Daniel, at sea, Philip Dundas
Daniel, at sea, Philip Dundas
List: $10.00 | Sale: $7.00
Club: $5.00

Daniel, at sea

Author: Philip Dundas

Narrator: Simon Callow

Unabridged: 7 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/08/2020


Synopsis

It’s 2014 and retired professor Daniel Sale, 77, is the wealthy descendent of a New England family. All of his life he has harboured the guilt of being responsible for the murder of his lover, 50 years before. And now he is alone, following the death of his wife, he fears the approach of dementia.

One day, he is introduced to New York lawyer Chester Bowery and his two young daughters. As they start to become friends, something unexpected from Daniel’s past confronts him with the bitter truth that everything he believed in his life up until that moment, may have been a lie. He confesses to his friend the brutal end to a love story half a century before.

Together they take a journey back to 1961 to relive his experiences in Barcelona, a city recovering from war, where he became involved in a world of Catalan intrigue, poverty and resistance but most of all a deep and overwhelming love affair in a world far different from his New England upbringing and his socialite mother.

This is an unfolding tale of an old man who, having become lost in the world, suddenly learns that life can begin at any time and that true love is never what you think and is never to be found where you expect it. It is both an elegy for a lifetime of grief and a celebration of the importance of being true to ourselves.

Narrated by world-renowned British actor Simon Callow OBE, star of stage and screen, with roles in films including Room with a View, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Postcards from the Edge and Shakespeare in Love. His rich, mellifluous tones bring charm and sensitivity to this story, sometimes uplifting, sometimes heartbreaking.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jamie on January 27, 2021

Daniel, At Sea is a highly accomplished and assured debut novel from Philip Dundas. Moving between contemporary New England and Franco's Spain, the story focuses on an intense but proscribed love affair, and its consequences for the life of Daniel, the main protagonist, many decades later. This is a......more

Goodreads review by A on November 13, 2020

A story of rich, entitled and rather fatuous folk Overwritten and schmaltzy and also prolix tale of love across social boundaries, the poor die off, the truly entitled get to live again and very well too. Loads of petty snobbery about old, white Eastcoast families and parodic mincing documentaries o......more

Goodreads review by Maureen on January 17, 2021

This is a great first novel - a tale of love and loss and memories. It is set in East Coast America and Barcelona and the author’s writing takes you right there to the time of Franco’s oppression of Spain and it’s people, but also the wealth and privilege of Daniels’s life in the US. The novel moves......more

Goodreads review by Zoë on January 09, 2021

'Daniel, at Sea' is an intoxicating and intriguing journey of humanity bound up in the story of Daniel Sale, characters that surround him, and of his past. It brushes seamlessly and without over sentimentality against the visceral and intellect, triggering us with potent descriptions of the ordinary......more

Goodreads review by carelessdestiny on November 22, 2020

A novel with wisdom, passion, conviction and complexity that is breathtaking to read.......more