The Winds of Marble Arch Audiobook By Connie Willis cover art

The Winds of Marble Arch

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The Winds of Marble Arch

By: Connie Willis
Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
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"While I was in Charing Cross Station, there was this strange wind...."

Tom, an American, is in London for a conference when he begins to experience unusual forces in the Underground. Is it an easily-explained phenomenon - or ghosts from Britain's past?

The Winds of Marble Arch won the Hugo Award for Best Novella.

©1999 Connie Willis (P)2008 Audible, Inc. Anthologies & Short Stories Hugo Award Locus Award Science Fiction

Critic reviews

  • Hugo Award, Best Novella, 2000
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Connie Willis is almost never about how we won the rocket war or how we got the space ship up. Her science fiction is an exploration of the heart. This is a lovely read. Not her best but very very good.
You almost have to be British to understand the underground bits. I don't know if the original book came with an underground map, but it would have helped.

Non Science fiction at its best.

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Twisty and perfect ;-) Exactly what I love about Connie Willis. Have a great quick experience! Last five words are Perfect.

Love This 😊

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Originally posted at FanLit.

Tom and his wife are visiting London so Tom can attend an academic conference while his wife goes shopping with a friend. When Tom takes the Tube to the conference, he feels a strange wind in the Underground. It???s more than just the normal drafts created by trains coming and going; this wind smells ancient and deadly and makes him feel afraid. Skipping the conference, and forgetting to buy theater tickets, Tom spends the next couple of days riding the Tube all over (under, actually) London to try to find the origin of the winds that only he seems to feel.

Connie Willis???s The Winds of Marble Arch won the Hugo Award for Best Novella and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. Like several of her stories, this one involves a time-traveling academic, except that he doesn???t actually move through time, but he senses historical events when he visits places where bad things have happened ??? in this case, the London Underground.

The Winds of Marble Arch gets tedious in the middle as Tom races from station to station sniffing the air, buying history books at the gift shops, and overwhelming us with information about what happened at each station during the London Blitz of WWII. This might be interesting for someone who???s familiar with all of the Tube stations, but for me it all ran together and I couldn???t appreciate all of Connie Willis???s extensive research into the history of the London Underground during WWII. There are also too many details about London theatres, actors, and plays ???another favorite topic for Willis.

It???s not all just an excuse to lecture us on London Blitz history and Underground geography, though. Willis cleverly relates these bombings and the dreadful winds they created to the disastrous effects of adultery, divorce, and aging. This part of the novella is truly beautiful.

Dennis Boutsikaris superbly narrates Audible Frontiers??? version of The Winds of Marble Arch.

Hugo award winner

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Many of Connie Willis’s best works require some patience, because they start with and may stay with the kind of chaotic events of daily life that we think are unimportant time-wasters that prevent our “real” lives, the parts that matter, from being better. Stick it out. Even as you feel frustrated at the unnecessary delays and backtracks and wasted time and just want to scream at her to get to the story already! Because she is a master of her craft. No tiny detail is unnecessary. Nothing is. Nothing is wasted or pointless. It is all real life. And by the time the tiny details and repetitions chase themselves around and around and begin to resolve into the point, the story - well. As always, she leaves me genuinely awestruck. Truly a subtle story well worth winning every award out there!

Chaos that resolved

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This is classic Willis, but it steps into some different territory. It's a grand read. Enjoy!

Love Willis' books

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