The Last Enchantments, Charles Finch
The Last Enchantments, Charles Finch
1 Rating(s)
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The Last Enchantments
A Novel

Author: Charles Finch

Narrator: Luke Daniels

Unabridged: 10 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/28/2014


Synopsis

The Last Enchantments is a powerfully moving and lyrically written novel. A young American embarks on a year at Oxford and has an impassioned affair that will change his life forever

After graduating from Yale, William Baker, scion of an old line patrician family, goes to work in presidential politics. But when the campaign into which he's poured his heart ends in disappointment, he decides to leave New York behind, along with the devoted, ambitious, and well-connected woman he's been in love with for the last four years.

Will expects nothing more than a year off before resuming the comfortable life he's always known, but he's soon caught up in a whirlwind of unexpected friendships and romantic entanglements that threaten his safe plans. As he explores the heady social world of Oxford, he becomes fast friends with Tom, his snobbish but affable flat mate; Anil, an Indian economist with a deep love for gangster rap; Anneliese, a German historian obsessed with photography; and Timmo, whose chief ambition is to become a reality television star. What he's least prepared for is Sophie, a witty, beautiful and enigmatic woman who makes him question everything he knows about himself.

For readers who made a classic of Richard Yates's A Good School, Charles Finch's The Last Enchantments is a sweeping novel about love and loss that redefines what it means to grow up as an American in the twenty-first century.

About Charles Finch

Charles Finch is a novelist and literary critic, author of the beloved Charles Lenox mysteries, following one of the earliest private detective in Victorian London. The books have appeared multiple times on the USA Today bestseller list. He has written numerous essays, articles, and reviews for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Slate, New York, and The Guardian, and was honored with the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle. He subsequently served on the NBCC’s board, and has also been a board member of the arts colony Ragdale and was one of three judges for the 2021 Pen-Faulkner Prize. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Charles

I wrote this, so...totally unbiased.......more

Goodreads review by Malia

I didn't know what I would make this book, as I am quite fond of Charles Finch's Lenox series, a character I have, as I rarely do, adopted into my fictional family circle along the lines of 'good old uncle Charlie'. The LAST ENCHANTMENTS is unquestionable different, which is not to say it is less en......more

Goodreads review by Cherie

I decided that I wanted to read this book because I liked the Charles Lennox mysteries that this author writes and I was curious about this book. I requested an audio version of the book from my Library. I started listening to the audio, narrated by Luke Daniels. After listening to the first two CDs......more


Quotes

“Reader Luke Daniels gets all the accents right and makes these last youthful enchantments compellingly real.” —Book Page

“Oxford is vividly described in Finch's realistic portrayal of a year abroad. Luke Daniels effectively captures Will's voice and those of his cohorts. The first person narrative is a good fit for this audiobook.” —Library Journal

“Daniels expresses the attraction between Baker and lover Sophie through emotionally charged dialogue, but in the end, true passion is heard as Daniels voices Baker's love of language and the idyllic enchantment of Oxford.” —Booklist

“Compelling. . . . William Baker's voice, vividly established in the opening line, is the most striking of this novel's many virtues.” —Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena

“Irresistible . . . The novel bursts with intelligence and wit as Charles Finch brilliantly examines our most secret longings and desires. . . . The Last Enchantments casts an enduring spell. ” —Amber Dermont, author of The Starboard Sea

“A witty, wonderful book about that tender age between college and true adulthood. Charles Finch's sensitive, lyrical and heartfelt writing charms to the very last page.” —Cristina Alger, author of The Darlings

“Intense, fast-paced, psychologically intriguing, and wonderfully written, Will finds not only Sophie, the complicated, captivating woman who takes his heart and an unsettling group of friends, but over the course of a disturbing and entertaining year, he finds himself in surprising ways.” —Susan Richards Shreve, author of You Are the Love of my Life