Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea

Author: Randolph Stow

Narrator: Humphrey Bower

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-16

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea allows us a precious glimpse into a simpler kind of childhood in a country that no longer exists.

In 1941, Rob Coram is six. The war feels far removed from his world of aunties and cousins and the beautiful, dry landscape of Geraldton in Western Australia. But when his older favourite cousin, Rick, leaves to join the army, the war takes a step closer.

When Rick returns from the war several years later, he has changed, and Rob feels betrayed. The old merry-go-round that represents Rob's dream of utopia (the security of his family and of the land that is his home) begins to disintegrate before his eyes.

Critic Reviews:

"His novels and poetry embody a uniquely rich and strange account of the land and people of Australia that we can ill afford to lose." (Australian Book Review)

"It is a rare pleasure for those of us who are already fans to have these works at our disposal.... [Stow was] the most talented and celebrated Australian author of the post-White generation."(The Monthly)

Members Reviews:

It will never be that minute again. It will never be today again. Never.

I've read this novel 3 times and it remains one of my favorite coming-of-age novels. I can't remember the first time I read it - perhaps when I was 15 or 16. The story of a large and extended family, the imagery and a look at Australia through the eyes of a six-year-old boy (Rob) which is matched by nostalgic descriptions of a time and place long gone. I think one of the big reasons this novel is as popular today as it was when first published in 1965 is because it takes people back to an era where life in Australia seemed less complicated, more innocent, and the rest of the world so far away.

For Rob and his little friends, school closed if it was too hot, and the teachers took those who couldn't go home to the pool. They were free to climb trees from which one might fall; free to dangle precariously from playground equipment and free to experience that frisson of danger as they hurtled around in space.

Rob's world is a perfect picture of an Australian childhood. Rough-housing your siblings, feeling proud of being the eldest, hiding from your parents when you get your clothes dirty and trying to impress the kids who are just that little bit older are the things we all do growing up, and it's these small, relatively mundane things that make this story work so well.

The story begins in 1941 in the early years of WWII and is told from the point of view of Rob Coram, a six-year-old who lives with his extended and well-to-do family in Geraldton, WA. Rob's childhood is full of glorious freedoms to roam the town, the beach and the farmlands around Geraldton oblivious to the war, until it claims his adored older cousin Rick.

But for Rob, the idea of war is remote. Yes, the maid vanishes, there are air raid trenches in the tennis court, and his father goes away to man the garrison in Perth, but Rob - who doesn't even realise that the place Australia is where he himself lives - is too young to understand. The story follows Rob as he grows up in Geraldton, Western Australia, and begins to understand the concepts of war, countries and his homeland.

Rick is held prisoner as a POW in Thailand. His experiences are sprinkled through the text in the form of brief, drastic and horrible episodes.