The Guest Book

A Novel

By: Sarah Blake

Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy

Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year

"Orlagh Cassidy narrates Blake's beautifully written multigenerational story of love and lies with consummate skill. Elegant and clear, distant yet passionate, she helps listeners discover the quirks in characters' personalities and explore their motives, both evident and hidden." —AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

“Sarah Blake is such a beautiful writer she can make any world shimmer." (Paula McLain, New York Times best-selling author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin)

The thought-provoking new audiobook by New York Times best-selling author Sarah Blake

A lifetime of secrets. A history untold.

No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are both from families considered the backbone of the country. But this refusal will come to be Kitty’s defining moment, and its consequences will ripple through the Milton family for generations. For while they summer on their island in Maine, anchored as they are to the way things have always been, the winds of change are beginning to stir.

In 1959 New York City, two strangers enter the Miltons’ circle. One captures the attention of Kitty’s daughter while the other makes each of them question what the family stands for. This new generation insists the times are changing. And in one night, everything does.

So much so that in the present day, the third generation of Miltons doesn’t have enough money to keep the island in Maine. Evie Milton’s mother has just died, and as Evie digs into her mother’s and grandparents’ history, what she finds is a story as unsettling as it is inescapable, the story that threatens the foundation of the Milton family myth.

Moving through three generations and back and forth in time, The Guest Book asks how we remember and what we choose to forget. It shows the untold secrets we inherit and pass on, unknowingly echoing our parents and grandparents. Sarah Blake’s triumphant novel tells the story of a family and a country that buries its past in quiet, until the present calls forth a reckoning.

©2019 Sarah Blake (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Sarah Blake has managed the extraordinary feat of writing both an intimate family saga and an ambitious excavation of the subterranean currents of race, class, and power that have shaped America. This is a vivid, transporting novel, written by a master conjurer of time and place.” (Jessica Shattuck, New York Times best-selling author of The Women in the Castle)

Narration was magical. The story had depth

The narration, Orlagh Cassidy, Hawaii enjoy hearing audible books from was so mellifluous and graceful and elegant reading so many varied voices in this particular book. I think for me this was the best part. The story while it could feel trait about a very wealthy family wound up being much deeper than I anticipated. I did have a little bit of trouble jumping from generation to generationBut by the end I had sorted it all out. A beautiful And heartbreaking story. Read beautifully

Engrossing family drama, multi generational, with heart rending secrets, love, kindness, and betrayal.

This very well plotted, well told story was a pleasure to read. The narration, however, suffered from periodic mispronunciations, and as a grammarian and English teacher I found this distressing. It probably won’t bother others. As someone who has “summered” in an island cottage for 36 years, I understood the way such a setting is a character in its own right. Well done!

Reading

I was captivated by the novel but really frustrated by the sound of the reader. She has a tendency to drop her voice to a barely hearable level when reading some of the female characters, especially the main character, Kitty. Left me major annoyed and looking forward to writing this review.

Slow

Very slow moving.I had a hard time staying interested,it didn’t get interesting until chapter 25

Entrancing story

The overall story was written very well. Multiple flashbacks, which have great detail but Sometimes I would get confused when it was taking place. Stories would overlap and couldn’t tell which era the story was in. The ending was a left to be desired. The story kind of wrapped up but wasn’t straight forward. Had to read between the lines. The narrator read very well, but some of her characters were hard to tell apart. This wasn’t a waste of a credit would have been harder to read this story than listen to it.

Incredible story by my favorite narrator.

This story was of generations beginning in the 1930’s thru many years ahead . It goes back and forth within the family and I couldn’t stop listening into the wee morning hours. A great book but much due to the great reader. Highly recommend this book.

Nice writing, unsurprising story

My main issue with the book is that all of the characters are such stereotypes, The book puts everyone in a box and the characters do exactly as expected. Overall I didn't love it.

beautiful

One of the best books I've read, and listened to. Loved her turn of phrase.

Doesn’t cut it

The reader performed the book as if she were reading a bodice buster romance novel. The author, who is trying for something more serious, lapses into cliché, stereotype, and implausibility in the service of trying to, apparently, write a deep novel about the naïveté of WASPs. The characters do things that those characters wouldn’t do and the whole thing falls apart in a way that was not intended. There are many better books, skip this one.

It slowly evolves into "Who cares"

So much plot. So many subplots. Skips through time. It should be riveting but ultimately the class collision loses any of its relevance and you just see the protagonist as kind of ridiculous. I lost my way and didn't finish after almost the whole book. The island? Who owns it? Who cares?