This Must Be the Place

By: Maggie O'Farrell

Narrated by: Graham Rowat, Saskia Maarleveld

Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

The dazzling new novel from best-selling, award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell, This Must Be the Place crosses time zones and continents to reveal an extraordinary portrait of a marriage.

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California; a father he loathes in Brooklyn; and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway. He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with 20 years ago, and this discovery will send him off course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?

This Must Be the Place crosses continents and time zones, giving voice to a diverse and complex cast of characters. At its heart it is an extraordinary portrait of a marriage, the forces that hold it together, and the pressures that drive it apart. Maggie O'Farrell's seventh novel is a dazzling, intimate epic about who we leave behind and who we become as we search for our place in the world.

©2016 Maggie O'Farrell (P)2016 Recorded Books

A good story spoiled

What made the experience of listening to This Must Be the Place the most enjoyable?

Maggie Farrell's skilful building of a story and its changes of time and place.

What was one of the most memorable moments of This Must Be the Place?

Bitter-sweet moments when the protagonists were stopped in their tracks by a memory.

What didn’t you like about Graham Rowat and Saskia Maarleveld ’s performance?

I find it intensely irritating when narrators can't pronounce quite simple foreign words properly. SK is clearly neither British nor American and I think one of either of those nationalities would have been better. 'Maman' and so many other instances of mispoken words.This really spoiled my enjoyment of a good story, my attention often being taken by irritating narration.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me sad for all the chararcters who seemed so lost most of the time.

Any additional comments?

I wish that Maggie Farrell would lose her maddening habit of making long lists of words, sometimes describing the same thing. Perhaps this is her signature?

the sound is so bad I couldn't

I stopped for a refund immediately. I am so sad since this would have been my 4th book by this author.

Wonderful book

I truly enjoyed this - and loved the female narrator. Something about the male narrator's reading voice very much annoyed me, though, which is why I can only award three stars for performance.

Solid book

Solid book. Good story, good reader. The story is a little hard to follow time-wise, especially with all the POV and character changes, but I suspect that's an audiobook thing rather than a problem with the book itself. Give it time and it makes sense. I would definitely recommend.
Trigger warning: Eating disorder.

Great writing, weak story

I was drawn into this book by the rich language. But ended up feeling the book is not much more than a vehicle for O’Farrell’s writing. Premise of the story is weak, implausible. Come on, really?

The back and forth on dates and generations was tricky - might have been easier to follow if reading rather than listening. Performance of readers was uneven.

Do not recommend.

Fabulous story

I loved the story.
The only thing I didn’t like was the male narrator’s voice.
Very original in plot as are all of this author’s works!

Some narration problems but Maggie O’Farrell is worth it

Wandering story, and I almost stopped listening because of too fast-paced SM narration (wch I hot used to, she’s great) and wholly miscast GR voice for Daniel (inflection and cavalier tone drove me crazy). SM did a far better job speaking as Daniel and it would have been a better listening experience with just her as narrator. .

Ugh!

Definitely not one of my favorites. Apparently this was a comedy. There were far too many useless characters and the back and forth of time lines was a bit much. I was bored to tears.
It just wasn't for me. Don't let my opinion deter you away giving this book a listen or a read. Its just not my style, I suppose.

this must be the place

very good. but its 400 pages long so its 30 chapters and 14 hours of listening. even though like a book I did not want to stop listening and stayed up late to finish it. which of course I didn't. but if not paying attention closely you can get confused because the author jumps from past history of the characters to the present hence why 400 hundred pages. still a good book

A broad expanse of everyday, every man

So many well developed characters in so many storylines! I’m amazed how well it all fit together as a book, being easy to follow the diverse and interesting life adventures.