Scaffolding
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Scaffolding
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Narrated by:
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Lauren Elkin
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By:
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Lauren Elkin
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart.
In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses.
Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…
Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space.
A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we’ve known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who’ve lived in them and the stories that have been told there.
Critic reviews
'Scaffolding is ingenious and febrile, delving into the intimacy and implacability of those awakening connections that layer, echoing, throughout our lives - doing so in ways that feel all at once vital, playful, profoundly moving. It’s a beautifully fluid meditation on what is at stake, and who we become, when we desire.' (Sophie Mackintosh)
What listeners say about Scaffolding
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Paul du Lac
- 06-09-24
Fresh and thought provoking
Rich story of human relationships across time. As a guy, found the insights interesting.
Enjoyed the narrator’s voice, but found the character (first person) switches difficult to follow initially as delivered in the same tonal range. Became easier as I got accustomed to it.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Gerard
- 26-07-24
Fairly good, though not memorable
Cleverly written and with some kind of message about relationships. I’m not sure what the message was. Something about free love (real free love, not the stuff they did in the sixties). I suppose that isn’t new but it is expressed in a self-consciously clever manner, rather as a young undergraduate might on first reading Lacan and supposing their generation the first to discover sex. Apiece with the zeitgeist up to a point, narrow and short on intersectionality perhaps.
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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
- Joanna H.
- 07-09-24
Compelling, thought provoking and intelligent
Loved both the narrative and the narration. Intriguing use of place, with events based largely in a single apartment. Thought provoking ideas, cleverly placed in a compelling story of relationships.
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1 person found this helpful
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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
- HelenJ
- 03-08-24
Makes you think
Deep book that makes you think about your own life story. I really enjoyed the delve into psychoanalysis and revisiting Lacan after many years. There are quotes from this book that will stay with me, especially in relation to adultery. Interesting and dark at times. A good book for arties too. I’ll listen again.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Lestón
- 16-07-24
Unusual philosophical story
Compelling story, vivid depiction of physial places and feelings, and lots of food for thought. Engaging characters and interesting to read about the philosophy of desire and infidelity. Very relevant themes and musings around patriarchy and female oppression. Slightly disorienting as part two had different characters narrating different sections and they were only separated by the merest pause so you had to figure out who was talking as you went along. The narrator (the author)'s dry, downbeat delivery went well with the story and I enjoyed the French references, though much was untranslated. I deducted a star as the audiobook had a couple of glitches unfortunately - words cut off / skipped sentences.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Nomenclature
- 06-08-24
Pretentious and confusing
The narrative is so confusing… perhaps less so as text but I’m listening via audiobook and it’s a challenge at best to follow which character is speaking. The text is overwhelmed by theory… as if written by an excited but not too bright under-grad. Yep, you’ve read trauma theory, yep, you’ve read psychoanalytic theory… you know your history… but can you sneak that into the story without weighing it down? Nope.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- AngieC
- 18-07-24
Not for me
Didn’t make it to the end of this one. Characters were unlikeable and seemed quite vacuous and privileged. The storyline was quite dull
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