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The Crane Wife
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The Crane Wife
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The Crane Wife
Audiobook8 hours

The Crane Wife

Written by Patrick Ness

Narrated by Jamie Glover

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

A magical novel, based on a Japanese folk tale, that imagines how the life of a broken-hearted man is transformed when he rescues an injured white crane that has landed in his backyard.

George Duncan is an American living and working in London.  At forty-eight, he owns a small print shop, is divorced, and lonelier than he realizes.  All of the women with whom he has relationships eventually leave him for being too nice.  But one night he is woken by an astonishing sound-a terrific keening, which is coming from somewhere in his garden.  When he investigates he finds a great white crane, a bird taller than even himself.  It has been shot through the wing with an arrow.  Moved more than he can say, George struggles to take out the arrow from the bird's wing, saving its life before it flies away into the night sky.

The next morning, a shaken George tries to go about his daily life, retreating to the back of his store and making cuttings from discarded books--a harmless, personal hobby--when through the front door of the shop a woman walks in.  Her name is Kumiko, and she asks George to help her with her own artwork.  George is dumbstruck by her beauty and her enigmatic nature, and begins to fall desperately in love with her.   She seems to hold the potential to change his entire life, if he could only get her to reveal the secret of who she is and why she has brought her artwork to him.

Witty, magical, and romantic, The Crane Wife is a story of passion and sacrifice, that resonates on the level of dream and myth.  It is a novel that celebrates the creative imagination, and the disruptive power of love.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 23, 2014
ISBN9780698149427
Unavailable
The Crane Wife
Author

Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness is the author of seven novels and a short-story collection. His five novels for teenagers have won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Costa Children's Fiction Prize, and has been shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize and the Arthur C Clarke Award. Patrick's works have been translated into 25 languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide. Born in America, he lives in London.

