-
The Goldfinch
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $38.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Secret History
- A Read with Jenna Pick
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
-
-
Horrible narration
- By M. Cardoso on 07-23-23
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
-
-
A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
-
The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
-
-
Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
-
All the Light We Cannot See
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Zach Appelman
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is 12, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
-
-
Afraid to Write a "Less-Than-Positive" Review
- By Elizabeth on 08-06-14
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Things I Learned from Falling
- A Memoir
- By: Claire Nelson
- Narrated by: Claire Nelson
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2018, writer Claire Nelson made international headlines when she fell over 25 feet after wandering off the trail in a deserted corner of Joshua Tree. The fall shattered her pelvis, rendering her completely immobile. There Claire lay for the next four days, surrounded by boulders that muffled her cries for help, but exposed her to the relentless California sun above. Her rescuers had not expected to find her alive. In Things I Learned from Falling, Claire tells not only her story of surviving, but also her story of falling.
-
-
Great read!!!
- By Hayley Sampson on 05-19-24
By: Claire Nelson
-
A Visit from the Goon Squad
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the listener does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.
-
-
Deep and dazzling novel, brilliantly read!
- By J. W. Coop on 06-29-19
By: Jennifer Egan
-
The Secret History
- A Read with Jenna Pick
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
-
-
Horrible narration
- By M. Cardoso on 07-23-23
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
-
-
A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
-
The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
-
-
Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
-
All the Light We Cannot See
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Zach Appelman
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is 12, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
-
-
Afraid to Write a "Less-Than-Positive" Review
- By Elizabeth on 08-06-14
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Things I Learned from Falling
- A Memoir
- By: Claire Nelson
- Narrated by: Claire Nelson
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2018, writer Claire Nelson made international headlines when she fell over 25 feet after wandering off the trail in a deserted corner of Joshua Tree. The fall shattered her pelvis, rendering her completely immobile. There Claire lay for the next four days, surrounded by boulders that muffled her cries for help, but exposed her to the relentless California sun above. Her rescuers had not expected to find her alive. In Things I Learned from Falling, Claire tells not only her story of surviving, but also her story of falling.
-
-
Great read!!!
- By Hayley Sampson on 05-19-24
By: Claire Nelson
-
A Visit from the Goon Squad
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the listener does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.
-
-
Deep and dazzling novel, brilliantly read!
- By J. W. Coop on 06-29-19
By: Jennifer Egan
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Nightingale
- By: Kristin Hannah
- Narrated by: Polly Stone
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
-
-
Heroic & Harrowing Work Of Fiction
- By Sara on 08-21-15
By: Kristin Hannah
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
A Gentleman in Moscow
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
-
-
A Reprieve Amidst Ugly News, Relentless Negativity
- By Cathy Lindhorst on 08-27-17
By: Amor Towles
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Alice Network
- A Novel
- By: Kate Quinn
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive.
-
-
We are standing on the shoulders of giants...
- By Marie on 02-25-18
By: Kate Quinn
-
Where the Crawdads Sing
- By: Delia Owens
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.
-
-
Don't listen to the negative reviews.
- By Kyle on 12-03-19
By: Delia Owens
-
11-22-63
- A Novel
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.
-
-
I Owe Stephen King An Apology
- By Kelly - Write Well Academy on 04-16-12
By: Stephen King
-
Lincoln in the Bardo
- A Novel
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”
-
-
"Where might God stand?"
- By Mel on 02-17-17
By: George Saunders
-
The Great Believers
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
-
-
A story for all time
- By Carla jo Thompson on 08-06-18
By: Rebecca Makkai
-
The Nix
- A Novel
- By: Nathan Hill
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 21 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart.
-
-
Is There An Editor In The House??
