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The Round House
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Gary Farmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's summary
National Book Award, Fiction, 2012
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and 13-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.
Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.
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Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to "cure" homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he's forced to face his past - and his role in another camper's death. As he recounts the events surrounding his "failed rehabilitation", Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer.
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A story full of heart and healing
- By ZippyBippy on 05-06-18
By: Nick White
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The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
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I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
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Fourth of July Creek
- A Novel
- By: Smith Henderson
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
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The Ghost of Tom Joad & the Wrath of Grapes
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By: Smith Henderson
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
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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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Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
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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....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Marrow
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Audra Pagano
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
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Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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Homesick for Another World
- Stories
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
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Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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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
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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.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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Walk Two Moons
- By: Sharon Creech
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In her own award-winning style, Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.
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Such a great story wonderfully told
- By Susan on 02-06-12
By: Sharon Creech
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She was named Omakakiins, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop. Omakakiins and her family live on an island in Lake Superior. Though there are growing numbers of white people encroaching on their land, life continues much as it always has. But the satisfying rhythms of their life are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever—but that will eventually lead Omakakiins to discover her calling.
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Heart Berries, what a gift!
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Leslie Marmon Silko's sublime Ceremony is almost universally considered one of the finest novels ever written by an American Indian. It is the poetic, dreamlike tale of Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo and veteran of World War II. Tormented by shell shock and haunted by memories of his cousin who died in the war, Tayo struggles on his impoverished reservation. After turning to alcohol to ease his pain, he strives for a better understanding of who he is.
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When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diary - hidden where Gil will find it - into a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an eerily gripping listen.
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Enjoyed it until the ending
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What listeners say about The Round House
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Precious
- 04-22-23
More!
Keeps you wanting more! I liked the story a lot. I just feel like I'm left with more questions than answers. Happy i took the time though!
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- Ryan
- 02-21-13
Louise Erdrich hits one out of the park
For me, this novel was about as close to perfect as contemporary fiction gets. It's beautifully written, well-voiced, full of memorable characters, and a rich snapshot of life on a North Dakota Indian reservation in the late 1980s. The narrator, Joe, is a grown man remembering a few life-shaping months of his early teens. The book begins with Joe and his father, a reservation judge, coming upon Joe's mother, who has just been assaulted and raped. The situation soon grows in complexity -- Geraldine takes to her bed and can't (or won't) recall who attacked her, and because the attack occurred somewhere close to the reservation boundary, it's unclear whose legal jurisdiction it falls into.
With his mother in legal and emotional limbo, and the police seemingly disinterested, the young Joe takes it on himself to solve the crime, though he proceeds in a typically fumbling, distractible adolescent manner. What follows is a story that's a lot of things at once. It's a mystery, a coming-of-age story, a drama of family and best friends, and a reflection on the history of a people struggling to maintain control of their own laws and culture within the larger framework of American society and its systems. Through Joe's young eyes, we come to grasp the weight of a complex past on the present day. I was in awe of the subtle purity with which Erdrich makes these separate pieces connect, ultimately bringing her protagonist towards terms with his reality and his identity.
As I said, the characters are wonderful. There's Joe's soft-spoken, intelligent father, Bazil. There's Joe's best friend, Cappy, the boy we all remember from adolescence who seemed to be a step ahead of us in confidence and experience, if not always wisdom. There's an ex-Marine priest, who has a singularly painful reason for choosing his vocation. There's an old man whose nocturnal tales confuse (or perhaps not) real events and tribal mythology. There's one of the dirtiest-minded old grandmas I've ever encountered in fiction. Erdrich's craft as a writer is such that I felt that I knew these people well and could picture their backstories and relationships within a couple pages of meeting them. (If I have a complaint at all, it's that the villain's pretty one-dimensional, but that wasn’t a big issue for me.)
The central, recurring theme in The Round House is that of overlapping worlds. I knew I was in love with the writing a few chapters in, when Joe explains Star Trek: the Next Generation from the perspective of reservation boys. In this personal way, Erdrich explores several other blurred boundaries, such as that between the Indian world and the white world, the way both Christian and native beliefs have personal meaning, the difficult crossing between childhood and the adult world, and the conflict between personal justice and the importance of rational, impartial law. I loved the way she brought these separate threads together in the raw, but beautifully symbolic final chapters. This is the novel that many aspiring writers attend MFA programs in search of, but few pull off.
To me, Gary Farmer did a good job with the audiobook narration, though some listeners might find the halting intonation of his Native American accent a little reminiscent of William Shatner. The only other book of Erdrich's I've read before was A Plague of Doves; while it was good, this is the one to start with.
