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The Night Child
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
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The Night Child
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Summary
Exquisitely nuanced and profoundly intimate, The Night Child is a story of resilience, hope, and the capacity of the mind, body, and spirit to save itself despite all odds.
Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl’s face appears above the students’ desks—“a wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been. Terror rushes through Nora’s body—the kind of raw terror you feel when there’s no way out, when every cell in your body, your entire body, is on fire—when you think you might die.”
Twenty-four hours later, while on Thanksgiving vacation, the face appears again. Shaken and unsteady, Nora meets with neurologists and eventually, a psychiatrist. As the story progresses, a terrible secret is discovered—a secret that pushes Nora toward an even deeper psychological breakdown.
This breathtaking debut novel examines the impact of traumatic childhood experiences and the fragile line between past and present.
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What listeners say about The Night Child
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Deborah
- 19-11-21
insightful
This story (although heavily dramatised!) will have helpful analogies for readers who are victims of past abuse. Interesting rather than entertaining
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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
- MissyG
- 22-12-23
This is beautifully written
This is a beautifully written story but so sorrowful and sad . An illustration of the trauma left within a young woman from CSA .
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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
- gabby
- 28-01-22
Fantastic story
I loved this story. It kept me interested throughout. I would recommend to anyone.
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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
- Karen
- 14-02-22
Harrowing Tale of Child Abuse
Told through the therapy of the adult woman coming to terms with her father's abuse.
She can't even beleive it herself untill bit by bit her memory returns and the resulting torment drives her mad.
wonderfully read the childs inner voice piercing and woeful.
Hard to listen to and even harder to finish but I won't forget this in a hurry.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- donna coleman
- 27-03-23
Didn’t really want to read a book on child abuse
But this ended up being what the story was about and it was an interesting perspective, I think I learned a bit about ptsd and how abuse survivors may/may not process what has happened to them but had I known the content, I would have left this one alone.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Bevvers
- 25-08-23
Hard going but eventually worth it.
*There should be a warning for descriptions of child sexual abuse in this book, it will be very triggering to some*
I so very nearly gave up on this!
I found it very hard to get into & got as far as writing a review based on only being able to get to chapter 8, but I came back to it another day & started again.
It wasn’t easy going (subject matter, the narrator & probably also the way it’s written) but once I got into it, I found myself enjoying it.
I agree it shouldn’t be so hard to ‘get into’ a book, & the repetition of words & phrases really got on my nerves – I don’t think it added anything to the story at all, it just became grating. I get that Margaret was traumatised, but we didn’t need to hear her counting to ten FIVE times, or to hear the phone’s ringing actually being voiced ‘Brrrrring brrrring brrring’.
The Irish accents were particularly terrible & the over dramatic voices weren’t endearing – but they were supposed to be traumatised people so…
That said, I can see why it’s written the way it is. It is essentially going through therapy with Nora / Margaret, & really does a good job of highlighting how much damage child abuse causes & how we can disassociate from traumatic events.
I’m glad I listened to it but there’s no doubt that this isn’t a book you can just pick up & fall into.
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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
- hellojoanie
- 25-07-22
An amazing first novel
This book gripped me from the first chapter. The narration was good, the characters came to life.
The pain, the edginess, the rawness came through clearly. This is a book filled with trauma but it is also a story of triumph, of love and hope.
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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
- Amazon Customer
- 24-06-23
Enjoyed this book
At times i found the subject difficult to heat. A bery raw heart breaking story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jane
- 04-08-22
Beautiful book
So sad but well written, fantastic narrator loved the whole concept of the story
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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
- Lisa Garrard
- 08-04-22
A Distressing Story
Oh my goodness what a difficult story to listen to. So sad, yet shines a light on the damage done at such a young age, which lasts a lifetime. Well written and well told.
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