Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Well
    Unavailable
    The Well
    Unavailable
    The Well
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Well

    Written by Catherine Chanter

    Narrated by Juanita McMahon

    3/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    'One night is enough to swallow a lifetime of lives.'

    When Ruth Ardingly and her family first drive up from London and view ‘The Well', they are enchanted by a jewel of a place. But the locals suspect foul play in its verdant fields and drooping fruit trees, and Ruth becomes increasingly isolated as she struggles to explain why her land flourishes whilst her neighbours' produce withers and dies. Fearful of envious locals and suspicious of those who seem to be offering help, Ruth grows less and less sure who she can trust.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJul 2, 2015
    ISBN9781510001428
    Unavailable
    The Well
    Author

    Catherine Chanter

    Catherine Chanter is a teacher, poet, and short story writer. She is the winner of the Yeovil Poetry Prize and the Lucy Cavendish Prize awarded by Cambridge University. She grew up in the West Country before attending Oxford. The Well is her first novel.

    Related to The Well

    Related audiobooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Three Triptychs

      Jan 1, 2021

      Woke to the “meanerror,” of birds squawkinginside the blue-greyblackpolyphonies of whathappens when we losethe terminologyto determine how badthings really are. Wasthere no way to puncturethe agonizing filmthat kept us all corralledhere? I looked thr

      3 min read

    • Article

      Lauren Oyler And Patricia Lockwood On Their ‘Evil Twin’ Internet Novels

      Feb 8, 2021

      I hate it here. Everyone agrees that “here” sucks. We are miserable and unproductive and lonely all at once. Time goes fast but not in the way that it flies when you’re having fun, more like when you wake up after a nap to find that it’s suddenly dar

      7 min read

    • Article

      Poetry and Intrigue in Uzbekistan: On Hamid Ismailov’s ‘The Devil’s Dance’

      Aug 8, 2018

      In Hamid Ismailov’s book The Devil’s Dance, one Uzbek prisoner says to another, “It’s time for afternoon prayers, I think. Are you a believer, or one of the moderns?”—a familiar and false dichotomy that intellectuals in Muslim countries have had to c

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Sarah Thankam Mathews

      Dec 18, 2020

      By May I was clenching my teeth so hard when I slept that it eventually cracked a filling. The post A Year in Reading: Sarah Thankam Mathews appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon

      Apr 11, 2022

      I had a dystopian idea in the beginning, and in the end the dystopia caught up with me. The post The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: C Pam Zhang

      Dec 11, 2019

      It was the last year of my third decade on this earth, and it seems with every passing year I grow increasingly alien to that earth, or it to me. The post A Year in Reading: C Pam Zhang appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Sexual Desire Can Spark A Real Connection

      Jan 9, 2019

      Sex helps initiate romantic relationships between potential partners, a new study finds. “Sex may set the stage for deepening the emotional connection between strangers,” says lead author Gurit Birnbaum, a social psychologist and associate professor

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘After Lockdown, Things Exploded’ – How TikTok Triggered A Books Revolution

      Jun 8, 2022

      It’s four o’clock on a sunny Saturday afternoon and the Krispy Kreme doughnut stall is doing a brisk trade at Lakeside shopping centre, a huge mall in Essex. But a few metres further along, young shoppers are salivating over a different sort of treat

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Casey Gerald

      Dec 14, 2018

      There’s a line in my book that reads, “I have been so many things along my curious journey: a poor boy, a nigger, a Yale man, a Harvard man, a faggot, a Christian, a crack baby (alleged), the Spawn of Satan, the Second Coming, Casey.” My reading tend

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Poem by Nelly Sachs

      Oct 19, 2020

      A Poem by Nelly Sachs
      1 min read

    • Article

      Munroe Bergdorf

      Nov 22, 2021

      Munroe Bergdorf
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 243

      Dec 15, 2018

      The Art of Fiction No. 243
      24 min read

    • Article

      My Policeman Review – Harry Styles Is Arrestingly Awkward In Stodgy Gay Romance

      Sep 12, 2022

      The narrative behind the big Harry Styles bid for movie stardom has so far been more alluring than the actual Harry Styles bid for movie stardom, an all-too-perfect ascent rapidly losing steam by the day. The teen heartthrob turned legit pop star kic

      4 min read

    • Article

      'The Raven Tower' Rises From Shakespearean Foundations

      Feb 26, 2019

      Ann Leckie's new fantasy novel is packed with family intrigue, throne-room maneuvering and nods to Hamlet in its story of a son who comes home to find his father missing and his uncle in power.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Case Study By Graeme Macrae Burnet Review – Unstable Identities

      Oct 14, 2021

      The Booker-shortlisted 2015 novel His Bloody Project employed a range of narrative techniques to prod at the truth surrounding a murder in a 19th-century Scottish crofting community. Graeme Macrae Burnet’s concern was not so much with who committed t

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Well

    3/5

    61 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      It started off well and hooked in me in to the story. The central characters, Ruth and Mark, were not terribly well fleshed out, we didn't really get told their ages nor had their appearances described, but the horrible situation they were experiencing was believable.

