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Dear Life
- Stories
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Arthur Morey
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
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Publisher's summary
A brilliant new collection of stories from one of the most acclaimed and beloved writers of our time.
Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro’s peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but always spacious and timeless stories is once again everywhere apparent in this brilliant new collection. In story after story, she illumines the moment a life is forever altered by a chance encounter or an action not taken, or by a simple twist of fate that turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into a new way of being or thinking. A poet, finding herself in alien territory at her first literary party, is rescued by a seasoned newspaper columnist, and is soon hurtling across the continent, young child in tow, toward a hoped-for but completely unplanned meeting. A young soldier, returning to his fiancée from the Second World War, steps off the train before his stop and onto the farm of another woman, beginning a life on the move. A wealthy young woman having an affair with the married lawyer hired by her father to handle his estate comes up with a surprising way to deal with the blackmailer who finds them out.
While most of these stories take place in Munro’s home territory - the small Canadian towns around Lake Huron - the characters sometimes venture to the cities, and the audiobook ends with four pieces set in the area where she grew up, and in the time of her own childhood: stories “autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact.” A girl who can’t sleep imagines night after wakeful night that she kills her beloved younger sister. A mother snatches up her child and runs for dear life when a crazy woman comes into her yard.
Suffused with Munro’s clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these tales about departures and beginnings, accidents and dangers, and outgoings and homecomings both imagined and real, paint a radiant, indelible portrait of how strange, perilous, and extraordinary ordinary life can be.
Critic reviews
"Both Kimberly Farr and Arthur Morey lend intuitive pacing to their nuanced performances of these works. The listener becomes steeped in the meaning and beauty of Munro's stories by virtue of the performers' deliberate pacing. They give each one the focus that is essential for the concentrated prose of the short story genre. Further, they convey the sense of profundity that these stories evoke with eloquent and clear deliveries." (AudioFile)
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La gran novelista, premio Nobel.
- By Anonymous User on 05-31-24
By: Alice Munro, and others
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The Best Short Stories 2023
- The O. Henry Prize Winners
- By: Lauren Groff - editor, Jenny Minton Quigley - editor
- Narrated by: Lauren Groff, full cast
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Lauren Groff has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices and including several stories in translation.
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Every story is overwhelmingly melancholy.
- By Jane S. on 10-31-23
By: Lauren Groff - editor, and others
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Tenth of December
- Stories
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
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Be prepared for something different...but good!
- By Mr. D on 02-21-14
By: George Saunders
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Mi vida querida [Dear Life]
- By: Alice Munro, Eugenia Vázquez Nacarino - translator
- Narrated by: Sol de la Barreda
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Una hermosa colección de cuentos de la premio Nobel Alice Munro, donde el amor, que nos acecha desde el pasado o nos reclama desde el futuro, es el tema central.
By: Alice Munro, and others
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
- Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
- By: Katherine Boo
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away.
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An Antidote for Shantaram
- By Dr. on 06-14-12
By: Katherine Boo
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Random Family
- Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
- By: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her extraordinary best seller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses listeners in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George; and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies.
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Speechless
- By Amazon Customer on 09-02-19
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Raymond Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark.
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Great stories, awful performance
- By Victor Capo on 02-14-19
By: Raymond Carver
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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The Best American Short Stories 2023
- By: Min Jin Lee, Heidi Pitlor
- Narrated by: Laura Copland, Jeena Yi, Pascale Armand, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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“Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home.
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Another Great Year of Shorts
- By Michael on 01-18-24
By: Min Jin Lee, and others
What listeners say about Dear Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Elizabeth M. Koehler
- 12-10-13
Poor narration CAN ruin an audiobook...
How could the performance have been better?
Each of the short stories in this collection is read by a man or a woman. Neither reader is very good. All male voices performed by the female reader sound the same, and the female reader's inflection was completely inappropriate -- even occasionally changing the intended meaning or preventing it from being understood. Unfortunately, this stood in the way of my enjoyment of the stories, as well as my being able to learn anything from them. Very distracting. It's a shame; Alice Munro is supposed to be the best.....