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Reviews for The Crane Wife

Rating: 3.5188679559748426 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

159 ratings19 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A well-crafted, whimsical story encompassing myth and magic, humor and heartbreak.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't know what to think of this book. Yes, I did like it but i'm still processing if it's great or pretentious, lyrical or over-done, An adult fairy tale / creation myth or total crap...
    Patrick Ness is a lovely writer. There was depth to most of the characters and the relationships between them. The story kept me reading and I wanted to know what would happen next. But I got to then end and I don't know how to feel about the book as a whole...
    Did anyone else get that feeling?
    Maybe I need to read it again...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was read for our book group, my first book by this author. I loved the imagery and the characters. Great interpretation of the Japanese folk tale
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    So beautiful.....so touching....and so real. I adore this book, and every second I spent with the author’s story. The audiobook is brilliantly narrated by Jamie Glover.
    5 huge stars, and highly recommended to anyone who loves a great story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The first chapter looked like fantasy. Then, it was straight fiction for a long time. A sweet love story. Then, it changed and the ending was sad and OK. It made me want to buy scissors and paper.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Crane Wife is an old Japanese folk tale that many people have probably heard even if they don't immediately recognize it. The Crane Wife was also a rather brilliant song and album by The Decemberists released late in 2006 that was one of my favorite albums of that time.The epigraph to Ness's recent novel is so:And all the stars were crashing round As I laid eyes on what I'd found. The DecemberistsIn "The Crane Wife" Patrick Ness puts a modern spin on the old folk tale. This story starts off OK, and the old tale in modern trappings is immediately recognizable. But it veers somewhere else rather quickly, grabs some other things and later becomes rather surreal. As a genre this is probably magical realism. The storytelling is a little strange from the start, and I'd almost call it an odd sort of didactic at times. Ness seems to want to shove our nose in an odd assortment of things. Repeatedly. I stayed with the story when we entered the strange parts even as I wondered why we were there. And I liked some of those strange parts too. But I also got irritated.The story is more than a single one, more than a simple one; it is parallel stories told in parts that the reader must put together somewhere down the line. As such, initially, it isn't the easiest read, although it is easy to read, per se. I admire what I think Ness is trying to do here but this ends up being a book I should have liked and enjoyed a lot more than I do. There are some good bits in here but they usually didn't add up to become great bits. I didn't glom on to the characters either. Mostly unlikeable. But sometimes here the story 'does' work and really catches my interest.It isn't often that I can or do write a review without saying anything specific about the story itself. It is intentional here. I've liked this author a lot in the past but I was disappointed here.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    But if it wasn't a dream, it was one of those special corners of what's real, one of those moments, only a handful of which he could recall throughout his lifetime, where the world dwindled down to almost no one, where it seemed to pause just for him, so that he could, for a moment, be seized into life. Page 11George's life could be qualified as simple, mundane possibly. Nothing exciting and nothing extreme happens other than a divorce that left him with a grown daughter who tolerates him as one who tolerates a persistent, but necessary pest. Until that one night. A crane, wounded with an arrow piercing her wing lands in his backyard. She will set off a chain of events that will culminate into one devastating night and George's monotonous existence will cease to exist. The Crane Wife is a blending of two different stories. Interwoven into George's story is a Japanese folktale that extolls grand themes that are the building blocks of what makes us human. In some ways, Ness seems to be overreaching in that by attempting to unravel everything under the sun, he neglects to combine all the different facets of the story together well. There is a sense that the lines between what is real, what is surreal, what are truths, what are lies is purposely blurred and you the reader are left to search in between the lines. The story is left to you to interpret and take what you wish from it. There is no doubt that Ness is a gifted writer as evidenced by the multitude of Post-It stickers I have poking out from the book. The story although lacking in cohesiveness never lacked from beautiful, poetical and lyrical writing. That alone made the reading worthwhile.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Forty-eight-year-old George is a divorced father and grandfather, an American who has lived in England for years. One night, a mysterious bird shows up on his lawn with an arrow piercing her wing. The next day, a woman shows up at his printing office with some art, and his life is altered forever.I finished this book days ago, but I'm still struggling to put my response into words. It's one of those books that you can't really explain to someone who hasn't read it. It's short but complicated, a potentially fast read but one that makes you want to slow down in case you missed anything. It's a blend of fairy tale and fiction where you're not quite sure where "real" ends and imagination begins. In the middle of the story of George, his daughter Amanda, and the woman Kumiko are musings on the importance of story and how it can't truly be contained in a novel or told from merely perspective; then there is the story of the flying woman and the volcano. So, clearly, it's not a story that can be boiled down to just a simple few words. I'm not quite sure I understood it and I'm not dying to reread it, but it's also staying with me longer than many tales do.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I can't get enough Patrick Ness. His style is impeccable. Accessible and beautiful at the same time. I really enjoyed this.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Spectacularly beautiful writing - and imaginatively powerful. The imagery that Ness brings to life is so vivid, and there are so many gems in the individual lines.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    After reading other reviews of this book, I was so afraid I would be disappointed. I am happy to say, I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, the writing was beautiful. If you've ever read anything written by Patrick Ness, you know what I mean. Patrick is a masterful storyteller and the writing on the 32 tiles reminded me of A Monster Calls. I glimpsed similarities between the voice of the tree in A Monster Calls and the volcano in The Crane Wife. Second, even though this book was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, this story was completely original and intriguing. This was not at all a "boring" retelling of an old folk tale. Overall, I am still very much in awe of Patrick Ness and his writing. It is no secret that I think he is a brilliant writer and I have such a deep appreciation for his work.