- By Sara on 11-03-16
By: Nathan Hill
Editorial review
By Sam Danis, Audible Editor
THE GOLDFINCH IS A COMING-OF-AGE EPIC THAT WILL STEAL YOUR HE(ART)
The Goldfinch was one of the first novels I listened to when I started working at Audible nearly a decade ago. I joined the team in September, and with this title releasing in a month’s time, I remember what a very big deal it was that a new Donna Tartt book was forthcoming (she only publishes about once a decade, after all). The plot is gripping: During a bombing at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, two events alter the course of 13-year-old Theo Decker’s life. His mother—the most prominent figure in his life—is killed, and he grabs the painting they were there to see (the titular Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius), thereby becoming an accidental art thief. What follows is a coming-of-age story of epic proportions—about fate, loss, consequences, and the intangibility of home and family. It is at turns sentimental, suspenseful, melancholy, and hopeful.
I watched as the glowing reviews poured in, with no real intention to listen myself. A 32-hour audiobook seemed incredibly daunting when I was new to the world of audio entertainment—primarily, a podcast and short audiobook listener. And this, after all, was literary fiction.
Why did I ultimately decide to pick it up? I can’t recall exactly, but I imagine it had something to do with peer pressure. My fellow editors and I influence each other in the best of ways—nobody wants to be the last one to hear something truly amazing—and I think it was our fiction editor, Tricia, who first sung the praises of this one. So, I buckled in (read: put on my headphones) and prepared for whatever was to come.
Continue reading Sam's review >
Publisher's summary
Audie Award Winner, Solo Narration - Male, 2014
Audie Award Winner, Literary Fiction, 2014
The author of the classic best-sellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel.
Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity.
It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and at the center of a narrowing, ever-more-dangerous circle.
The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: 55+ Quotes for Whenever You Need a Little Encouragement
We all have bad days and dry spells. We all experience moments of disappointment, sadness, and self-doubt. And occasionally, we all need an encouraging word—or several—to lift our spirits, boost our confidence, and fill us with hope. Straight from the works of best-selling and widely admired authors, here's a collection of positive and reassuring words you can turn to anytime you're in need of support.
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Wind/Pinball
- Two Novels
- By: Haruki Murakami, Ted Goossen - translator
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels—Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973—that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age—the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat—are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami’s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat.
-
-
FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY: Extra Ball at 600,000 points
- By Darwin8u on 08-12-15
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
-
-
Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
-
Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
-
-
The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
-
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
-
-
Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Wind/Pinball
- Two Novels
- By: Haruki Murakami, Ted Goossen - translator
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels—Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973—that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age—the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat—are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami’s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat.
-
-
FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY: Extra Ball at 600,000 points
- By Darwin8u on 08-12-15
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
-
-
Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
-
Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
-
-
The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
-
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
-
-
Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
-
Koko
- Blue Rose Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 22 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They are Vietnam vets — a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a single shattering secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York.
-
-
7 hours in and I am done
- By bionichands on 01-26-12
By: Peter Straub
-
High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
-
-
Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
-
How Like a God
- By: Brenda W. Clough
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would it be like, to get absolute power? Would you wear a cape and fight crime? Rule the planet? Or perhaps you would be like Rob Lewis, and watch your world collapse around you. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Rob is going to find out.
-
-
At one point the main character rapes at 13 year old girl
- By Richard Davis on 05-29-21
By: Brenda W. Clough
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
Secret Smile
- By: Nicci French
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda's sister Kerri has a new boyfriend. He's a handsome charmer who seems to dote on Kerri. But Brendan isn't the man he says he is. Miranda should know. She broke off her own affair with him just a few weeks ago when she found him reading her diary.
-
-
I want my 9 hours back
- By Ashley on 07-19-23
By: Nicci French
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Tell the Wolves I’m Home
- A Novel
- By: Carol Rifka Brunt
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life - someone who will help her to heal....
-
-
worst protagonist ever
- By Danica on 12-19-14
-
Burn Baby Burn
- By: Meg Medina
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nora Lopez is 17 during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora's family life isn't going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only on holidays. All Nora wants is to turn 17 and be on her own.
-
-
Couldn't finish listening to this book.
- By Mathis on 12-03-17
By: Meg Medina
-
Black & White
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to 14. As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro's novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart.
-
-
It was okay
- By Lucy7 on 02-13-19
By: Dani Shapiro
-
Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
-
-
THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
-
The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
-
-
I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
-
The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
-
-
Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Little Friend
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence, and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved. So Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright and insufferably determined - sets out to unmask his killer.
