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Narrated by Katherine Littrell
Shirley BarrettUnabridged — 5 hours, 41 minutes
Narrated by Katherine Littrell
Shirley BarrettUnabridged — 5 hours, 41 minutes
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The Bus on Thursday by Shirley Barrett is a darkly humorous audiobook about one woman's post-cancer retreat to a remote Australian town and the horrors awaiting her.
It wasn't just the bad breakup that turned Eleanor Mellett's life upside down. It was the cancer. And all the demons that came with it.
One day she felt a bit of a bump when she was scratching her armpit at work. The next thing she knew, her breast was being dissected and removed by an inappropriately attractive doctor, and she was suddenly deluged with cupcakes, judgy support groups, and her mum knitting sweaters.
Luckily, Eleanor discovers Talbingo, a remote little town looking for a primary-school teacher. Their Miss Barker up and vanished in the night, despite being the most caring teacher ever, according to everyone. Unfortunately, Talbingo is a bit creepy. It's not just the communion-wine-guzzling friar prone to mad rants about how cancer is caused by demons. Or the unstable, overly sensitive kids, always going on about Miss Barker and her amazing sticker system. It's living alone in a remote cabin, with no cell or Internet service, wondering why there are so many locks on the front door and who is knocking on it late at night.
…a comedic horror novel…The whole novel is written in what Eleanor calls "funny-angry" blog posts, which might be why the jacket copy pitches the book as "Bridget Jones meets The Exorcist." But it's closer to a fun, campy Tim Burton movie…Barrett also works as a screenwriter and filmmaker, so it's no surprise that she's a masterly world-builder.
07/16/2018
Australian author Barrett’s frantically original and sometimes overwrought novel traces the breakdown of headstrong young Eleanor Mellett. The story begins with her in precarious balance, having just lost a breast to cancer surgery and angrily broken up with her long-term lover. She’s offered a mid-term teaching job in the little Outback town of Talbingo, and it’s such a beautiful, friendly place that she can hardly believe her luck. But how did the previous teacher vanish? And why did she have so many locks on her cottage door? And is Eleanor’s new lover overly passionate or actually demonic? As Eleanor drinks too much, commits a series of grotesque blunders, and fights the paranoid suspicion that something is out to get her, readers begin to realize that not everything that’s going wrong can be her fault: some malevolent force really must be playing pranks on her. Told in a series of blog posts (though at times the conceit is hard to believe), the narrative races and stumbles from one darkly hilarious pratfall to the next, and is recommended for readers who can laugh while cringing. (Sept.)
"A horror novel about a breast cancer survivor told in the voice of your funniest but most anxious friend, The Bus on Thursday is an appealing mix of genres that is both fluffy and deeply affecting at the same time." —Vulture
"Ingenuously exploits folk horror conventions . . . Funny and harrowingly honest." —Toronto Star
"Delightfully bizarre . . . Eleanor Mellet steps straight out of a chick-lit plot line into WICKER MAN-type horror . . . This book deserves to find its (cult) audience. For readers who enjoy their horror elegantly twisted." —Library Journal, starred review
"Narrated by a cybercentury Wife of Bath, this bawdy tale suspends both our disbelief and our scruples." — Kirkus
"With her snarky wit and old-school horror style, Barrett has mastered the art of the small-town gothic — perfect for readers who like their horror to straddle the nebulous border between the real and the otherworldly. Hilarious, bizarre, and absolutely terrifying, The Bus on Thursday reads like the Lovecraftian love child of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King!" —Powells.com
"The Bus on Thursday is a delirious, exhilarating ride that you can't predict and you won't forget. Like Rosemary's Baby recast with Bridget Jones, it will make you laugh and make you gasp. What more could you possibly want?" —Adam Sternbergh, author of The Blinds
"I don't know that I've read a book before that made me laugh out loud while remaining totally unnerved, but The Bus on Thursday does just that. It's a novel overrun with a rapidly metastasizing host of unreliable outbursts, odd characters and suspicious events. I'd willingly bear witness to any world through sociopathic Eleanor's eyes." —Jac Jemc, author of The Grip of It
"Bursting with raucous energy, while anchored in seriousness, The Bus on Thursday is an intoxicating horror-humor romp.” —Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne and The Southern Reach Trilogy
“Shirley Barrett has crafted a quirky, one-of-a-kind, wild ride of a novel with demons, kangaroos, a missing schoolteacher, a remote town where things are strangely off-kilter, and a wonderfully bizarre cast of characters. The Bus on Thursday is a darkly funny and deeply unsettling novel you’ll devour in one sitting.” —Jennifer McMahon, author of The Winter People
2018-07-02
While recovering from breast cancer, a woman takes a job as a teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in an isolated Australian town, where she is beset by both inner and outer demons.Eleanor Mellett is in her early 30s, recently single, and in recovery from cancer treatments that have culminated in a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. A support group misfit, Eleanor begins to keep a private blog as a therapeutic gesture. It is through this device that Eleanor's "funny-angry" voice, the unchallenged star of this unconventional novel, dictates the reader's experience of the plot. In short order, Eleanor moves to remote Talbingo to replace the angelic Miss Barker (who's disappeared), becomes involved with the erotically gifted vacuum salesman Gregory and his lumpen teenage brother, Ryan, and runs afoul of the small-town sensibilities of a host of characters, from the school's ferocious front-office maven, Glenda, to the exorcism-happy Friar. Throw in an ominous "1960s sci-fi power station, like some kind of reinforced bunker where Dr. Evil might live," a vengeful, reanimated hand, and the potentially sentient soul-transport bus of the title, and the results may seem like a hyperbolic decoupage of B-movie reference, each layer complicating and confusing the one before. What saves this book from the threat of murk, however, is movie director and writer Barrett's (Rush Oh!, 2016) skillful deployment of the form. Eleanor's voice is bold, frank, and savagely funny. Her observations about the intersections of cancer culture and the rom-com ideology of a certain kind of 21st-century feminism are so keen as to draw blood. Moreover, the total-eclipse-level narcissism of this personal-blog style neatly conceals how unreliable Eleanor's perspective actually becomes. Readers will find themselves going to great lengths to excuse some of her more dubious behaviors—including, but not limited to: assault, breaking and entering, and potentially maiming the Friar. Eleanor begins her blog by stumbling through a world of familiar absurdity and ends it by stumbling out of a world whose absurdity has become frenetically surreal. The journey from here to there shows the alert reader a tremendous amount about both the rigidity of our social mores and the flexibility of our sympathies.Narrated by a cybercentury Wife of Bath, this bawdy tale suspends both our disbelief and our scruples.
| BN ID: | 2940169226164 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 09/18/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