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28 people found this helpful
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- K. Shaw
- 03-28-13
Not your usual intense mystery
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Round House?
The teenage boys watching a video they liked by peering through the priest's window into his home.
Any additional comments?
I listened to the audio version of this book. It was an OK story that was well told but just not my usual intense mystery/thriller. This was a slight mystery/drama set in the late 80's on an Indian reservation and told from a 13 year old boy's perspective. I will say there are some very funny moments with the 13 year old boy and his buddies.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Brian
- 03-14-13
What was all the hoopla about?
I fell for it. I thought the story slogged along and this was one of the worst narrators ever. So many times, I had inserted a mental period only to discover that it was a mistimed, inappropriate pause. The only reason I finished was I didn't have the good sense to download a backup for my roadtrip. Thumbs down!
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3 people found this helpful
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- MASI
- 01-16-13
Great writer and great narrator
Most of the story is told from the perspective of a twelve year old boy who I grew to love, flaws and all (due in part to the skillfull narration). The author has obviously done her research and her description of the complexities of life on a reservation are very realistic. The only parts I did not enjoy were the sidebars where she told a story within the story. I think she was trying to write in an "authentic" native voice but the sidebars were very distracting. It was really hard to discern the message she was trying to convey with them.
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- shira5665
- 01-14-13
Another brilliant Louise Erdrich story.
Ms Erdrich's prose takes you in to her world so intimately that you feel like you're actually sitting on the sidelines watching as the story unfolds. I loved every moment of being in that world. The life of a teenaged boy on an Indian reservation so unfamiliar - and yet the inevitable unfolding of the human drama so familiar, gives the story a resonance that lasts long after the last word. I also loved (as always) her mastery of the writing craft - there's not one extraneous or redundant word. A story I'll definitely read/listen to again.
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- Kristen
- 12-19-12
Great book and narration
Would you listen to The Round House again? Why?
I love Erdrich, and the story was at once sad, captivating and redeeming. Farmer did a great narration. I love his easy way of speaking.
What other book might you compare The Round House to and why?
I don't know what to compare this book to. But it's just as good as Wild and Beautiful Ruins in its own way. The writing is literary but not dense. Totally enjoyable to listen to.
What about Gary Farmer’s performance did you like?
I loved his drawl. Perfect for a story about the Reservation.
If you could rename The Round House, what would you call it?
Indian Found
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- tooonce72
- 02-11-13
Likeable enough
A 80's Brighton Beach Memoirs on the reservation. The Round House seemed as if Brighton Beach Memoirs was used as this books blueprint. The author took it across country and in an effort to advance it 50 years added drugs, guns and violence.
Such is the way of the world.
The tribal lore and the ways of life on the reservation were interesting. I even enjoyed Gary Farmer's authentic reading. It was the reoccurring unbelievable major events that haunted me throughout and took away from the story.
What I most had difficulties with is the lack of medical care the mother once she came home from the hospital. Days and days went by where I kept screaming, "Get the poor woman some medical attention PLEASE!" It was hard to listen to it go on for a month or better. You cannot tell me that an educated man would buy a new clock before taken his emaciated troubled wife to a doctor.
Once unbelievably starts in a book, then you start questioning everything and the story gets sidetracked.. So the author wants me now to believe at none of the half a dozen or so banks this floozy drags an unrelated teenager into, with tens of thousands of cash, no one investigates...make her show proof of origin, call the IRS? Then within a month all but one of the accounts is drained of over two hundred thousand and banking officials aren't investigating money laundering? In 1988 there is no way that would happen. Not to mention that the author mentions many times the lack of groceries but, wants us to believe that 12 different banks are within reach.
Yes, they are silly little things but, when the reader can't see it happening - it can't be visualized.
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- Lynn
- 01-02-13
Strong story, narration was not a problem
The headline is not intended to damn this audiobook with faint praise. The story is great, and I almost decided not to "read' this book on Audible because of some prior reviewers suggested the narration detracted from the story. But I am glad I did listen to it. The performance was an expression of the narrator's voice and seemed entirely appropriate. I thought the book offered an interesting window into the culture on the reservation and the relationships in the family and with their friends and relations as they deal with the horrific assault on the mother and its aftermath. Terrific story, well-plotted. Overall, the audiobook was great, well worth the time invested in listening.
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- CBDC
- 03-08-19
Extraordinary
I’ve listened to books by Erdrich a few years ago and really thought they were poetry and wisdom. This book is by far the best.
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