The Amateur
A Novel
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
The Amateur
Narrated by:
Melora Hardin
Pre-order Now for £15.34
-
Narrated by:
-
Melora Hardin
-
By:
-
Chris Bohjalian
1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives.
In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy’s little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, The Amateur asks: What happens when one small moment—a swing, a ball, a piece of string—changes the course of an entire life?
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Critic reviews
Chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of "The Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026.”
“An irresistible, insightful retelling of Lolita.”
—Marion Winik, Oprah Daily
"The Amateur is a joyous novel with an unforgettable narrator who will break your heart. It is sharply funny, beautifully told and so moving on the way life can upend itself in a single moment. I adored it."
—Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country
"A gripping literary thriller in which a young woman’s future hangs in the balance after a chance accident at an elite country club exposes secret affairs and class divides. Impossible to put down.”
—Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Caller Unknown and Wrong Place, Wrong Time
"Styled as an unflinchingly candid memoir written by Mira decades after the fact, Bohjalian’s latest dazzles as it devastates. Plentiful foreshadowing ramps up tension and keeps the momentum high while Mira turns over weighty subjects—sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress, familial dysfunction—with grace and wry humor. It’s a masterpiece."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Irresistible… a marvelous 11th-hour twist and a satisfying denouement lie ahead. It’s hard to think of any reason not to call this a perfect novel: a hole in one.”
—Kirkus (Starred Review)
“Intrepid . . . Timely and empathic.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“Bohjalian delivers again with this suspenseful novel. . . . Provocative. . . . An engrossing read that will offer much discussion for book clubs.”
—Library Journal
“An irresistible, insightful retelling of Lolita.”
—Marion Winik, Oprah Daily
"The Amateur is a joyous novel with an unforgettable narrator who will break your heart. It is sharply funny, beautifully told and so moving on the way life can upend itself in a single moment. I adored it."
—Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country
"A gripping literary thriller in which a young woman’s future hangs in the balance after a chance accident at an elite country club exposes secret affairs and class divides. Impossible to put down.”
—Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Caller Unknown and Wrong Place, Wrong Time
"Styled as an unflinchingly candid memoir written by Mira decades after the fact, Bohjalian’s latest dazzles as it devastates. Plentiful foreshadowing ramps up tension and keeps the momentum high while Mira turns over weighty subjects—sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress, familial dysfunction—with grace and wry humor. It’s a masterpiece."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Irresistible… a marvelous 11th-hour twist and a satisfying denouement lie ahead. It’s hard to think of any reason not to call this a perfect novel: a hole in one.”
—Kirkus (Starred Review)
“Intrepid . . . Timely and empathic.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“Bohjalian delivers again with this suspenseful novel. . . . Provocative. . . . An engrossing read that will offer much discussion for book clubs.”
—Library Journal
No reviews yet