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I love fairy tales, folk tales, mythological tales - if it's old, passed down through generations, generally speaking has a moral, and is something that inspires me to dream, I love it. I love it so much, in fact, that it's what I'm going to graduate school to study and research. Although my interest is mostly centered on the oral traditions of Native Americans, I still am very interested in the stories being told around the world. So I was very excited to see that one of my favorite young adult authors, Patrick Ness, had a book, The Crane Wife, coming out that was geared toward the adult crowd - and it was based on a Japanese folktale, no less!Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Jan. 7, 2014.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Based on a Japanese story that entwines the mystical in the every day. As a 50 yr old divorcee George rescues a crane in his back garden and falls in love with a mysterious women all in the same week.I loved the exploration of the myth, the wonderful descriptions of the art and its impact. I loved the blurring of reality and leaving the truth carefully unsaid. The romance at its heart was ok and the everyday "nice guy" lead and mysterious women worked well within the story.However I really didn't get on with some of the other characters, mostly Amanda who I never understood and couldn't empathise with. Some of things she said or did just seemed weird, I mean why would anyone would socialise with work colleagues they don't like? I was infuriated, too, that they were all female in a work place that was overwhelmingly male (it was made a big deal off). Nor did I buy that her character (or most women) would say things like: "But as she watched Rachel's unfeasibly shapely bottom shuffle off in defeat, Amanda found herself feeling an emotion so unassociated with her that it took her a minute to identify it properly. It was pity." Of course the HR women hating harpy, or backstabbing work "friend" and her insipid sidekick might say it but not her. Oh did I mention sexist stereotypes? Which is the other glaring problem with the book.I don't think Ness is sexist but this book is, sometimes purely because I felt what he was trying to do just back firedSpoilers:Who the volcano 'embodies' is nicely inverted (gender wise) but then by turning a back-stabbing friend into relationship destroying harridan and you are starting to free fall into female stereotypes again.End spoilerSo in the end I can't recommend this book. The moments I enjoyed equalled the moments I wanted to throw this book at the wall. Even if you don't care about gender issues or think all women are actually like that (sigh) I still think that Amanda is going to take some getting used to.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    George, a divorced and lonely man is woken one night by a keening sound, only to discover a great white crane in his backyard. The bird is powerful and has a real presence but is painfully injured with an arrow through its wing. George helps the bird and his life is changed from that moment on.I hadn't heard of the Japanese folk tale that formed the inspiration for this story, and I think it was better that I hadn't. It took me a while to settle into the pace of The Crane Wife - it's quite different to what I usually read - but the writing was beautiful and the themes were all about love and forgiveness. I enjoyed George's flawed character, the mythology aspects throughout the novel and the ending was very touching.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well, I finished listening to this book a couple of days ago and although it was a well told story it didn't quite fulfil my expectations. I have read his Chaos Walking Trilogy which I enjoyed and I absolutely loved his illustrated edition of A Monster Calls. However, to come back to the Crane Wife.The story is loosely based on an old Japanese Folk Tale set in modern England, and that's how the story starts. We meet George a lonely, divorced, middle aged American, living in England. One night he awakens from a keening sound, and initially thinks he dreams. However, he than follows the sound into his back garden. It is a sound that has awoken him – an ‘unearthly sound … a mournful shatter of frozen midnight falling to earth to pierce his heart and lodge there forever, never to move, never to melt’This first sentence, gives us already an idea of what “we” the readers have to expect in this story. So this was to be a story about love and loss. Nevertheless, George ventures out into the moonlight, finds a wounded crane with a wing pierced by an arrow, frees the crane, and then watches it fly away. Completely overwhelmed by this experience and still not sure whether this was real or a dream. A crane in London? ....................AND the next day a beautiful woman turns up at his printing shop.When Kumiko comes into the printing shop George is busy with cutting a crane from discarded book pages. She sees the cutting and asks George to give it to her so that she could meld the cutting into her own art, which are abstract figures formed from feathers. The resulting first tile is utterly stunning. However, Kumiko has got a set of other tiles which she uses to tell her story, a story in which anger is destructive and love involves the acceptance of loss.Aside from George and Kumiko becoming lovers, the story presents two other narratives: The most interesting one is about George's daughter Amanda, a woman swamped by anger at everyone, at herself and the world, also somewhat isolated by her sharp tongue. The second and much more fragmented story is about a crane and a volcano, which is the story told via Kumiko's tiles. No … Not explain. Stories do not explain. They seem to, but all they provide is a starting point. A story never ends at the end. There is always after. And even within itself, even by saying that this version is the right one, it suggests other versions, versions that exist in parallel. However, the story was meant to be about love, forgiveness, anger, well just all the emotions we all go through from time to time, but somehow the story of Kumiko and George fell a little short as they were incredible distant and just somehow seemed to unreal, whereas the other two narratives were brilliantly told. So all in all a good read, despite some flaws in flow and characterisation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beautifully written, this modern-day story feels like a folkloric myth and although it is based on Japanese lore, it has universal appeal and could easily be Ukrainian, Finnish, or Native American.Middle-aged & lonely George Duncan helps an injured crane that lands in his garden one night, and then finds his life changed by the appearance at his shop the following day of a beautiful Japanese woman. The story depends on magical realism so be prepared to suspend disbelief.WARNING: one character in particular uses profanity including that word that begins with the sixth letter.Read this if: you enjoy folklore or fairy tales; or you are a fan of beautifully crafted prose. 3½ starsNote: I won this in a contest held by Tracey at Carpe Librum. She mailed it all the way from Australia (to Nova Scotia, Canada) for me! Thank you again, Tracey!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    *i received this book through Goodreads. Thanks to those that made it happen!*

