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What Red Was

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What Red Was

Written by: Rosie Price
Narrated by: Eleanor Tomlinson
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The audiobook edition of What Red Was written by Rosie Price, read by Eleanor Tomlinson.

‘Kate Quaile,’ he said. ‘I like your name.’
Kate frowned. ‘How do you know my name?’

Through their four years at university, Kate and Max are inseparable. For him, she breaks her solitude; for her, he leaves his busy circles behind. But loving Max means knowing his family, the wealthy Rippons, all generosity, social ease and quiet repression. Theirs is not Kate’s world. At their London home, just after graduation, her life is shattered apart in a bedroom while a party goes on downstairs.

WHAT RED WAS is a startling debut novel. It explores the effects of trauma on mind and body, the tyrannies of memory, the sacrifices involved in staying silent, the courage of a young woman in speaking out. And when Kate does, this question: whose story is it now?

© Rosie Price 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2019

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction

Critic Reviews

Moving, vivid, confronting and bold, What Red Was is an urgent story told beautifully
Subversive and sophisticated… [Rosie Price’s] exploration of sexual violence and class makes for an unforgettable read
Bringing together themes of survival, agency, complicity, self-denial and, ultimately, courage, this assured book is one of the most powerful debuts you’ll ever read.
An incredibly nuanced exploration of the complexities of sexual violence, WHAT RED WAS heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent. This is an important book.
WHAT RED WAS is a gripping novel that shines an unflinching light on trauma and its prismatic impact. A deeply necessary book, elegant and assured even as it burns at the centre with cool, clear-eyed rage.
One of the best books I've ever read about female rage and transgression, and the boundaries of both family and art, shot through with gorgeous prose, wrapped in a thrilling plot. WHAT RED WAS is at once incredibly timely and one for the ages. An assured and stealthily brilliant debut that people will be talking about for a long time
Rosie Price has a dazzling gift for rendering the mechanisms of power and privilege viscerally real--whether that power is as concrete as a hand over a face, or more amorphous, subtle, and difficult to name. With its penetrating insight into the texture of trauma and its enthralling prose, this is a book that succeeds in prying open our cultural moment and laying it bare for scrutiny
[A] conversation-starting novel about love, violence and toxicity from [a] subversive new voice
A confident and provocative debut (John Boyne)
Price never takes the obvious route or goes for an easy resolution. A writer to watch (Sarra Manning)
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