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9 people found this helpful
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- george d
- 06-07-24
Munro is an outstanding short story writer.
I am an 87 year old Mid-westener who was surprised how Munro's craft drew me into her Canadian view of our mutual decades. She drew me into her stories like a trout is caught by master fly-fisher. Her lures seem innocent but they hide sharply barbed hooks.
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- Andrew
- 06-17-24
Fantastic short stories
These short stories are beautiful. Filled with the beauty of life. The narration is excellent.
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- Randall
- 02-07-13
Disappointed in this book
Based on the reviews I was excited to start and listen to these stories. I was very disappointed. There is not one single passage or character that moved me or made me sit up and pay attention. I don't know who these stories do appeal to but they do not appeal to me. I did listen to the end but I don't know why.
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7 people found this helpful
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- lenore scendo
- 04-10-21
Performance
The woman narrator is annoyingly “perky” at stretches, which can undermine the profundity of some of the stories. The male narrator of two stories was terrific. Maybe that was due to the stories themselves.
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- Kindle me this:
- 05-30-14
"Corrie" was the best storrie
Any additional comments?
Many of the stories had little plot, but instead pivoted on a small realization.
I liked "Corrie" much better than the rest of the story because it had plot, excellent characterization, and a pivotal realization.
However, there was something more - effective use of the Unreliable Narrator (she adopts Howard's POV early on to give the reader information stated as fact, then later adopts Corrie's POV to state contradictory information as fact) to suggest a resolution that was never actually stated.
***(SPOILER ALERT)***
Many reviewers conclude (as Corrie apparently did) that Howard had been pocketing the blackmail money that supposedly was going to Sadie.
Let's assume that Sadie received that money and donated it to the church to pay for the new steeple, which Howard was then paid to design and build.
Remember how the parishioners all thought that Sadie was "a rare person", and they all knew who Corrie was, even though she didn't know them?
The deeper irony is that the new steeple was directly counter to the philosophy and wishes of Corrie's now-deceased father, who had hired the architect in the beginning of the story, which was how Howard the architect and Corrie met.
Remember how Corrie's father despised modern church buildings, and hired Howard to build a traditional one?
So, ultimately, the father's money paid for a steeple he would have despised.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Vio
- 02-21-24
Bit too slow
Bit too slow and most of the stories had no real compelling theme. I don't want to be snarky, but a lot of the stories are about tragically boring lives. For me, the point of books is to transport you away from the mundane.
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- "Not a Robot"
- 12-13-13
shimmering gems - jammed into too small a space
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
yup
What was one of the most memorable moments of Dear Life?
I would only say that I somewhat preferred the earlier stories to the final autobiographical notes.
Have you listened to any of Kimberly Farr and Arthur Morey ’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I found her a bit limited. ALL of her men sounded the same. Not just voice but inflections. I actually found this a bit distracting. On a few occasions, I thought that her emphasis was misplaced. But generally acceptable.
Could you see Dear Life being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
oh for goodness' sake! who thinks up these questions?
Any additional comments?
Yes. Why in the world not leave at least 5 seconds between stories. I generally listen while driving - and frequently in the dark. So it's not that easy or safe to dive for the 'pause' button. A good short story - and these are - sometimes ends beautifully and abruptly, leaving the listener lost in thought. But no time for that here! We've got to push on to the next story pronto!!! Not even two heartbeats to absorb the ending.PLEASE reconsider this policy.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Buyer009
- 08-29-16
Pleasantly captivating
Hard to put a finger on why her short stories are so engrossing. But I was captivated the entire time. The characters, the real inclinations they have and the observations each bar narrator makes are all experiences we wouldn't be able to absorb anywhere but Munro's words.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Alison
- 05-26-15
Engaging Stories
What made the experience of listening to Dear Life the most enjoyable?
Characters were both unusual and familiar.
What other book might you compare Dear Life to and why?
Flannery O'Conner similar engagement with normal quirky people. "Life is strange".
Any additional comments?
This is one of my favorite Audible books for both the stories and the narration. I do not understand the negative reviews. It was perfect for working on a task while listening.
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2 people found this helpful