Learned by Heart
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Learned by Heart
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Narrated by:
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Shiromi Arserio
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By:
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Emma Donoghue
About this listen
The heartbreaking story of the love of two women – Anne Lister, the real-life inspiration behind Gentleman Jack, and her first love, Eliza Raine – from the bestselling author of Room and The Wonder.
'A rich and spellbinding 19th-century story of forbidden love' – The Independent
'Donoghue evokes a relationship that is convincing and exquisitely touching' – The Guardian
In 1805, at a boarding school in York, two fourteen-year-old girls first meet.
Eliza Raine, the orphan daughter of an Indian mother, keeps herself apart from the other girls, tired of being picked out for being different. Anne Lister, a gifted troublemaker, is determined to conquer the world, refusing to bow to society’s expectations of what a woman can do.
As they fall in love, the connection they forge will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
Full of passion and heartbreak, evocative and wholly unique, Learned by Heart is a beautiful and moving historical novel from acclaimed author Emma Donoghue.
Shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Prize
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What listeners say about Learned by Heart
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rachel Redford
- 25-02-24
Very, very real
I loved this and I’m glad that I never saw Gentleman Jack on television. It was enough for me to know that a real life story inspired Learned by Heart without being distracted by comparing Donahue’s fictional interpretation with the ‘real life’ details.
Born in Madras, Eliza Raine is the unwanted illegitimate and orphaned daughter of an English father and an Indian mother, shipped out of the way to England to attend an early eighteenth century girls’ boarding school in York. Fellow pupil Anne Lister is everything that Eliza is not: flamboyant, rebellious, dare devil and fabulously clever and well informed. I loved her torrents of knowledge harvested from her life of reading which so impressed Eliza but infuriated her teachers and earned her the loathing of the other girls.
Donahue is so good at confined worlds and historical settings. Here the microcosm of the school with all its rules and conventions is generously detailed and astonishingly real, and the deep bond which grows between the two 14 year-old girls is portrayed with tenderness Their lovemaking in their isolated sleeping quarters is particularly powerful and yet also delicate.
The girls’ dream of living as husband and wife in Italy once they had escaped the confines of school would obviously never be realised. The inevitable tragic denouement with Eliza later incarcerated in an asylum is portrayed in her deeply affecting diary entries and the letters Eliza writes - but never sends – to Lister, the one true love of her life who had by then callously moved on to new pastures.
The narration is excellent – dramatic when required, and gentle and sensitive for the narrative voice as well as the internal and spoken dialogue.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- KLD
- 14-09-23
A beautiful glimpse into the history of Raine & Lister
“Never one I loved before ye,
ne’er thy like shall see again”
Delicately crafted, researched and painfully painted. I have a solid background of
Their tender love was the beginning of the breaking of Eliza and the making of Lister. Eliza’s character is so beguiling and even it can certainly be said almost as intriguing a person as Lister. The depth of her voice shines through the past by Emma Donoghue’s expert imagination. Left me wanting to know more of Eliza, perhaps with the further uncovering and deciphering of Lister’s diaries will bring forth more of such insights.
“Love kills time, time kills love”
The Shakespearean alignment of As You Like It was a masterful piece of literary comparison.
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