The Blue Hour

A Novel

By: Laura Pritchett

Narrated by: Robert Fass, Nicol Zanzarella, Carol Monda, Richard Powers, Amy Landon, Donald Corren, P. J. Ochlan

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

The tight-knit residents of Blue Moon Mountain, nestled high in the Colorado Mountains, form an interconnected community of those living off the land, stunned by the beauty and isolation all around them. So when, at the onset of winter, the town veterinarian commits a violent act, the repercussions of that tragedy will be felt all across the mountainside, upending their lives and causing their paths to twist and collide in unexpected ways.

The housecleaner rediscovering her sexual appetite, the farrier who must take in his traumatized niece, the grocer and her daughter, the therapist and the teacher reaching out to the world in new and surprising ways, and the ragged couple trapped in a cycle of addiction and violence. They will all rise and converge upon the blue hour - the l'heure bleu - the hour of twilight, a time of desire, lust, honesty. The strong, spirited people of Blue Moon Mountain must learn to navigate the line between violence and sex, tenderness and the hard edge of yearning, and the often confusing paths of mourning and lust.

Writing with passion for rural lives and the natural world, Laura Pritchett, who has been called "one of the most accomplished writers of the American West", graces the land of desire in vivid prose, exploring the lengths these moving, deeply felt characters - some of whom we've met in Pritchett's previous work - will traverse to protect their own.

Full cast of narrators includes Suzanne Toren, Emily Sutton-Smith, Suzanne Elise Freeman, Andrew Eiden, Traber Burns, Tanya Eby, Elisabeth Rodgers, Emily Woo Zeller, P. J. Ochlan, and Mark Bramhall.

©2017 Laura Pritchett (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Beautiful Stories

What did you love best about The Blue Hour?

This is a collection of stories about the winter of people's lives, a time when things are cold and unknown. There's poetry in Pritchett's writing and a sense that beauty coexists with ugliness.

What did you like best about this story?

I loved that THE BLUE HOUR explores love (and the lack of it), loss, and the fragility of the human psyche.

Which scene was your favorite?

There's no real scene really...but the narrators are amazing. The narrators are so perfectly cast that it seems like they're telling you stories from their heart and not the page.

If you could rename The Blue Hour, what would you call it?

It's the perfect title.

Any additional comments?

Stories can be listened to independently, but as a whole it creates a tableau of a community. (I also discovered some new-to-me narrators by listening.)

Disappointed. I could not finish the book.

45 minutes is all l could tolerate. from the reviews l thought it would be a good book. Wrong

If I listen to it again I can leave a review.

I think that overall it's easy to get the idea mixed up throughout each chapter that there's an "hour of twilight" for every character in the book. I don't see how they could have each had the same feeling of epiphany where their stories get seriously mixed up. I think it's more like the hour of confusion, it's got more depth when you pause the chapter every ten minutes to reflect.