The Sewing Machine cover art

The Sewing Machine

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Sewing Machine

By: Natalie Fergie
Narrated by: Angus King, Ruth Urquhart
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £13.99

Buy Now for £13.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again.

Decades later, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred unpicks the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

©2017 Natalie Fergie (P)2017 W. F. Howes Ltd Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Heartfelt

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Woman with the Map cover art
John Scott's Threads of Life cover art
The Letter Reader cover art
Christmas at the Village Sewing Shop cover art
That Bonesetter Woman cover art
The Color of Our Sky cover art
The Forgotten Garden cover art
Memories of Glass cover art
Cuckoo in the Nest cover art
Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop cover art
The Words We Whisper cover art
The Paris Apartment cover art
The Last Week of May cover art
The Shut-Away Sisters cover art
Under One Roof cover art
The Killings at Badger’s Drift cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Gentle story about the lives of 4 generations and using a sewing machine to help them in the daily struggle of their lives

Pleasant story about the people & a sewing machine

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A delightful book, which I enjoyed immensely. It is a web of intrigue, allowing insights to several lives and all coming to an interesting end. I applaud the writer, the story line tremendous, the characters are like neighbours of mine. Found everywhere in any town or village. Step inside and enjoy.

What a web of intrigue.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I very much enjoyed this book despite the rather robotic narration. Although having said that I am not sure whether a more robust performance would have actually suited the story any better. Whatever, the narration does not really detract from what is a very interesting listen as we hear about 3 different generations of people that are in various ways connected to a particular Singer sewing machine. To begin with I wasn't absolutely sure if I was going to stay with it but gradually got caught up in the various threads to finally feel quite bereft at having to say goodbye. Well worth downloading.

Something a little bit different

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
story can be a bit slow to get going but hold on, ending is great!

what an ending!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have a 1921 treadle singer sewing machine and I thought this would be a great book for me. However I found the story hard to follow without a book you can flick back through to figure who everyone is, and I also really didn't like the narrator, who sounded endlessly apologetic

Rather dull

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I hate to leave books unfinished and have been know to read alternate pages just to complete the book. I could have easily given up on this book but persisted. Was it worth the effort? No it wasn't. I found both narrators very depressing, flat and without any life.
Story is OK but probably would have been more appealing with a more inspired reading

OK story but narration dreary & uninspired

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
nice story, covering a number of time-periods - a bit predictable and characters bit fully developed.

easy but predictable listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really enjoyed this. I don’t understand why people didn’t like the narration, and thought the story was just so so. I thought it was clever and intriguing. Highly recommended.

An absorbing listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I met the author of this book a few years ago. We had done the same writing course and were attending a convention that ran alongside it. She talked then about the book which had just been published at the time. Always wanting to support fellow writers, and also wanting to support a fellow writer on the same course as I, this book was always in the back of my mind as one I must read at some point. I didn’t know much about the plot, but I wanted to read it to be supportive of Natalie.

Anyway, fast forward a few years. I had never quite gotten around to purchasing The Sewing Machine, and it came up on an Audible sale. Well, no excuse I thought, and made the purchase.

I’ve been listening to/reading a lot of serial killer books recently, Manhunt - about Millie Dowler’s killer Levi Bellfield, Killing for Company about Dennis Nilsen, and Serial Killers which is a history of loads of different murderers. I’m a fan of true crime and the My Favorite Murder podcast so this isn’t unusual for me, but maybe a bit unusual to read so many back to back, but they just happened to be what I had in my recent Audible library. Anyway, when I came to the end of this run, I really wanted to read something lighter, and completely different. I looked down my list and thought right, it’s about time for you and me Sewing Machine.

I had no idea that I would fall so in love with this amazing book. Or that I’d be so very envious of Natalie’s writing ability. Her characters are so perfectly sculpted, each with their own secrets, and traits, you can’t help but feel for them all, and wish that they were people you knew for real. And I’m not just talking the main characters, I’m talking Eva from the corner shop, Fred’s neighbour and her little boys, Donald’s cousin. People who appear only a couple of times in the story but they feel so real.

The interwoven threads of story keep you completely gripped, and even though I had pretty much guessed the ending before it came, I was so happy that it ended how it did that I wasn’t even mad about that. This book has had me sobbing pretty much all the way though, in a way that only great storytelling can. As I inched closer and closer to the end I didn’t want it to be over. I wanted to stay in these peoples lives and company forever.

This is a story that spans over 100 years, several generations of several families, and yet it feels just as relevant as anything else you could pick up, by showing the kindness (and cruelty too) of humans. This book is a masterpiece, and Natalie, if you’re reading this, I can’t wait to see what else you’ve written or are you’re working on.

Everyone stop what you’re doing and read The Sewing Machine. Right now.

The most beautiful book I’ve read in a LONG time

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I love how the different generations were intertwined. There were a few "oh!" moments when it all came together which I loved. Great narration too, I like the use of two narrators, it makes it come alive even more.

What a fab book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews