The Ivy Tree

By: Mary Stewart

Narrated by: Amy Molloy

Mary Stewart, one of the great British storytellers of the 20th century, transports listeners to rural Northumberland for this tale of romance, ambition and deceit - a perfect fit for fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym.

Whitescar is a beautiful old house and farm situated in Roman Wall country. It will make a rich inheritance for its heirs, but in order to secure it, they enlist the help of a young woman named Mary who bears remarkable resemblance to missing Whitescar heiress Annabel Winslow. Their deception will spark a powder keg of ambition, obsession and long-dead love.

The ivy had reached for the tree and only the tree's upper branches managed to thrust the young gold leaves of early summer through the strangling curtain. Eventually the ivy would kill it....

©1961 Mary Stewart (P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic reviews

"There are few to equal Mary Stewart." (Daily Telegraph)

"Mary Stewart is magic." (New York Times)

"One of the great British storytellers of the 20th century." (Independent)

I’ve listened to this so many times!

I loved this story. Well read. It keeps my attention. The narrator does a great job with the many accents needed to tell the characters apart.

Mary Stewart's Most Complex Heroine

As I've been making my way through the new recordings of Stewart's novels, I've noticed that they're mostly dated by the heavy smoking the characters do. In THE IVY TREE, the lead character does smoke a lot--especially in the first half of the book, but the lead character here also says really annoying things about women being hysterical BECAUSE they're women. She was pretty unlikeable in many ways throughout much of the book, making me wonder why so many readers had said that this was their favorite Mary Stewart. However, her moral compass seems pretty true--even if that might not always seem to be clear. She's not afraid of work, and she is not spoiled or selfish. She really cares about those she loves. She doesn't fall into the arms of just any handsome man who comes along either. In the end, I came to like her, but it was hard at first.

The complaints by many about the narrator, Amy Molloy, are true. Her ability to use a North American accent is clearly trained but inconsistent at best. There are strange pronunciations for any dialect of English I've heard. Who says "tomatoes" so that the "mat" rhymes with "cat"? Molloy does. I think many of these pronunciation problems such as the vowels in "careful" and "calm," come from Molloy's Irish background, but a good editor should have caught those. Why even choose an Irish actress when there are only two Irish characters in the book? I suspect there was no real editor. Worse than all the pronunciation problems was the tediously slow reading speed and the sheer lack of ability to read well, pausing so often in the incorrect places such as between an adjective and a noun. This is really disqualifying for an audiobook reader, and the publisher is to blame for not hiring any of many really good readers such as Jennifer Ikeda, who read very well and can handle accents too. I turned the speed to 1.25x to get through the slow reading speed.

In short, this is a very good novel, with very good writing, and a complex heroine. The narrator, however, leaves much to be desired. I won't buy any more books with Amy Molloy listed as narrator.

Narrator

The narrator spoke in a low and slow tone. She mispronounced simple words and it was very distracting. An excellent story but sadly badly narrated.

Not the best Of Mary Stewart..

I am fond of Mary Stewart books, but this one was just way too slow moving and the main protagonist, the female character, was just so wimpy and pacifistic that it was somewhat depressing to listen to her. The story could have been good, it had some interesting plot elements that could have worked, the characters were well drawn out, and the author tried, but it just wasn’t good. There are other Mary Stewart books that have some of the same flaws and yet are very good such as Wildfire at Midnight and Touch not the Cat. I highly recommend those.

Ms Stewart is quite the wordsmith

I loved this book. Ms Stewart has such a gift for describing the setting....you feel as though you are physically there with the main characters. Amazing story, well crafted from beginning to end.