-
-
Couldn't put it down
- By Sam on 03-15-12
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Secret History
- A Read with Jenna Pick
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
-
-
Horrible narration
- By M. Cardoso on 07-23-23
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Little Friend
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows up in the shadow of her brother, who—when she was only a baby—was found hanging dead from a black-tupelo tree in their yard. His killer was never identified, nor has his family, in the years since, recovered from the tragedy. For Harriet, who has grown up largely unsupervised, in a world of her own imagination, her brother is a link to a glorious past she has only heard stories about or glimpsed in photograph albums.
-
-
WAYYYYY too abridged!
- By lacey on 12-07-16
By: Donna Tartt
-
A Mercy
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, "with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady." Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.
-
-
Great book
- By Pablo Tebas on 01-18-09
By: Toni Morrison
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
-
-
An amazing book about complex human perception
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Little Friend
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence, and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved. So Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright and insufferably determined - sets out to unmask his killer.
-
-
Couldn't put it down
- By Sam on 03-15-12
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Secret History
- A Read with Jenna Pick
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
-
-
Horrible narration
- By M. Cardoso on 07-23-23
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Little Friend
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows up in the shadow of her brother, who—when she was only a baby—was found hanging dead from a black-tupelo tree in their yard. His killer was never identified, nor has his family, in the years since, recovered from the tragedy. For Harriet, who has grown up largely unsupervised, in a world of her own imagination, her brother is a link to a glorious past she has only heard stories about or glimpsed in photograph albums.
-
-
WAYYYYY too abridged!
- By lacey on 12-07-16
By: Donna Tartt
-
A Mercy
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, "with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady." Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.
-
-
Great book
- By Pablo Tebas on 01-18-09
By: Toni Morrison
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
-
-
An amazing book about complex human perception
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Savage Detectives
- A Novel
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: Eddie Lopez, Armando Durán
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation. The Savage Detectives is a hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It is the first of Bolaño's two giant works, with 2666, to be translated into English and is already being hailed as a masterpiece.
-
-
Bolaño Poetic Gyre
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: Roberto Bolaño
-
All Aunt Hagar's Children
- Selected Stories
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: James Peter Francis
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.
-
-
I JUST DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS!
- By Mimi Routh on 07-05-15
By: Edward P. Jones
-
Never Let Me Go
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.
-
-
Be patient; it will pay off
- By Kc on 05-23-05
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
The Plot Against America
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Ron Silver
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.
-
-
Life is imitating Roth's art
- By Matthew on 08-04-16
By: Philip Roth
-
Salvage the Bones
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A hurricane is building, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's 14 and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.
-
-
Good but I wish I hadn't read it.
- By Jeanie on 01-26-21
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
-
-
A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
-
Nickel and Dimed
- On (Not) Getting By in America
- By: Barbara Ehrenreich
- Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication. With nearly a million copies in print, Nickel and Dimed is a modern classic that deftly portrays the plight of America's working-class poor.
-
-
Good concept, but poor execution.
- By Marco Forcone on 08-24-04
-
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 43 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world’s most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through 34 nations and 60 years of political and cultural change—all in one integrated, enthralling narrative.
-
-
Great book, but not terrific listening
- By History on 10-18-11
By: Tony Judt
-
White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
-
-
4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Lincoln in the Bardo
- A Novel
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”
-
-
"Where might God stand?"
- By Mel on 02-17-17
By: George Saunders
-
Veronica
- By: Mary Gaitskill
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a teenager on the streets of San Francisco, Alison is discovered by a photographer and swept into the world of fashion-modeling in Paris and Rome. When her career crashes and a love affair ends disastrously, she moves to New York City to build a new life. There she meets Veronica: an older wisecracking eccentric with her own ideas about style, a proofreader who comes to work with a personal "office kit" and a plaque that reads "Still Anal After All These Years".
-
-
Everything is baroque-en
- By Eric on 12-14-06
By: Mary Gaitskill
-
The Argonauts
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Maggie Nelson
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer) family making.
-
-
A relaxing meditation on identity, gender and art
- By redhidari on 10-01-15
By: Maggie Nelson
What listeners say about The Goldfinch
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John C.