      The author kind of dropped references to things into the story which were confusing, and only later in the book clarified. For example, the central couple has a daughter called Angie, but shortly after describing their wedding, when Ruth was pregnant, we are told that Mark can never father children. Only some time later, after I'd scrolled back many pages to see what I'd missed, did we get told that Ruth had become pregnant to another man who later died. We were not told whether Mark knew he was not the father of the baby at the time of their wedding.

      The reason I kept reading was to find out what made The Well so special and how it had rain when all around was in drought. Instead the story descended into a torpid and drawn-out description of a mad cult and its insane antics. Ruth became quite unlikable and made some ridiculous decisions.

      I'm annoyed at how much time I wasted on this book, which I read on my tablet and which had zero leading, meaning each line was directly on top of the next. And still the main premise of the book remains unexplained.

      And for a country surrounded by sea, why could they not use desalination systems to create drinking water?
    • 4/5
      This was almost an apocalypse novel (and how I love apocalypse novels!) with its scenario of a drought-stricken country in which water shortages are causing all sorts of chaos, except in a smallholding called 'The Well' which lives up to its name and has a plentiful supply. A story of marital breakdown, religious nutters and murder is played out against this backdrop, and an impressive degree of suspense is built up. This book will appeal to readers who like a well-turned sentence. it's written in beautifully poetic prose and at times when I read slowly I appreciated this very much - it's atmospheric and has a very original feel - but at other times, like when I was racing to find out whodunnit, the dense, descriptive text was like creepers snaking around my feet, hindering my progress.As with apocalypse novels, there is a sense of reading fiction that could easily become fact given a particular conjunction of events or conditions in the real world. I found myself wanting to know more about the situation outside the gates of The Well, but information is scant as almost all of the story takes place within its curtilage. I get that the outside world wasn't where the author was going with this story; her concerns were with the interplay between the characters living at the smallholding; it's just a personal preference thing.
    • 1/5
      What a stupid, awful, boring, stupid (did I say that already?) book. I felt absolutely no connection to any of the characters, and would it have killed the author to give us some sort of explanation for the origin and resolution of the drought? Nitpicking: the main character's insistence on calling her guards "Three," "Anon" and "Boy," rather than their given names, was extremely annoying. This book was just a mess.
    • 4/5
      Ruth Ardingly has just been released from prison to serve out a sentence of house arrest for arson and suspected murder at her farm, The Well. Beyond its borders, some people whisper she is a witch; others a messiah. For as soon as Ruth returns to The Well, rain begins to fall on the farm. And it has not rained anywhere else in the country in over three years.

      Ruth and her husband Mark had moved years before from London to this ancient idyll in the hopes of starting their lives over. But then the drought began, and as the surrounding land dried up and died, and The Well grew lush and full of life, they came to see their fortune would come at a price. From the envy of their neighbors to the mandates of the government, from the fanaticism of a religious order called the Sisters of the Rose to the everyday difficulties of staying close as husband and wife, mother and child—all these forces led to a horrifying crime: the death of their seven-year-old grandson, drowned with cruel irony in one of the few ponds left in the countryside.

      Now back at The Well, Ruth must piece together the tragedy that shattered her marriage, her family, and her dream. For she believes her grandson’s death was no accident, and that the murderer is among the people she trusted most. Alone except for her guards on a tiny green jewel in a world rapidly turning to dust, Ruth begins to confront her worst fears and learns what really happened in the dark heart of The Well.

      A tour de force about ordinary people caught in the tide of an extraordinary situation, Catherine Chanter’s The Well is a haunting, beautifully written, and utterly believable novel that probes the fragility of our personal relationships and the mystical connection between people and the places they call home.

      Ordinary couple wanting to escape the London rat race buy a idyllic farm and then the drought begins.....

