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The Corner That Held Them

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About this listen

A unique novel about life in a fourteenth-century convent by one of England’s most original authors

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel like no other, one that immerses the listener in the dailiness of history, rather than history as the given sequence of events that, in time, it comes to seem. Time ebbs and flows and characters come and go in this novel, set in the era of the Black Death, about a Benedictine convent of no great note. The nuns do their chores, seek to maintain and improve the fabric of their house and chapel, and struggle with each other and with themselves. The book that emerges is a picture of a world run by women but also a story—stirring, disturbing, witty, utterly entrancing—of a community.

What is the life of a community and how does it support, or constrain, a real humanity? How do we live through it and it through us? These are among the deep questions that lie behind this rare triumph of the novelist’s art.

©1948 The Estate of Sylvia Townsend Warner (P)2021 Penguin Audio Fiction Historical Fiction Medieval Women's Fiction Middle Ages Witty
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I didn’t think I could be gripped by a tale of 14th century nuns but I was wrong. This is a beautifully written and very clever book. The everyday, often humorous, lives of these women flow through the pages until you feel you really know them and are living in their time.

A truly unusual novel

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The narration and story line were both really special.
I have been transported completely, you can smell the Middle Ages! The characters are utterly fascinating. I have laughed and learned.

Truly unusual

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