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Title details for Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt - Available

Mr. Chartwell

A Novel

by Rebecca Hunt
Susan Duerden
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
July 1964. Chartwell House, Kent: Winston Churchill wakes at dawn. There’s a dark, mute “presence” in the room that focuses on him with rapt concentration.
It’s Mr. Chartwell.
Soon after, in London, Esther Hammerhans, a librarian at the House of Commons, goes to answer the door to her new lodger. Through the glass she sees a vast silhouette the size of a mattress.
It’s Mr. Chartwell.
Charismatic, dangerously seductive, Mr. Chartwell unites the eminent statesman at the end of his career and the vulnerable young woman. But can they withstand Mr. Chartwell’s strange, powerful charms and his stranglehold on their lives? Can they even explain who or what he is and why he has come to visit?
In this utterly original, moving, funny, and exuberant novel, Rebecca Hunt explores how two unlikely lives collide as Mr. Chartwell’s motives are revealed to be far darker and deeper than they at first seem.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 8, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780307879967
      • File size: 204156 KB
      • Duration: 07:05:19

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Winston Churchill suffered from bouts of deep depression, which he famously referred to as a big, black dog. Rebecca Hunt takes the reference literally, personifying Mr. Chartwell as a mysterious six-foot talking dog. The novel follows Churchill and Esther, a young widow with a room to let. The only applicant for the room is Mr. Chartwell--who is also known as Black Pat. Thanks to a remarkable performance by Susan Duerden, Hunt's novel is engaging--if not always engrossing. The sections featuring Churchill's encounters with the sentient embodiment of his illness are both well written and flawlessly read, with Duerden offering artful vocal alterations and seamless transitions from character to character. The sections between Esther and Black Pat are less interesting, but Duerden's reading remains top-notch. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 27, 2011
      Audio buffs looking for something different will find this an original. Depression, in the guise of a black dog who stands over six and a half feet tall in his top hat, arrives in London in the summer of 1964 to lodge at the home of Esther, whose husband killed himself two years earlier. But the hairy, talkative, and slobbering Mr. Chartwell, who prefers to be called "Black Pat," must first tend to Winston Churchill, who is about to retire from politics. Susan Duerden, best-known for her role as Carole Littleton on Lost, provides a wonderful portrayal of Esther, who is both tempted by and afraid of Mr. Chartwell. Unfortunately, Duerden's characterizations of Black Pat and Churchill are less successful: she gives Black Pat a hardly foreboding purr, and cannot master Churchill's distinctive voice. A Dial hardcover.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 15, 2010
      In her sad, hopeful and very original debut, Hunt examines two battles with depression, one that has already been lost and one where there is still a possibility of winning. The story follows the parallel lives of a lonely young London librarian, Esther Hammerhans, and the celebrated statesman, Winston Churchill, during the days before he retires in July of 1964. Esther, whose husband committed suicide two years earlier, is renting out the spare room in her home, but when she opens the door to her new tenant, Mr. Chartwell, she finds herself face to face with a huge talking, upright walking, black dog. Esther soon learns that when Chartwell (aka Black Pat) leaves the house, it is to pay regular visits to Churchill and psychologically torture him, which he has been doing for years. Chartwell is no mere talking dog; he is a dark, lingering presence that has come to try to torment Esther into depression, much like he did her late husband. Taking a hard look at the demons that haunt people, Hunt's story is an clever illumination of the suffering of so many, their status on the social scale offering no protection.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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