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    Amherst
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    Amherst
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    Amherst
    Audiobook7 hours

    Amherst

    Written by William Nicholson

    Narrated by Lesa Lockford and Justine Eyre

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Alice Dickinson, a young advertising executive in London, decides to take time off work to research her idea for a screenplay: the true story of the scandalous, adulterous love affair that took place between a young, Amherst college faculty wife, Mabel Loomis Todd, and the college's treasurer, Austin Dickinson, in the 1880s. Austin, twenty-four years Mabel's senior and married, was the brother of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, whose house provided the setting for Austin and Mabel's trysts. Alice travels to Amherst, staying in the house of Nick Crocker, a married English academic in his fifties. As Alice researches Austin and Mabel's story and Emily's role in their affair, she embarks on her own affair with Nick, an affair that, of course, they both know echoes the affair that she's writing about in her screenplay.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateFeb 10, 2015
    ISBN9781633796980
    Unavailable
    Amherst
    Author

    William Nicholson

    WILLIAM NICHOLSON is the author of the acclaimed Wind on Fire trilogy as well as the screenplays for Gladiator and Shadowlands. He lives in Sussex, England. www.williamnicholson.co.uk

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    Reviews for Amherst

    3/5

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    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this but found the long ago affair more credible than th present one. It was only when I got to the end that I discovered that his is one of a series of six novels. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read some of the earlier ones because the characters, particularly Jack weren't well developed enough to carry the story. Still, it's enjoyable as a stand alone novel.
    • 2/5
      Only the poetry of Emily Dickinson made this book tolerable. I wondered throughout if the author was trying too hard to be clever and over-reached the story of Austin and Mabel. That story alone would have been worth telling. The modern day parallel seemed contrived. I did not find any of the characters truly believable.
    • 1/5
      This was just awful. Would-be British screenwriter Alice Dickinson (no relation) visits Amherst to research her project: the affair of Austin Dickinson, poet Emily's married brother, with Mabel Loomis Todd, a much younger married woman. She is convinced not only that this was a true passion but that much of the sexual action took place in Emily and Lavinia's house with the sisters getting hot and bothered listening outside the parlor door. And let's not forget that the affair had the approval of Mabel's husband, who liked to watch while masturbating. Alice is invited to stay in the guest suite of a much older married professor--and you can guess what goes on there. Nicholson tries to make a passionate parallel between the two affairs, one of which went on for years while the other lasted a few days. Oh, and let's not forget that on the modern couple's first meeting, his friend tells Alice, "Don't fuck him." I should have known at that point that this book would be a real loser. I'm no prude about sex in novels, but I prefer it to be part of the story, not the reason for it. Nicholson includes quotes from Dickinson's poetry and Austin and Mabel's letters, plus a bibliography, in hopes of convincing his readers that this is a scholarly, well-researched novel. It doesn't work, especially since his modern characters, Alice and Nick, are both silly, selfish, and totally unlikable. Spare yourself the pain of reading this one.
    • 3/5
      Alice Dickinson is writing a screenplay about Mabel Todd and Austin Dickinson's love affair in the 1880s. Austin's sister is poet, Emily Dickinson (no relation to Alice). Alice goes to Amherst, Massachusetts where they all lived and where the Emily Dickinson museum is, to do some research. The story is a dual time one as we follow Alice, and also the story of Mabel and Austin.This book is one of six featuring some of the same characters, but they can be read as standalone novels. I have read the first three, The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life, All the Hopeful Lovers and The Golden Hour and I have to say I much preferred them to this one which didn't do a great deal for me. I do like William Nicholson's work but The Lovers of Amherst was a bit dry and unemotional for me, despite the main theme being one of love.
    • 4/5
      I was more than a little skeptical about this book going in. For one, I'm skeptical about books with real-life writers as characters (I dislike the whole Jane Austen-solves-crimes thing). For another, I grew up in and around Amherst and it can be hard to read about a place you know and love if you feel like the writer gets it wrong — I'm probably extra-sensitive to that, living now in a place that gets written about a LOT. But this book won me over and by the end I was blown away. It's a really thoughtful, interesting take on the role of love in our lives, what we expect from it and what we're willing to do to seek it. I also learned a lot about the Dickinson-Todd love affair, which I'd heard about but always thought was just ancient gossip dredged up because the poet was famous. And I *really* hope Nicholson, an accomplished screenwriter, writes that movie about Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.