    One thing is apparent after having finished this book, and that is Ness’ ability to write believable and multifaceted characters. Every character in The Crane Wife is an embodiment of the story’s themes: loneliness, desire, fragility, and the labyrinthine cognitions and mental constructs that even the simplest of “truths” must invariably sieve through. The latter is summarized well in the book:

    “There were as many truths – overlapping, stewed together – as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than the story’s life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.” [42]

    This book was a very compelling amalgam of various truths as held by particular individuals. As much as i enjoyed reading his writing, i must confess that the more fantastical aspects were my least favorite aspect of the writing, as they seemed to belie the beautiful narrative that he was able to tell without their presence.

    Ness defines a story as “a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all, never all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing us.” [142] i would say that he’s woven an effective net.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked it at first. In the middle, a little less. By the end, I was annoyed and bewildered.(That’s the honest-to-goodness truth. You can stop reading now, if you want. Nobody is making you read the rest of this little review. Or you can simply discount it as the thoughts of one reader. It’s okay. Warning: lots and lots of spoilers.)Let me tell you a little more, just in case you are thinking about reading this book and those three sentences are not enough. I liked the imagery at first. The mysterious arrival of a crane outside George Duncan’s door. The subsequent arrival the next day of Kumika at his workplace. George and Kumika’s combined art that caused such a stir. But then I became confused. It’s very likely that it is just me. A volcano. Plunging fingers into a warrior and stopping his heart. George going out on Kumiko with his daughter’s difficult friend. Dreams A fire.On and on. I couldn’t fill in the spaces between the images. And I gave up caring about these characters, though I did manage to force myself to read through to the end. In the hope (unrealized) that the story would make some sort of sense by the conclusion. I’ll tell you that this is not the review I wanted to write, not the review I thought I’d be writing when I was happily reading along, a few pages in. And I’d love it if you could ‘splain to me what I’m missing. Maybe that’s all it would take.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    GoodPatrick Ness is usually a YA author and previously I’d only read the fabulous [a monster calls] but I do follow him on twitter and when he read out some of the novel at a Kitschies event I was at last year I thought it was interesting enough to get when it was available. Then my favourite bookshop – Mr B’s Emporium of reading delights in Bath got him in to speak about the book and I knew I had to be there. The book is based on a Japanese folk tale, a man saves a Crane and shortly after a woman enters his life and he falls in love. Through her they become rich and yet the man has a growing dissatisfaction with the woman’s secretiveness. Ness spoke about the fact that some of the episodes in the book, Minor Spoiler (like the car accident) actually happened to him and his approach to writing. If a book you are writing cannot inspire emotion in the writer, how do you expect to inspire emotion in the reader. And this story is emotional. Ness interweaves a mythical story throughout the book in 32 short snippets of a love tale about the Crane and a Volcano which really underpins and informs what happens in the “main” plot. George is a divorcee approaching 50 who runs a print company with a deliberately incompetent Turkish assistant and makes art from cutting up old books. His marriage broke down as he was too nice but has left him with a daughter, Amanda. Amanda has a flaw in that she speaks her mind and cannot make lasting friendships, she does however love her son fiercely and is also still in love with her French ex-husband. When the mysterious Kumiko enters their lives George and Amanda are changed. Kumiko makes art out of feathers and when her art and George’s art is combined it creates something that is much more than the sum of its parts.A story is not an explanation, it is a net, a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all, never all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing usNess has woven together two narratives and like Kumiko & George’s art the sum is greater than the parts. This is a story about love, but not just a love story, it is also about possession and loss and the nature of stories.Overall – Highly recommended modern ancient tale