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Audiobook7 hours
Never Mind Miss Fox: A Novel
Written by Olivia Glazebrook
Narrated by Gunnar Cauthery
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this audiobook
A gripping and suspenseful novel about secrets, betrayal, and the power of the past.
Clive and Martha have been a couple since they met at university; they now have a young daughter, Eliza, and on the surface, all seems well in their family. But neither Martha nor young Eliza know that the story of this happy marriage harbors a secret scene: a momentary betrayal that could have destroyed the marriage before it even began. Only Clive knows about the trap door in their history but he's convinced that, with the intervening years, the incident has lost its power. But when Eliza comes home from school one day and excitedly announces that she has a new piano teacher called Eliot Fox, the guise of domestic tranquility threatens to shatter. The enigmatic Eliot Fox knows the secret that Clive is desperate to keep hidden. As her presence in the family's life grows, so too does the ominous shadow of the past that looms over Clive. Glazebrook's darkly suspenseful tale of a family in crisis reveals how seemingly ordinary lives can contain extraordinary acts of destruction. Told with intensity and penetrating emotion, Never Mind Miss Fox is a compelling tale of guilt, justice, and what it really means to make amends.
Clive and Martha have been a couple since they met at university; they now have a young daughter, Eliza, and on the surface, all seems well in their family. But neither Martha nor young Eliza know that the story of this happy marriage harbors a secret scene: a momentary betrayal that could have destroyed the marriage before it even began. Only Clive knows about the trap door in their history but he's convinced that, with the intervening years, the incident has lost its power. But when Eliza comes home from school one day and excitedly announces that she has a new piano teacher called Eliot Fox, the guise of domestic tranquility threatens to shatter. The enigmatic Eliot Fox knows the secret that Clive is desperate to keep hidden. As her presence in the family's life grows, so too does the ominous shadow of the past that looms over Clive. Glazebrook's darkly suspenseful tale of a family in crisis reveals how seemingly ordinary lives can contain extraordinary acts of destruction. Told with intensity and penetrating emotion, Never Mind Miss Fox is a compelling tale of guilt, justice, and what it really means to make amends.
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Author
Olivia Glazebrook
Olivia Glazebrook was born in 1976 and brought up in Dorset, England. She studied English literature at University College London and has written as a journalist, screenwriter, film critic, and book critic for fifteen years. The Trouble With Alice is her first novel. She lives in West London.
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Reviews for Never Mind Miss Fox
Rating: 2.78125 out of 5 stars
3/5
48 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Never Mind Miss Fox by Olivia Glazebrook; (4 1/2*)I did not expect to like this book but it fascinated me and I loved it. Not in a warm, fuzzy way but in a rather dark way.This is no great love story but it is about a woman and a man coming together to wed and have a family. The family struggled through the years as their young daughter did. She, Eliza, learned from an early age to stuff down as much of her emotions, her pain and hurt, as she possibly could for in her home there was no succor for these emotions. She had her dreams but had little expectation of them, as her mother had before her.The father's past comes back, in the form of Miss Fox, to bite the entire family but surprisingly it affected Eliza the least. The marriage and the lives of this family stood to lose everything. The story is about how when all is said and done......what are we willing to compromise in order to protect those we love.I thought the book was written quite well and I found the subject matter, as presented here, to be fascinating at least in the manner things progressed. The characters are unlikeable, boring, droll and so many other unflattering adjectives can be used to describe them but in the end we 'get' them. Well done, Glazebrook.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Overly descriptive and slow moving. A bit boring but good narrator.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Drawn out and driven by coincidence, with some heavy-handed symbolism thrown in as well. while the author is ambitious in filling the book with unsympathetic characters, she doesn't succeed in generating much interest in what happens to them.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Suspensful -Waited on pins & needles till books end to find out "WHY"!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a story about several people and their relationships and how they can suffer when one has a secret.First of all, the characters were really horrible. They were angry, bitter and unkind to each other. The writing was well-done. It explores the relationship between Clive and his wife, Martha. Something terrible happened in the past that Clive has never confided to Martha. When things begin to unravel and the truth comes out, Clive is confronted with the consequences.I enjoyed the book, just hard to feel any sympathy for these unhappy, aloof characters. I received a complimentary copy from Goodreads.com in exchange for a review
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eliza, the daughter of Clive and Martha, came home to say that her new piano teach was Eliot Fox. Lives changed in a hurry and finally the past caught up with Clive. A happy family at one time was now in a turmoil. Could they survive this? A quick and easy to understand read!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The writing itself was really good and fast paced, but I did not really care for the story at all. I didn't like any of the characters and found them to be just awful and brattish.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5While you won't fall in love with the characters in Never Mind Miss Fox, you will want to know what happens to them as the story unfolds. The plot is predictable but it mirrors the struggles of typical life as we all carry secrets from our youth that mold who we are as adults. For Glazebrook's Clive, the secret, buried but always just under the surface, comes to life when a woman from his past reenters his life. Once a friend and now a music teacher, Eliot plays on the emotional state of Clive. "Will you tell?" he asks her. "I won't have to," she answers. The author explores the facets of marriage from passion to stability to forgiveness. She shows how a single act can affect a multitude of people, even years after it was committed. The novel is thought-provoking, causing you to wonder about the what-ifs of life. I look forward to reading more from the author.
