Mourning Ruby

Written by Helen Dunmore

Narrated by Virginia Leishman

About thirty years ago, a mother laid her newborn baby in a shoebox and left it in the backyard of an Italian restaurant. Now the baby, Rebecca, is a mother herself. A child of no one and nowhere, she has created her own unorthodox but tender family. Then this hopeful life is dealt a blow that could shatter even the strongest of ties. Now, Rebecca must face the future by delving into her mysterious past. Dunmore's most ambitious work to date, Mourning Ruby is a meditation on memory and history-both personal and public. It's an unforgettable tale of love, loss, and the transcendent power of storytelling itself

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781461810186

Helen Dunmore

HELEN DUNMORE is a novelist, short story writer and poet. She has written twenty-two children’s books, including Brother Brother, Sister Sister; The Lilac Tree; The Seal Cove; and the bestselling Ingo series. She has written nine adult books including A Spell of Winter, which won the 1996 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her poetry collections have won the Poetry Society’s Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize and the Signal Poetry Award. Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire, England, and now lives in Bristol with her husband and children.

Reviews for Mourning Ruby

[p.d.r.lindsay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I always enjoy Helen Dunmore's writing and this novel is another to add to the list of satisfactory reads. Ruby is a character to enjoy. Abandoned as a baby, with no ties to her parents, Rebecca makes her own family life with Joe, a historian and good friend; her husband Adam, Joe's friend; and Ruby, her beloved daughter. All is well until..... Well read the book and find out.

[nyiper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As an audio I kept listening but I don't think I would have kept reading it if I had tried it in book form. It was so complete in the description of this horrible accident and the resulting consequences---almost way too much so. And then there were the stories within the story so that we could come full circle.It is a disturbing listening experience---more than you really want to hear about one person's grief---although eventually we add the husband's grief. It's really not something you want to learn about but as the writer says, we, the reader(s) (listeners) are just walking along with Rebecca, listening to her tell us her story.

[louiseh_40 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The most depressing story I've ever read. I found this book disturbing and morbid, maybe its because I had two babies under the age of two and a marriage under strain at the time. If this is you put off reading this book until a later date. Intensely sad