The Enchanted April

It starts with a small newspaper advertisement: a medieval castle on the Italian Riviera, to let for the month of April, wisteria and sunshine included. Two London wives, worn thin by drizzle and dutiful marriages, impulsively answer it, and to afford the rent they recruit two strangers, a formidable widow and a beautiful socialite who is tired of being looked at. Four women who have nothing in common except exhaustion arrive at San Salvatore among the flowers.

What follows is not a plot so much as a thaw. Von Arnim watches, with sly wit and real tenderness, as sunshine, idleness, and distance from everyone's expectations quietly rearrange each woman's life. It is one of the great feel-good novels in English, funny, generous, and the perfect thing to have read to you somewhere comfortable.

At roughly 79,400 words, The Enchanted April runs about 9 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

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