      While the rest of the country suffers the Well appears to be the only place in the UK where rain still falls. Soon they are under siege from the media, the curious public and increasing government interest. Disgruntled locals are muttering about witchcraft, their lives are torn apart and Eden becomes Hell.

      Ruth's troubled traveller daughter arrives with son and fellow travellers in tow, closely followed by a group of creepy nuns calling them the Sisters of the Rose of Jericho.

      The overwhelming feeling I got from this book was a sense of isolation, The Well had become a prison for Ruth and her increasingly disturbing thoughts.

      Beautifully written, the descriptive prose is very evocative:

      Dawn was late, dusk early in the dying days of the year, but the mornings were medieval blue and gold.....

      A long, melancholy book that maybe could have done with a little pruning here and there but worth the investment.
    • 4/5
      A gripping and tragic story set in a dystopian future that has enough parallels with the present that it's possible to imagine the scenario arising.
    • 5/5
      Recently one of the book sites I follow asked when the last time was that I knew from the first page that I was going to love a book. This was the book. And it never disappointed me at any time. To me, this is what great literature is all about. Each and every chapter grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go. The book centers around The Well, which is a plot of land recently purchased by a middle-aged couple who are trying to make a new start in life. This takes place during a period when there has been a terrible drought throughout Britain, causing severe water shortages and new rules and laws imposed by the government; however, it’s still raining at The Well. Of course, that brings up all kinds of doubts and fears about this couple and their land. Is there something scientific causing this peculiarity or is the woman a witch – or possibly even a messiah?While The Well is a paradise for Ruth and Mark, it comes with a heavy price. When tragedy strikes their family, the suspense and horror builds as they try to unravel what actually happened and who was to blame. As their world is torn apart, they struggle with trust and forgiveness and try to hold on to their own sanity. I was completely absorbed in this book and so many parts struck a deep chord in me. Catherine Chanter has the heart of a poet and has constructed a beautifully written work of art. The Well and its inhabitants will haunt you long after you lay this book down.An ARC of this book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
    • 3/5
      The beginning of The Well captivated me. The premise of the story was interesting, and I appreciated how Chanter made the land where it continued to rain a character in the novel. Unfortunately, as soon as the Sisters of the Rose entered the story, it lost some of its momentum. The religious elements didn’t interest me enough, and Ruth’s role in the rise of it didn’t seem well enough explained. The book is beautifully written, and the imagery in it is stunning, but it wasn’t quite enough to overcome my impatience with how the story unfolded.
    • 4/5
      I'm not going to rehash the plot because the description on the book page is a very good one. I'm just going to write what I thought of the book. When I first started this it seemed a bit wordy, though I was interested to see where this was going and of course to find out who really killed Lucien, her five year old grandson. It soon became apparent that this is a character study of Ruth mainly but of others too, how they reacted to the circumstances. How the fact that rain only fell in one place, at the Well, while the rest of the continent seems to be in a drought. Sure brought out the worse in people as Chanter so ably describes.I soon became immersed in this story, although it was centered in one place there was much happening. Neighbors turn against them, crazies come from all over and finally the Sisters of the Rose, who view Ruth as the chosen one. I found fascinating how Ruth herself, was induced into believing this, soon putting everything on the line. A good view of how people become seduced into a cult, acting against their own best interests. I ended up really liking this book, it is very well written and the psychological aspects were intriguing. How people act and why, how they behave under untold stress. Did I feel sorry for Ruth? Yes and no, some I think she brought on herself but the penalty was one she didn't expect to pay. Although I did guess the who on the who done it, the ending was still a surprise because there is more than just the unmasking of the killer. All in all, I liked this book, it was different and in the end I felt satisfied with all I read. ARC from Publisher.
    • 3/5
      THE WELL by Catherine ChanterTHE WELL is several buckets of water too long. The first 200 pages of the book were boring. The last 100 were fast paced and absorbing. The question – Are the last 100 pages worth the first 200? If you like many pages of psychological wanderings to get to the real story then – Yes, you will like this book. If you just want your mystery to get to the point with logic, this book will drive you crazy. The identity of the murderer was never really in doubt. The characters were unknowable until near the end of the book so a connection with the characters was difficult. The one “knowable” person was Lucien. The sub plot of drought was the link that held everything together, unfortunately, the drought was known only through inference. A reasonable explanation of why the drought was everywhere except at the well was never addressed. That leaves one with magic, psychology and an unsatisfying read.3 of 5 stars for good writing but a plodding plot.