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The Four Corners of the Heart
- An Unfinished Novel
- Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt
- Length: 4 hrs and 1 min
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The Four Corners of the Heart
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Publisher's summary
From the internationally bestselling author of Bonjour Tristesse comes the surprise publication of a novel she never finished—and a story that evokes her greatest works.
French literary star Françoise Sagan was just eighteen when she published her first bestseller, Bonjour Tristesse, in 1954. Decades later, this short novel surfaced: an unfinished manuscript that wittily dissects the romantic lives of its bourgeois characters.
The glamorous Marie-Laure never expected her wealthy older husband to survive a devastating car accident that left him in a fragile mental and physical condition. But three years later, Ludovic Cresson returns home to the family estate and finds himself in the throes of a tumultuous marriage.
Overseeing this tense dynamic is Henri, the patriarch, who wants to see his son recover but detests various members of his own family. When Marie-Laure’s mother visits the estate, the family equilibrium falters spectacularly. As Ludovic’s virility returns, he cannot resist the charms of his mother-in-law—and neither can his father.
The story ends abruptly, but it offers a vivid, if open ended, look into some of Sagan’s final undiscovered characters.
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Critic reviews
“Despite being unfinished, Sagan’s razor-sharp portrayal of the upper classes is on full display in this fine novel.”—Library Journal
“There’s a romantic charm, innocence and otherworldliness to this book of a kind unlikely to be found in a contemporary novel…a curiously pleasing reminder of what a one-off Françoise Sagan was.”—The Spectator
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 374
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 334
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 329
Edith Wharton stands among the finest writers of early 20th-century America. In The Custom of the Country, Wharton’s scathing social commentary is on full display through the beautiful and manipulative Undine Spragg. When Undine convinces her nouveau riche parents to move to New York, she quickly injects herself into high society. But even a well-to-do husband isn’t enough for Undine, whose overwhelming lust for wealth proves to be her undoing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Cannot recommend a better narrator!
- By Esther on 07-29-12
By: Edith Wharton
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The Age of Innocence
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,281
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,019
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,013
Countess Ellen Olenska, separated from her European husband, returns to old New York society. She bears with her an independence and an awareness of life which stirs the educated sensitivity of the charming Newland Archer, engaged to be married to her cousin, May Welland. Though he accepts the society's standards and rules he is acutely aware of their limitations. He knows May will assure him a conventional future but Ellen, scandalously separated from her husband, forces Archer to question his values and beliefs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Narrated to Perfection
- By Ilana on 09-18-12
By: Edith Wharton
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The Belly of Paris
- By: Émile Zola, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly - translator
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
Although it is little known in this country, The Belly of Paris is considered one of Émile Zola’s best novels. Set in the newly built food markets of Paris, it is a story of wealth and poverty set against a sumptuous banquet of food and commerce. Having just escaped from prison after being wrongfully accused, young Florent arrives at Paris’ food market, Les Halles, half starved, surrounded by all he can’t have, and indignant at his world, which he now knows to be unjust. He finds that the city’s working classes have been displaced to make way for bigger streets and bourgeois living quarters, so he settles in with his brother’s family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not keen on Davidson’s voice
- By Jeff Lacy on 05-08-21
By: Émile Zola, and others
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The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 1: The Forsyte Saga
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 38 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
John Galsworthy's magnificent trilogy of power and passion chronicles the wealthy Forsyte family. As the disintegrating values of the Victorian era progress to World War I and the political uncertainty of the 1930s, the family's material and emotional struggles are set within the dwindling status of the affluent middle-classes.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tiring
- By marsha nunley on 04-29-21
By: John Galsworthy
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Bel Ami
- By: Guy de Maupassant
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 180
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4 out of 5 stars 158
Guy de Maupassant is revered for his naturalistic fiction, which brilliantly captures flesh-and-blood characters as it evokes the most telling details of everyday life. Considered one of the finest French novels ever written, Bel Ami follows journalist Georges Duroy and his increasing stature among the Paris elite. With an immense thirst for power, Georges is not above an almost gleeful use of wealthy mistresses to achieve his ends.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bel Ami or how to socially climb in 1885 Paris
- By Neil Chisholm on 12-03-13
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Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Frederic Moreau is a law student returning home to Normandy from Paris when he first notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a lifetime. He befriends her husband, an influential businessman, and their paths cross and re-cross over the years. Through financial upheaval, political turmoil, and countless affairs, Mme Arnoux remains the constant, unattainable love of Moreau’s life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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When Crimes of Passion Were All the Fashion
- By W Perry Hall on 03-12-17
By: Gustave Flaubert
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,164
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,884
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,891
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 35 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,676
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 12,514
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12,443
Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Need to Disclose and Highlight Name of Translator
- By Charles B on 08-27-18
By: Leo Tolstoy
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The Painted Veil
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,057
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,486
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,472
First published in 1925, The Painted Veil is an affirmation of the human capacity to grow, change, and forgive. Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, it is the story of the beautiful but shallow young Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to a remote region of China ravaged by a cholera epidemic.
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4 out of 5 stars
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What An Unexpected Delight!
- By Mimi on 10-22-08
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Remembrance of Things Past
- Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust, Scott Moncrieff - translator
- Narrated by: John Rowe
- Length: 19 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 679
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 558
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 554
Swann's Way is Marcel Proust's literary masterpiece and the first part of the multivolume audiobook Remembrance of Things Past. In the opening volume, the narrator travels back in time to recall his childhood and to introduce the listener to Charles Swann, a wealthy friend of the family and celebrity in the Parisian social scene. He again travels back, this time to the youth of Charles Swann in the French town of Combray, to tell the story of the love affair that took place before his own birth.
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5 out of 5 stars
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EXCELLENT!
- By Maggie on 08-18-10
By: Marcel Proust, and others
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,062
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 941
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Story4 out of 5 stars 934
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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Maurice
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Peter Firth
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 986
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 989
'Ah for darkness...not the darkness of a house which coops up a man among furniture, but the darkness where he can be free!' Maurice Hall knows he must choose between living life in the shadows or denying himself a chance at love and fulfilment. Aware of his attraction to the same sex, in a time where it was considered unlawful and immoral to have homosexual desires, Maurice must decide whether to battle or submit to a prejudiced 20th-century English society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally!!! It's past time!
- By Christopher P. on 11-18-10
By: E. M. Forster
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The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,000
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 868
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 862
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
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The Idiot
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Alastair Cameron
- Length: 23 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
Young Prince Mishkin is that rare thing - a "completely beautiful human being". He is honest, humble, generous, and selfless, but unfortunately these traits mean he is often mistaken for an idiot. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, after being away at a Swiss sanatorium for the treatment of epilepsy, Prince Mishkin is taken under the wing of the wife of General Yepanchin, who arranges for him to live with the family of her money-obsessed friend Ganya.
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5 out of 5 stars
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wow.
- By Michal Krawczyk on 04-25-17
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Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
- A Novel
- By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Jull Costa Margaret - translator, Robin Patterson - translator
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Machado de Assis’ classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for 21st-century audiences. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: “I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible story from an incredible author
- By Anonymous User on 01-01-21
By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and others
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The Voyage Out
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 96
The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely
- By Edith on 05-24-19
By: Virginia Woolf