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Bel Canto
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
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Bel Canto
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Publisher's summary
“Blissfully Romantic.... A strange, terrific, spellcasting story.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Bel Canto...should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty.” (Lloyd Moss, WXQR)
“Glorious.” (The New Yorker)
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
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Critic reviews
- 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction
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"Patchett can be counted on to deliver novels rich in imaginative bravado and psychological nuance. This fluid and assured narrative...demonstrates her growing maturity and mastery of form." (Publishers Weekly)
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 379
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 284
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 288
Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos crafts an irresistibly touching debut novel. Love Walked In is a contemporary tale, steeped in nostalgic, cinematic charm, of love in all its forms. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia Brown appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But it is Martin's connection to 11-year-old Clare Hobbes that touches Cornelia's heart in ways she never imagined.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dreadful audio quality
- By Marenghi on 09-16-11
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The Magician's Lie
- A Novel
- By: Greer Macallister
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Nick Podehl
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,460
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,313
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,318
The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage. One night in Waterloo, Iowa, with young policeman Virgil Holt watching from the audience, she swaps her trademark saw for a fire ax. Is it a new version of the illusion, or an all-too-real murder? When Arden's husband is found lifeless beneath the stage later that night, the answer seems clear.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Too Fantastic
- By Ms. Lucy on 02-22-15
-
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
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 359
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 216
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 217
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 240
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 94
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 97
Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
-
A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 697
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 602
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 592
The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
-
The Secret Keeper
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 15,961
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14,260
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14,234
England, 1959: Laurel Nicolson is 16 years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Kate Morton (and Caroline Lee) does it again!
- By Maria on 10-20-12
By: Kate Morton
-
The Singing Bone
- By: Beth Hahn
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 73
Alice and her three closest friends meet the enigmatic Jack Wyck. Enticed by his philosophy and the promise of a constant party, Alice and her friends join Mr. Wyck's small group of devoted followers. Their idyll takes an increasingly sinister turn. Mr. Wyck's grand scheme goes wrong, culminating in a night of horrific murders.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed feelings - you may love it - or not!
- By C. Vincent on 04-19-16
By: Beth Hahn
-
The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 81
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
-
Diamond Head
- A Novel
- By: Cecily Wong
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Samantha Chen, Angela Lin, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 113
Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
.
- By Gina on 09-06-15
By: Cecily Wong
-
The Muse
- A Novel
- By: Jessie Burton
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Maria Elena Infantino
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 400
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 370
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 365
England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed narration
- By Amy Fleury on 08-05-16
By: Jessie Burton
-
One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 127
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 101
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 99
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
-
Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 436
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 387
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 387
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
-
Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 302
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 256
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 260
Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
-
Funerals for Horses
- By: Catherine Ryan Hyde
- Narrated by: Carly Robins
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 123
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 107
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 109
Ella Ginsberg's brother, Simon, has disappeared. His clothing, shoes, and watch were found abandoned near a freight line track in Central California. His jockey shorts and wallet were never found. The police have no clue, and Simon's wife had no warning that anything was wrong. Ella takes off on foot across much of California and Arizona, thinking she can find Simon using nothing but her knowledge of the way he might think. Her search leads her to the Navajo Nation in Arizona.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Funerals for Horses
- By Carolyn Ferrell on 03-26-18
-
Russian Winter
- A Novel
- By: Daphne Kalotay
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 167
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 117
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 115
In Russian Winter, the beautiful debut novel by critically acclaimed writer Daphne Kalotay, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalinist Russia. Called “tender, passionate, and moving” by Jenna Blum, the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us, Russian Winter is a perfect choice for fans of the novels of Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), and Ian McEwan (Atonement).
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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Do yourself a favor and listen to this book!
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One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.
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It's a winter evening in Boston and the temperature has drastically dropped as a blizzard approaches the city. On this fateful night, Bernard Doyle plans to meet his two adopted sons, Tip the older, and more serious and Teddy, the affectionate dreamer, at a Harvard auditorium to hear a speech given by Jesse Jackson. Doyle, an Irish Catholic and former Boston mayor, has done his best to keep his two sons interested in politics, from the day he and his now deceased wife became their parents, through their childhoods, and now in their lives as college students.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Don't listen to the interview at the end.
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Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving, genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths, and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real--and all life’s givens get given a second chance.
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Incompetent Foreign Pronunciation
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Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper, Vogue, and The Washington Post, form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love.