- 11-08-13
A Not So Secret History
Any additional comments?
The good news:
∙Easy to read, interesting, and thought-provoking.
∙Lots of words for the money, and for the most part, it doesn't drag or seem like filler.
∙Called Dickensonian by many (e.g. Stephen King), the book has many of the elements of other accomplished author's works. Obvious ones are "On the Road", "The Catcher in the Rye", "The Painted Bird", "The Great Gatsby", "The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death", "Dark Places", "Snobs", and "The Kite Runner". Most of the Dicken's comparisons mention "Oliver Twist" or "David Copperfield", but I found that it borrows the most from "Great Expectations" if plot is excluded. It's probably pointless to make comparisons to Tartt's classmate, Bret Easton Ellis, but you can't read "Lunar Park" and escape the kinship.
∙It has a lot of what made "The Secret History" great.
∙The setup is as compelling as any book in recent memory.
∙One of the main character's friends is as developed and memorable as any character in popular fiction.
The bad news:
∙The first couple chapters are tedious. I was relieved when the book finally took off. You'd think the editor didn't get a say.
∙The painting serves somewhat as a MacGuffin, reducing its impact as a near-character in the novel.
∙The 2nd quarter of the book goes on an indulgent interlude. The book is the length of 4 standard novels, so this section could easily have been tightened up with no harm done.
∙Toward the end, the novel's themes are reiterated in narrative exposition as if the author doesn't trust the reader to understand them from the story itself.
∙At least one important character is very static and woefully underdeveloped.
∙It may be personal preference, but I tend to dislike characters that repeatedly behave immorally or amorally, but constantly fret about it. Fine if the character grows over time (or devolves), but frankly, who likes a shit that constantly feels bad that he's such a shit. There's Byronic and there's embryonic. I imagine Tartt might say, "But some people are actually like that". Yes, but perhaps that makes them more bland than a hero or an anti-hero.
Other thoughts:
Some movie comparisons might be "Closer", "Good Will Hunting", and "Ordinary People" with a little "True Romance" thrown in for feathers.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
197 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ibillinsly@gmail
- 05-28-17
Wow
Where does The Goldfinch rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Top Five for sure, probably second after Infinite Jest.
What other book might you compare The Goldfinch to and why?
Performances like this are difficult to compare
Which character – as performed by David Pittu – was your favorite?
All fantastic
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
It's too long to listen to in one sitting. Also, this audiobook is not one to blow through as fast as possible. It is one to take your time with. It is one to appreciate for the writing and the narration.
Any additional comments?
This book starts off a little slow, but stay with it. You'll be glad you did. It incrementally gets better up until the very end. I didn't want it to be over. Some books, or audiobooks, give the listener/reader a sense of satisfaction after finishing it. I haven't felt that type of satisfaction since listening to Infinite Jest. And while The Goldfinch didn't strike me in the way that Infinite Jest did, it came close, and I never thought another book would. The narrator is amazing. The writer is amazing, and it takes both to create a performance so perfect. Listen to it. You won't be sorry.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
116 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rachel
- 10-17-17
All the Heart Eyes
What I'd heard was: "Dickensian!" "Art theft!" I was hardly prepared for a book so beautiful, mysterious, dark and strange; one that made me laugh and ache.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mark
- 07-06-14
Slow Burner
A terrorist bomb explodes in a New York art gallery, killing many people and destroying priceless art treasures. Theo, the hero of this book, loses his mother in the blast, but before discovering this he is given a famous painting, The Goldfinch, by an old man dying of his wounds, accompanied by a young girl.
The rest of the book describes the effects of this initial trauma on the life of the boy growing into a man. He is taken in by two kind New York families and is eventually reclaimed by his dodgy estranged father, who whisks him off to Las Vegas. Theo still has the painting and has kept it secret all along.
He forms a friendship with a likable Russian-American rogue and they hang out together, getting drunk and experimenting with drugs. His father is then killed as a result of mixing in the wrong circles, and so Theo is alone again. He runs away to avoid Child Custody Services and rejoins the kindly New York antique dealer who had helped him after the bomb blast.
