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Akin cover art

Akin

By: Emma Donoghue
Narrated by: Jason Culp
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Summary

Akin is a tender tale of love, loss and family, from Emma Donoghue, the international best-selling author of Room.

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his 11-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France. 

This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael's sharp eye and ease with tech help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, both come to grasp the risks that loved ones take for one another and find they are more akin than they knew. 

Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room a huge best seller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a young boy who unpick their painful stories and embark on writing a new one together.

©2019 Emma Donoghue (P)2019 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd

What listeners say about Akin

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Funny book with a different storyline

I really enjoyed this book a different slant on the usual present day harking back to ww2. The addition of the mouthy kid provided humour and a balance to the much older mans perspective. Would def recommend.

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5 people found this helpful

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Wonderfully Narrated

Wonderful story, brought to life by the wonderful narrator. My book club pick and one of my favorites so far this year.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Stick with it

It took me a while to get into this book. i was disappointed initially because i didn't think it was as engaging as Room or Frog Music, which i loved. As the story progresses, however I found i was drawn into it and really enjoyed it. I particularly liked the way she described Nice with all its beauty and all its shabbiness, tourist tat and dog dirt. The main character, Noah undergoes a fairly predictable, but none the less lovely, transformation in the course of his week.
The narrator is good and switches convincingly between a tired, 80 year old man and an 11 year old boy.

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1 person found this helpful

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Too much information!


Elderly widower and French-born American Noah, a retired scientist and academic, has his never-before-met teenage great nephew Michael foisted upon him out of the blue. Noah has no option but to take Michael with him on the trip to Nice, the place of his birth, which he had already planned.

It’s a great novel in many ways. Emma Donaghue is excellent at creating realistic time capsules in minute detail, and she obviously does a huge amount of research to do so. The setting of Nice, right now and during its fraught history, scientific facts and experiments, and the history of photography are just some of the topics explored in depth. The convoluted mind of this American academic and the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his culture and that of rough, tough-but-damaged and vulnerable Michael is expertly conveyed throughout in two different languages of English.

The novel is also partly a touching and optimistic fable with the old man and the troubled boy finally recognising something ‘akin’ between them.

BUT Donaghue needed to have edited out a great deal of all her research. I frequently felt as overwhelmed as Michael by Noah’s bombardment of background history, references to great works, Jewish history, history of art, French axioms etc et. I delight in extending my mind, but this is a novel, not a treatise. Donaghue needed to have been much more selective and to have reminded herself that Noah is a human being and not a vehicle for displaying her findings.

SO, for me, an excellent novel spoiled by undisciplined employment of research.

Appropriately the narration is American – – and Jason Culp is a sensitive reader. He has a careful go at all the French language in the story, but Noah’s first language is French . He would have spoken French as a Frenchman and not as an American, and the difference can grate.

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Stunning

Didn’t want it to end - refreshing, interesting, heart wrenching at times, great characterisation & wonderful narration.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing

I’ve had this in my wish list for over a year and was looking forward to it. I did finish it so it wasn’t completely awful but the characters were pretty painful and historical incidences seemed shoehorned in.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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captivated by the story across generations

I found myself totally captivated by Noah and Michael as they learned how to be family.
definitely one of Ms Donohue's best. personally I far prefer her writing when it is set in contemporary times rather than her historical fiction. she writes the characters well and they are easy to identify with.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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Painful don’t waste your time

Was hoping for more , no real depth in it . Waste of time , I kept thinking it would get better but sadly no. Really struggled to finish it.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Moving and gripping

While the ending is a little bit predictable, the arc of the narrative is wonderful. At times, the protagonist is unfuriatingly dim, bur he has such humanity and humour...I really enjoyed this.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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A very different book

Lovely to listen to a very different, and original, story. Well narrated and characterised, the story held ones interest throughout. With some historical interest included, Akin, like Room, holds the listener throughout. Thought provoking, tender, and humorous throughout.

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