The Hired Man, Aminatta Forna
The Hired Man, Aminatta Forna
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The Hired Man

Author: Aminatta Forna

Narrator: Mark Ledbetter

Unabridged: 9 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/01/2013


Synopsis

The new novel from the winner of the Commonwealth Writer' s Prize, The Hired Man is a taut, powerful novel of a small town and its dark wartime secrets, unwittingly brought into the light by a family of outsiders. Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of our most perceptive and uncompromising chroniclers of war and the way it reverberates, sometimes imperceptibly, in the daily lives of those touched by it. With The Hired Man, she has delivered a tale of a Croatian village after the War of Independence, and a family of newcomers who expose its secrets. Duro is off on a morning' s hunt when he sees something one rarely does in Gost: a strange car. Later that day, he overhears its occupants, a British woman, Laura, and her two children, who have taken up residence in a house Duro knows well. He offers his assistance getting their water working again, and soon he is at the house every day, helping get it ready as their summer cottage, and serving as Laura' s trusted confidant. But the other residents of Gost are not as pleased to have the interlopers, and as Duro and Laura' s daughter Grace uncover and begin to restore a mosaic in the front that has been plastered over, Duro must be increasingly creative to shield the family from the town' s hostility, and his own past with the house' s former occupants. As the inhabitants of Gost go about their days, working, striving to better themselves and their town, and arguing, the town' s volatile truths whisper ever louder. A masterpiece of storytelling haunted by lost love and a restrained menace, this novel recalls Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Anil' s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. The Hired Man confirms Aminatta Forna as one of our most important writers.

Reviews

Goodreads review by RJ

The book has been well summarized in numerous reviews here, but I wanted to add a response to some reviewers who feel that this book doesn't adequately address the atrocities of the Balkan wars, and that the narrator doesn't specify the political details, or who was killing whom. The author manages......more

Goodreads review by Roger

Now, here's a thing, a British woman writer of Sierra Leone extraction writing a novel from the point of view of a Croatian man living in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of recent history. And doing it oh so very well. This book will pull you in. Into the man who leads a limited, disciplined, rusti......more

Goodreads review by Britta

A beautiful book about how the Yugoslav Wars affected (and still affect) a small Croatian village. Shown very quietly and without any 'special effects'. Highly recommended! 4,5*......more