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Title: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Author: Helen Simonson

Narrator: Bill Wallis

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-01-10

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 93 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Major Ernest Pettigrew (Retd) is not interested in the frivolity of the modern world. Since his wife Nancys death, he has tried to avoid the constant bother of nosy village women, his grasping, ambitious son, and the ever spreading suburbanisation of the English countryside, preferring to lead a quiet life upholding the values that people have lived by for generations - respectability, duty, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But when his brothers death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs Ali, the widowed village shopkeeper of Pakistani descent, the Major is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the 21st century.

Members Reviews:

Excellent little book

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It tells a wonderful and clever yarn about parochial Britain. It weaves intergenerational and racial considerations intricately into the text. I found it very engaging and entertaining. The reader is excellent and easy to listen to. He changes his voice to represent each different character which heightens the listening experience. Well done.

An absolute delight

As an expatriate Brit, living in Africa, I LOVED this book for the beautiful descriptions of English village life, the countryside, and the quirky eccentricities of the older generation of English society. A gentle story of love in lifes Autumn years, interwoven with the harsher elements of family greed, racial prejudice & snobbery but with deft touches of humour to lighten the gloom of humanity behaving badly. Beautifully written & a perfect choice of reader I immediately looked on Audible.com for books featuring the author (none) & narrator (lots hurray!). Heartily recommended.

Excellent

What did you love best about Major Pettigrew's Last Stand?

This would be one of my favourite audbiobooks so far. The narration is outstanding - BIll Wallis is pitch perfect as all the characters, especially Pettigrew - and the story is warm and engaging. I found myself thinking about the characters and what they would do next when I wasn't listening to the book. I can't recommend this audiobook highly enough.

Deserves a Stand Up Ovation!

Major Ernest Pettigrew, a sixty-eight year old widower who hasn't yet gotten over the death of his wife six year hence, has just lost his younger brother quite suddenly and is understandably very upset about the news. When he sets out to leave his house and drive over to his sister-in-law's, he is taken by a temporary malaise just as the local shopkeeper, Mrs Ali stops by for a visit. The kind middle-aged lady helps the Major recover, even offering to drive him to his brother's funeral when he doesn't feel able to do so himself. And so a beautiful friendship is born. An unlikely friendship, with differing class and ethnic backgrounds (she's Pakistani), combined with life in a small English village, making such a pairing fodder for plenty of gossip and disapproval among the Major's friends and neighbours; his insufferable financier son is opposed to their union because it doesn't fit into his notions of career or socially enhancing manoeuvres; Mrs Ali's nephew, who helps her in the shop is also dead-set against the pairing, having recently returned from studies in Pakistan and renewed his Muslim faith with extreme vigour.