Narrow Margins

De: Marie Browne

Narrado por: Lucy Scott

Narrow Margins is the true story of one family's journey from the financial crash of the Rover car company to an alternative and better lifestyle. Faced with the loss of everything - the house, the cars, and more importantly, their rather lazy and indolent lifestyle - Marie Browne and her family took on the challenge of a whole new way of life.

Strapped for cash, the family buy a decrepit 70ft barge called Happy Go Lucky which had been run as a floating hotel. Outdated and in need of a complete refurbishment, Happy becomes their floating home. First they need to learn the ropes and many pitfalls beset their adventures. As they come to terms with living on a narrow boat, listeners gain a fascinating insight into life in the slow lane.

Marie Browne is a gently harassed mother of three who, for the past 15 years, has been desperately trying to escape the Customer Service Industry. Apart from her husband and kids, the best things in her life are real ale; barbecues; ugly mad dogs that nobody else wants and cream-covered designer coffees. She also has an obsession with shoes, but her husband is threatening to get her help for that.

©2009 Marie Browne (P)2012 Audible Ltd

lazy day boat book

Rather uninteresting, yet endearing. Excellent narration, the story itself is rather un-spicy. The book gets better late middle through the end, and ends abruptly. The narration goes overboard with uninteresting boating foibles, and unfortunately the protagonist is presented as a incompetent ninny for much of the book. (Surprising due to the author being female.)

I can't say I enjoyed this book

though there was nothing "wrong" with it either - just sort of ... there. Her family and friends never really came alive to me, so the tales of school and custody, etc. didn't mean much, while the more slapstick elements of mishaps onboard sometimes struck me as "guess you had to be there" being highly visual (or olfactory in the case of the septic troubles). The story was well written, and filled time, but I doubt I'd be interested in the planned sequel about their new boat. Narration was good, so probably better heard than read.