The Guest Book: A Novel

Written by:
Sarah Blake
Narrated by:
Orlagh Cassidy

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
41
Narrator
11
Release Date
May 2019
Duration
17 hours 16 minutes
Summary
'Orlagh Cassidy narrates Blake's beautifully written multigenerational story of love and lies with consummate skill. Elegant and clear, distant yet passionate, she helps listeners discover the quirks in characters' personalities and explore their motives, both evident and hidden.' — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

The thought-provoking new audiobook by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake

A lifetime of secrets. A history untold.

No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are both from families considered the backbone of the country. But this refusal will come to be Kitty’s defining moment, and its consequences will ripple through the Milton family for generations. For while they summer on their island in Maine, anchored as they are to the way things have always been, the winds of change are beginning to stir.

In 1959 New York City, two strangers enter the Miltons’ circle. One captures the attention of Kitty’s daughter, while the other makes each of them question what the family stands for. This new generation insists the times are changing. And in one night, everything does.

So much so that in the present day, the third generation of Miltons doesn’t have enough money to keep the island in Maine. Evie Milton’s mother has just died, and as Evie digs into her mother’s and grandparents’ history, what she finds is a story as unsettling as it is inescapable, the story that threatens the foundation of the Milton family myth.

Moving through three generations and back and forth in time, The Guest Book asks how we remember and what we choose to forget. It shows the untold secrets we inherit and pass on, unknowingly echoing our parents and grandparents. Sarah Blake’s triumphant novel tells the story of a family and a country that buries its past in quiet, until the present calls forth a reckoning.

“Sarah Blake is such a beautiful writer she can make any world shimmer.' — Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin
Reviews
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Gail R.

I selected this book because my family spent summers in Maine and we still feel a special tie to the lake and camp we no longer own. However...this book needs a lot more editing! It was overly long, more detailed about things (e.g. how a character’s clothing was arranged for the next day) rather about the characters of the characters! The people were stick-figuresque, did not evolve in any way, and the movements back and forth in time did not do anything but taunt the reader/listener into thinking perhaps something of substance would finally be revealed....and so I kept waiting. For naught. I will never invest in a 16 hour listen again without recommendations from my personal friends. The narrator has a nice voice but I frequently had to adjust the volume to catch what she was saying (perhaps a production problem). My FB friends have already received my even more frank assessment of this book.

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Ingrid

Excellent story, beautifully written and artfully interwoven between three generations of a family. Highly recommended!

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Kate M.

Oh, my. This is a NYT best seller? Along with James Patterson drivel.

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