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Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays
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The Human Stain
- By: Philip Roth
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- Unabridged
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It is 1998, the year America is plunged into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president. In a small New England town a distinguished professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues allege that he is a racist. The charge is unfounded, the persecution needless, but the truth about Silk would astonish even his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret that he has kept for fifty years. This is the conclusion to Roth’s brilliant trilogy of post-war America—a story of seismic shifts in American history and a personal search for renewal and regeneration.
By: Philip Roth
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These Precious Days
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“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.
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Heartfelt Essays, Beautifully Performed
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By: Ann Patchett
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The author of Bel Canto, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize, and long-running New York Times best seller, turns to nonfiction in a moving chronicle of her decades-long friendship with the critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.
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A grim tale of unrecovered co-dependency
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The Dutch House
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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.
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Not my favorite Patchett
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By: Ann Patchett
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This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Somewhat Disappointed
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By: Zadie Smith
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Veronica
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 55
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 54
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".
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2 out of 5 stars
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Everything is baroque-en
- By Eric on 12-14-06
By: Mary Gaitskill
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What Now?
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
Based on her lauded commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, this stirring essay by best-selling author Ann Patchett offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, "What now?"
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5 out of 5 stars
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A commencement message for life
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By: Ann Patchett
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The Savage Detectives
- A Novel
- By: Roberto Bolaño
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 332
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Story4 out of 5 stars 337
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.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Bolaño Poetic Gyre
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: Roberto Bolaño
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The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
- Complete Collection
- By: Lydia Davis
- Narrated by: Mia Barron, Thérèse Plummer, Jonathan Davis
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
Lydia Davis is one of our most original and influential writers, a storyteller celebrated for her emotional acuity, her formal inventiveness, and her ability to capture the mind in overdrive. She has been called "an American virtuoso of the short story form" ( Salon.com ) and "one of the quiet giants... of American fiction" ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ). This volume contains all her stories to date, from the acclaimed "Break It Down" (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee "Varieties of Disturbance".
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating, quirky short stories
- By 4thace on 03-08-19
By: Lydia Davis
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 996
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 887
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 888
When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
What listeners say about Bel Canto
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Dr. D
- 10-21-11
Well worth your time!
A really good story. The author develops each character completely and puts you inside their head. The emotions are developed and palpable! You can't wait to see what comes next!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Trista
- 07-08-11
only all right
I might have expected too much from this book. I had heard many great things, but I thought it was only okay. I kept waiting and waiting for that moment that just grips you and you never want to stop listening, but it never came. Anna Fields does a great job, though!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- JACK
- 05-04-12
Beautiful Singing
The story's characters are as real as the people i see everyday. It is a wonderful, painful,dreamlike love story. It feels like the ending is abrupt. Only later did i realize it made me just like the people in the story would have felt. There was no other ending possible.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Colleen Calvert
- 09-18-11
Unusual, engaging story
Every time I found myself thinking this story sounded impossible, it would surprise me and draw me in further. It doesn't really matter if it is realistic or not. The characters are wonderful and the relationships, while unconventional, are interesting. This is a book in which you are drawn to almost all the characters, however flawed. Loved it!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Harold
- 08-18-11
A book to savor
Ann Patchett develops her characters oh so slowly, in the same way we learn about people in real life. This allowed me to get to know them and savor them. Listening added to this dimension for me especially with such an expressive narrator.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Janeen
- 12-21-20
what a beautiful story
love, excitement, tears, understanding, breathless.
I am holding back my tears as this ending was so beautiful and sad. such a great read. honestly, slow start...but well worth every single word!!! the Writer did an excellent job with every detail!!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- L.Drake
- 08-01-15
Beautifully Written: Disappointing Morality
This was a magical story about how music can transform a situation. However, the infidelity towards the end was very disappointing. It diminished the beauty.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Heather Knuckey
- 02-18-15
I didn't think I was going to be so interested
I'm not giving away the story but she systematically brings you thru the story getting to know and like people and cheering for them to feel what it must have felt like in the end.
I have trouble sitting and listening to a story thru. I lose interest here and there usually but not in this book.
she keeps you waiting and interested without too much time passing before you can think I no longer care about this character.
she gives you just enough clearly and then allows you to feel as if you were them.
what it must have been like.
she allows you to know what will happen in the end. at first, you think when will it happen with an eager sensation but as you near the end you think when's it going to happen with dread.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- molly
- 09-23-15
Amazing!
One of the best books I have read in the past 10 years! The performance was astounding!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joshua O. Hess
- 06-23-15
Engaging
This is an extremely engaging and well written novel. The characters are each completely realized and I felt more and more connected to the individuals as they intertwined.
Patchett went to Sarah Lawrence College, of which I am alum. She's remarkable and easy to recommend.
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