Audiobooks narrated by Diana Hutton

A Grave above Ground: A Beggar's Tale Audiobook

An unwanted pregnancy leads a bright young woman into a life she could never have imagined. Unique, sad and sometimes darkly humorous, “A Grave above Ground” is a beggar's tale. It is about how easily life can change; escape from persecution and life as a refugee and homeless person, but also the beauty and limits experienced with the healing power of love and care. Its about reconciliation with loss and pain as well as awakening and closure. We are in Spain as we follow the life and thoughts of Mara, a Romanian beggar who sits, day after day, on the pavement outside a bank in Madrid. Little by little her past takes shape, her tragic past, as she reflects on the members of her family, as she describes the village of her childhood, the hardships of Ceausescu's Roumania, her relationships - one of which was her downfall. She takes the reader through her happy but troubled youth, her dysfunctional family, her loves and follies, an unwanted pregnancy, the sordid kidnapping of her baby by the Romanian authorities and the fruitless search for the infant in the Bucharest orphanages. We experience her flight from Roumania, her abuse as a refugee and illegal immigrant that throws her life into a sad downward spiral and near psychological collapse. After years of begging and loneliness, fate offers her a chance and rescues her through a ‘flu epidemic, when she lands comatose in the caring environment of a small Madrid hospital. After all this, can she find the strength to escape from the depths into which she has fallen? Mara's is a tale of sadness, of a woeful start to life and an ambiguous ending.

Diana Hutton (Author), Diana Hutton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sisterly Love

Sisterly Love is about the unique bonds of sisterhood. ... This is certainly not a story with its conventional beginning, middle and end, although all that does happen in it. But I have wanted to depict eras and places through the lives of two sisters and these come and go at will, following the need that each of the sisters has to relate her memories or to comment on her present. So I suppose I could say that there is a story-line, but it is not conventionally told. The story of their lives begins in the early years of the twentieth century with the usual sibling rivalries and disputes exaggerated by the presence of an obnoxious aunt and we revisit them from time to time.starting in the nineteen thirties. Elsie typifies the solid, conservative, hard-working office girl. Lillian shifts with ease from one boyfriend to another, from one husband to another, from one boss to another, from one country to another, yet she always returns to take refuge by either Elsie's or Horace's (their young brother's) home fires. By dint of Lillian's wanderings, the novel moves from London to an English country village, to South Africa, to Australia, to Spain, back to London, all vividly evoked through reminiscence. It is loneliness in their advancing years which forces them into each other's company, despite themselves. It is the sadness of having nothing else in life which inevitably flings them against one another painfully peeling away the layers of their past existences and forcing them to surrender themselves to the irritating state of undesired dependence. It is the inescapable pathos of two lives reduced by the passing years to grumpy proximity in a small bed-sitter that breathes life into Sisterly Love. .. My aim was to write about how youth transforms into old age with a certain humour, sadness and sensitivity. D.H. Madrid, 2019

Diana Hutton (Author), Diana Hutton (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Grave above Ground - A Beggar's Tale

An unwanted pregnancy leads a bright young woman into a life she could never have imagined. Unique, sad and sometimes darkly humorous, “A Grave above Ground” is a beggar's tale. It is about how easily life can change, escape from persecution as a refugee and the beauty and limits experienced with the healing power of love and care. Its about reconciliation with loss and pain as well as awakening and closure. We are in Spain as we follow the life and thoughts of Mara, a Romanian beggar who sits, day after day, on the pavement outside a bank in Madrid. Little by little her past takes shape, her tragic past, as she reflects on the members of her family, as she describes the village of her childhood, the hardships of Ceausescu's Roumania, her relationships - one of which was her downfall. She takes the reader through her happy but troubled youth, her dysfunctional family, her loves and follies, an unwanted pregnancy, the sordid kidnapping of her baby by the Romanian authorities and the fruitless search for the infant in the Bucharest orphanages. We experience her flight from Roumania, abuse as a refugee and illegal immigrant throws her life into a sad downward spiral and near psychological collapse. After years of begging and loneliness fate offers her a chance and rescues her through a ‘flu epidemic, landing comatose in the caring environment of a small Madrid hospital. After all this, can she find the strength to escape from the depths into which she has fallen? Mara's is a tale of sadness, of a woeful start to life and an ambiguous ending.

Diana Hutton (Author), Diana Hutton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Diana Hutton