Listen to the Child

By: Elizabeth Howard

Narrated by: Laura Pierson

Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

London's East End heaves with child prostitutes, hawkers, beggars, and thieves. A solution is offered that sounds perfect - Canadian farmers need workers, their wives want housemaids. Shipping children to this land of plenty offers them a future. Widow Mary Trupper is wary, but the promise of a good life for her children is strong.

©2016 Yvonne Barlow (P)2019 Hookline Books

What hardships

This is the first book I’ve read/listened to by this author. It touches on a subject not often spoken about. Of course, not all children went to neglectful homes, but nonetheless the pioneer life was a very difficult one and very different from where they came from. I could not imagine how lost and alone, helpless and unheard they must have felt.
Miss Constance (a religious, young woman who helps with an orphanage) devises a plan to send children to Canada in hopes of a better life and family. She is well intentioned, but has little perspective concerning the reality of what life will be like for these kids. Eventually, she starts to convince poor families to send their children as well. This book follows the stories of several children, and the hardships and loss they endure. Although they are fictional, the experiences are not.

At the end is a reference to books about some real children and what happened to them after they arrived in Canada.

This is the first book I’ve listened to by this narrator ( Laura Pierson ) and I would try another. She did okay narrating, but her style needs polishing. It’s obvious you’re being read to, there is not much differentiation in the way she portrayed the characters speaking styles or emotion. I did not however find it so distracting that I needed to stop listening.

There are no explicit sex scenes, excessive violence or swearing.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review.
Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.

Story 4/5
Narration 3/5

Beautifully written

Such a sad tale of a terribly hard life! The storyline kept my interest the entire time. I look forward to more books by this author.

Didn't get past the second chapter.

The narration is so bad, I couldn't stand it and turned it off. The story might be good, I don't know, maybe I'll read it sometime. The story is set in London, with typical British sayings but narrated by an American and the narrator does not read with the correct intonation or feel for what is happening. I listen to a lot of books, and I can tell you, the narration of this one is very annoying.