Amherst

Name: Amherst
Brand: Dreamscape Media
Availability: InStock
Author: William Nicholson
ISBN: 9781633796980

Author: William Nicholson

Narrator: Lesa Lockford and Justine Eyre

Unabridged: 7 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Published: 02/10/2015

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Alice Dickinson, a young advertising executive in London, decides to take time off work to research her idea for a screenplay: the true story of the scandalous, adulterous love affair that took place between a young, Amherst college faculty wife, Mabel Loomis Todd, and the college's treasurer, Austin Dickinson, in the 1880s. Austin, twenty-four years Mabel's senior and married, was the brother of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, whose house provided the setting for Austin and Mabel's trysts. Alice travels to Amherst, staying in the house of Nick Crocker, a married English academic in his fifties. As Alice researches Austin and Mabel's story and Emily's role in their affair, she embarks on her own affair with Nick, an affair that, of course, they both know echoes the affair that she's writing about in her screenplay.

About William Nicholson

William Nicholson is a screenwriter, playwright, television writer, and novelist. In addition to his Academy Award–nominated screenplays for Shadowlands and Gladiator, he is the author of Motherland; several young adult and fantasy novels; and a sequence of contemporary adult novels set in England. He lives in Sussex, England.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M is taking a break.

One of the things that appealed to me about this book was the chance to get reacquainted with some of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, which I hadn’t read since college. Some of her poems are strategically placed within the story and I certainly was in awe again as the historical parts unfolded, and w......more

Goodreads review by Magdalena aka A Bookaholic Swede

In this book we get to meet Alice Dickinson (no relation to Emily Dickinson) as she travels to Amherst to do some research for a screenplay about Austin Dickinson (Emily Dickinson brother) and Maud Todd's illicit love affair. Paralleled to this story, we also get to follow Austin and Maud falling in......more

Goodreads review by MaryannC Victorian Dreamer

I so badly wanted to like this but I just couldn't stay with it. I liked the history of David and Mabel Todd and Austin Dickinson but the parallel love story of Alice and Nick just wasn't grabbing me. Maybe it was because Mr. Womanizer Nick decided he could fall in love after all and Maybe I just di......more