The book then shoots forward a few years to find Theo getting himself into trouble by selling fake antiques, and then he is reunited with his Russian Friend. There is a bit of an adventure at the end and I won't spoil it any more than I have already done.
Overall, I was disappointed by this book. It is well-written and the characters are well-drawn and engaging, but the plot is slow and a bit random. It sort of drifts along and you are thinking 'come on, come on, get on with it', and although it finishes with a dramatic climax you are still thinking 'what was the point of all that?'. It is all a bit shapeless and unsatisfying.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kate
- 03-26-14
Hallelujah
Since I am a big fan of Donna Tartt, I was determined to be surprised. I read it the day it came out having intentionally avoided previewing any synopsis or advance reviews and am so glad I did! It was such a pleasure to move through the turnings and revelations with no expectations. Every element I value in a novel was rendered so satisfyingly: characters, plot, prose (exceptional), intricate themes, a sense of place and time… I’ve read both her previous books at least four times over the past 20+ years. I find them very rich and layered and compelling. I’m unashamed to say that I’ve read this one twice already in its first 6 months, a re-reading record for me. Truly great!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 06-29-18
Best book I ever read.
And I have read many, many books. This book profoundly affected me. I never wanted it to end.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jen
- 11-20-13
Lovely story, bombshell pacing
Wow....I absolutely loved this book. Everything about it was wonderful - the flawed but redeemable Theo and the cast of people in his life - from the honorable to the horrible. The pacing of the story, however, kept me hanging on every chapter. The lulls then the quiet bombshells were so well done that I just sat stunned several times.
I generally hate when people review by comparison, but this reminded me of Pat Conroy and John LeCarre combined - the lovely writing and characters of Conroy, the intrigue and twists of LeCarre. If you like either author, buy this book.
I highly recommend this book. I plan on buying and giving several copies as gifts.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John Braine
- 05-07-14
Wonderful
Any additional comments?
Now and then, someone in work will ask me what I’m reading, and what’s it’s about. I’m often a bit stumped on how to answer that, as happened with the Goldfinch recently. I could say it’s about a guy who steals a painting after an explosion in an art gallery, and the consequences that followed. But of course the painting in The Goldfinch is a bit of a mcGuffin, and as with a lot of books like this, I found myself saying… Oh… god… what is it about… it’s about everything, love, loss, death, friendship, art, marriage, morals, parenting, growth, mental health, addiction, hedonism… LIFE.
Tartt, Euginedes, and Franzen really excel at taking a bunch of interesting and believable characters to tell a story that itself is just a backdrop to the broad canvas of life. Their novels are always an amazing experience to read. The books that come before and after always pale in comparison. And The Goldfinch is no different. A masterpiece.
As for the audio, I immediately recognized David Pitu's voice from The Marriage Plot and knew I was in good hands. He's very easy to listen to.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Janet H. Maddox
- 04-11-14
You will get value for your dollar or credit!
Do you know that feeling when you want to hurry through a book because it is hard to put down and at the same time you find it so enjoyable that you hate to see it end? This long book was a treat from beginning to end. I liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the narrator. And it kept me enthralled for all 30+ hours. Reading the reviews of Tartt's other books which I have not read, I see comments for one having a lengthy end and for the other, comments about an abrupt end. I must say this one seemed about right. Yes, it ended with loose ends, but that's life - never tied in a neat bow. Yes, the author did some lengthy philosophizing at the end, but I was so reluctant for the book to end that I enjoyed this part as well. You will get your money's worth for sure!
A bit of art history, a bit about art conservation, a bit about furniture restoration and the antiques business, a lot about casual drug use, a lot of mystery and intrigue - a modern take on a who-done-it combined with coming of age in difficult circumstances. All in all, I loved it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- kelly
- 12-15-13
A long road to ????
Is there anything you would change about this book?
This book takes a really long time to get nowhere. Nine hours of this book could have been written in just two chapters. None of the characters thus far have any depth to them, and the plot is 90% unnecessary details. I doubt I'll be investing the time it takes to finish the rest of the story, and sadly it doesn't bother me in the least. If you are looking for a good read you are better of getting something like Shantaram.
Would you ever listen to anything by Donna Tartt again?
unlikely
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful