of phrase are unusual. There are some very beautiful and believable moments but the story is extremely slow-moving and repetitive. The ending is quite peculiar and unsatisfying (and doesn't deliver an amazing twist as some reviews claim). The story mainly revolves around three locations in the same small town and there are far too many descriptions of what the characters are having to eat or drink. It held me just enough for me to persevere to the end, but I wasn't really looking forward to listening to it anymore.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
- Katherine
- 12-04-13
The Scent of Lemon Leaves - lost in translation
Just listened this book. Promising start but soon lost my attention. I pushed through to the end and was disappointed but not surprised. I was relieved to have finished the book.
The subject was interesting, the characters well defined.... but all amounted to just the scent of lemon when there should have been the sharp tang taste of lemons. Maybe a lot was lost in translation?
Readers' voices were good.
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1 person found this helpful