Editions

Girl, Balancing & Other Stories

Girl, Balancing & Other Stories

  • Helen Dunmore

  • Juliet Stevenson (Read by)

  • Emilia Fox (Read by)

  • Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Read by)

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Girl, Balancing & Other Stories, by Helen Dunmore, read by Emilia Fox, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Juliet Stevenson.

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives:

A girl alone, stretching her meagre budget to feed herself, becomes aware that the young man who has come to see her may not be as friendly as he seems.

Two women from very different backgrounds enjoy an unusual night out, finding solace in laughter and an unexpected friendship.

A young man picks up his infant son and goes outside into a starlit night as he makes a decision that will inform the rest of his life.

A woman imprisoned for her religion examines her faith in a seemingly literal and quietly original way.

This brilliant collection of Helen Dunmore’s short fiction, replete with her penetrating insight into the human condition, is certain to delight and move all her listeners.

Reviews

  • This posthumous collection from the much-loved author, focusing on motherhood, war and women under threat, is an act of tender commemoration… there are new departures on the themes that preoccupied Dunmore: childhood, motherhood, war, friendship, forgotten lives.

    Guardian – Book of the Week

  • Wisdom and wit shine out from Helen Dunmore’s last stories…The simplicity of the writing is deceptive; Dunmore manages to say a lot about families, about the mystery of creativity, and the shock of seeing someone you thought you knew in a new light.

    The Times

  • Dunmore’s gift for period detail combines with the respect she has for her characters’ inner lives to produce an effect that is oddly moving.

    Sunday Times

  • Dunmore’s love of history glints and gleams in this elegant, posthumous collection

    The Daily Mail

  • Whether musing on a portrait of John Donne or a friendship between two widows, the late, much missed Dunmore always has something worth saying

    Mail on Sunday, Event – Summer Reads

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About the Author

Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children's author and poet. She published twelve novels including Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the inaugural Orange Prize in 1996; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby and House of Orphans. She was posthumously awarded the Costa 2017 prize for her poetry collection Inside the Wave.

Helen Dunmore

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Extracts

A tribute to Helen Dunmore, from the pen of her son Patrick

Written by her son, Patrick Dunmore, this extract from Helen Dunmore's final work Girl, Balancing is a beautiful tribute to Helen Dunmore, writer – but also to Helen Dunmore, a dearly-loved mother.
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Helen Dunmore
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Features

Helen Dunmore

Orange Prize-winning writer Helen Dunmore, author of The Siege and The Lie, on the alchemy of writing

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