*I received an advanced reading copy of the book through Goodreads.* - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5'She was a climbing weed that twisted round them, rootless and threading, a clinging twine. She would attach herself to anyone.'Clive and Martha fell in love during their last year at Oxford. Both became successful, they got married and they had a child named Eliza. Unbeknownst to Martha, a dark secret mars their seemingly perfect life that has surfaced and threatens everything. Never Mind Miss Fox is not only a cautionary tale about keeping secrets and how they will only sit and fester but how past actions will always effect your future no matter how well you keep them hidden.Never Mind Miss Fox is full of an unlikable cast of characters with Clive and Martha the most flawed of the bunch. If Clive's odd personality won't repel you, his past actions certainly will. Martha is introduced with emphasis on her resentment towards her daughter and the relationship she has with Clive. Neither have any positive characteristics to show for them. As time elapses, we see the changes and the continued weakening of their relationship which leads up to the reintroduction of Eliot Fox, an old friend of theirs from when they were young. She is Eliza's new piano teacher and she quickly becomes infatuated with her yet when Pandora's box is finally opened, everything is thrown asunder. While not the most positive examination of a family, it was still a believable portrayal.'How, he wondered, could something so familiar to his mind be so impossible to communicate? It was unspeakable; unsayable. Whatever words he used the meaning would not translate. He would be unintelligible. He was not equipped with the skills or the tools that he needed.'The secret itself was unoriginal and I kept hoping for an interesting twist. The secret became less a part of the story and instead it became more about the after effects and the trouble it caused even after so much time had elapsed. It showed the effects on their daughter, seemingly innocent in all the drama, yet irrevocably impacted. It also showed not necessarily forgiveness but acceptance of the betrayal, and it even had an intriguing albeit unnecessary metaphor involving bats in the attic and whether they should have been disturbed at all. (Clearly, pointing out the fact that that secret had always been a part of their lives, was it truly necessary for it to be made known?) Never Mind Miss Fox didn't possess a strong resolution but situations such as those are ones you never quite get over; they remain with you always. The strong writing makes this well-worth the read and the story will make for interesting conversation.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When Clive and Martha’s daughter, Eliza, begins piano lessons with a new teacher, the couple is shocked to see a face from their past. But Clive knows that the reappearance of Eliot Fox has the potential to shake his little family, as Eliot carries with her a secret Clive hoped would stay long buried.
At its core, Never Mind Miss Fox is less about the twist it’s sold on and much more about the complexities of marriage. While it fails to deliver truly unpredictable suspense, it’s quite successful at deconstructing the secrets and emotions that can destroy relationships. Glazebrook’s prose is perfectly succinct and particularly suited for detailing the lifestyle her characters live and the quiet emotions they carry.
“‘You’re only sorry because you’re frightened of losing your family. You’re sorry for yourself.’ Yes I am, Clive thought. What other way is there? ‘Sorry’ would always start and end with himself.”
Readers turning to Never Mind Miss Fox in search of a mind-bending plot that keeps them guessing may be disappointed, however, when revealed, Clive’s secret feels real instead of pieced together for effect. Combined with Martha’s struggle to adjust to motherhood, Glazebrook has written a novel that tests the breaking points of marriage and examines the fault lines some are built on. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some books are annoying because the author writes too much out of his own experience and doesn’t draw on science. This book doesn’t have that problem; Davies does the research. Oh my, yes, Davies has done the research. He quotes at least two studies on every page of this book. So that’s not the problem.I was annoyed by the loose organization at the book. I loved all the fascinating research Davies shares, but I was never very clear where he was going with his findings. My take: this would have been a much stronger book, a more (bear with me) riveting book, if you will, had Davies spent more time editing it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"We're here on a family holiday—and anyway I love 'you lot.' That wicked little Eliot makes me laugh, and your girlfriend's bottom is doing wonders for your father—do look, Clive, he's gone absolutely scarlet."Is it bad that I felt that every character in this book deserved to be miserable? I really could not find a character in this book that I actually liked (not even Clive and Martha's daughter, Eliza). Even though I was annoyed by the characters in this book I couldn't help but want to read about them. I was hooked from the beginning of this book and couldn't wait to read about these people that I started to despise. This is a relatively short book (compared to some of the books that I normally read) and I just flew right through it.What really stands out about this book is the quality of writing. Olivia Glazebrook may have created characters that I hated but she managed to keep me hooked in the story because of her writing. Glazebrook just makes it so easy to get lost in these characters' lives. Usually if I don't like the characters than I tend to not like the book but in this case Glazebrook's style of writing really saved the book for me.The secret that Clive is trying to keep from Martha is not that difficult to guess (in fact you can probably guess it before you even start reading the book) but I still found myself really wanting to know exactly what had happened in the past. I just loved reading the passages from the past and getting to see how the characters had grown from then. I may have been able to guess the secret but I was still fascinated by the events that took place in the past.I would recommend this book if you are looking for a really well written book and don't mind characters that can be annoying. I received this book from a Librarything Early Reviewers giveaway. The content of my review is not affected by that in any way.