The Sadness of Beautiful Things
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The Sadness of Beautiful Things
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By:
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Simon Van Booy
About this listen
An exquisite new collection of short stories from award-winning author Simon Van Booy.
Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes listeners into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better.
“Van Booy’s stories are somehow like paintings the characters walk out of, and keep walking.” (Los Angeles Times)
"Simon Van Booy knows a great deal about the complex longings of the human heart." (Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain)
Audiobook Table of Contents:
"A Sacrifice", read by Alana Kerr Collins
"The Green Blanket", read by James Fouhey
"Playing with Dolls", read by Simon van Booy
"The Pigeon", read by Giordan Diaz
"The Hitchhiker", read by Alana Kerr Collins
"Not Dying", read by Darren Burrows
"The Saddest Case of True Love", read by Simon van Booy
"The Doorman", read by James Fouhey
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Critic reviews
"With a deceitful simplicity and a generously empathetic ear, Simon Van Booy gets to the core of the moment." (Colum McCann, author of Transatlantic and Let The Great World Spin)
"Simon Van Booy writes wonderful stories that surprise and uplift, that hold our attention all the way with subtle revelations about life in all its astounding contradictions: its sorrows and joys." (Sheila Kohler, author of Becoming Jane Eyre and Once We Were Sisters)
"Each of these eight stories, while burdened by loss, are also limned with a more hopeful light. Van Booy captures the rare flashbulb memories of trauma, heartbreak, and melancholy, in the lives of people he’s met, but his writing basks in the healing afterglow of what follows. In the sparsely furnished prose of Van Booy’s stories it is easy to pour oneself into his characters, who I delight to know are real people, existing somewhere far away." (Madeline Day, The Paris Review)
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 55
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 371
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 332
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Story4 out of 5 stars 332
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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1 out of 5 stars
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Story4 out of 5 stars 161
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 579
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 464
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 464
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 61
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 63
By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,373
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,920
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,918
When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Patchett Has It
- By Pamela Harvey on 06-10-08
By: Ann Patchett
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Marrow
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Audra Pagano
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 551
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 492
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 491
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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4 out of 5 stars
-
HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
-
The Road Home
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008, The Road Home is the best-selling story of Lev, a middle-aged migrant from Eastern Europe, who moves to London in search of work after losing his wife and job. Lev's London is awash with money, celebrity and complacency. The world Tremain creates is both convincing and poignant.
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4 out of 5 stars
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OK - nice narration - good characters
- By bea on 02-21-11
By: Rose Tremain
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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 362
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 219
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 220
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Without a Map
- A Memoir
- By: Meredith Hall
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 53
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not Your Average "16 and Pregnant"
- By Susie on 12-11-12
By: Meredith Hall
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She Got Up Off the Couch
- By: Haven Kimmel
- Narrated by: Haven Kimmel
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 274
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 186
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 187
When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or "working." And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Great fun !!
- By Kim on 04-20-11
By: Haven Kimmel
-
The UnAmericans
- Stories
- By: Molly Antopol
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 124
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 111
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 111
Again and again, Molly Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Sensational stories! Brilliant new author.
- By MidwestGeek on 05-04-14
By: Molly Antopol
-
She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,096
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,824
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,840
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
-
The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 719
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 653
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 651
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
-
The Other Mother
- By: Rachel Harper
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, William DeMeritt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 42
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami, who arrives at Brown University on a scholarship—but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was Jenry’s mother’s lover?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Very good.
- By Roland Harper on 05-22-22
By: Rachel Harper
-
Homesick for Another World
- Stories
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 301
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 267
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 267
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Jamestown promises to be a history lover’s dream, a reality series featuring 15 contestants who will spend six months living in 17th century conditions, their ability to adapt and overcome daily hardship judged by millions of TV viewers. Supplies will be replenished, and a medical officer will be on hand to ensure everyone’s well-being. Lucrative cash prizes will be awarded at the end.
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Very Gory compared to Craven Manor
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Clever and Current
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Lark Smith has always had a plan for her life: find a fantastic guy, create a marriage as blissful as her parents’, pop out a couple of kids, and build a rewarding career as an oncologist. Things aren’t going so well. For one, the guy didn’t work out. Theoretically, she’d love to find someone else, but it hasn’t happened. Two, she’s just been transferred out of Oncology for being too emotional. (Is it her fault she’s a weeper?) Three, her parents just split up. Deviating from the plan was … well, not in the plan. A potential solution comes from the foul-tempered surgeon Lorenzo Santini.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyed the book but not the narration
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October in the Earth
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Del Wensley, wife of the most celebrated preacher in Harlan County, tries to mind her place. Until her husband’s infidelity pushes an already strained marriage to a breaking point. Clinging to her last hope for self-respect, Del turns her back on the rigid life she’s known. A coal train is rolling through the valley. With her eyes wide open to the unfamiliar, and to the freedom she craves, Del takes to the rails.
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Remarkable and Well-Done
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Being a typewriter is not as easy as it looks. Surrounded by books (notorious attention hogs) and recently replaced by a computer, Olivetti has been forgotten by the Brindles—the family he’s lived with for years. The Brindles are busy humans, apart from twelve-year-old Ernest, who would rather be left alone with his collection of Oxford English Dictionaries. Once a collector of words, now Olivetti only collects dust. He gets a rare glimpse of action from Ernest’s mom, Beatrice—his used-to-be frequent visitor—only for her to drop him off at Heartland Pawn Shop and leave him behind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely brilliant!
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Bear
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Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Depressing drudgery
- By Catherine on 08-09-24
By: Julia Phillips
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The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
- A Novel
- By: Helen Simonson
- Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Helen Simonson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 161
It is the summer of 1919, and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well done
- By lyjo on 07-31-24
By: Helen Simonson
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The Last Masterpiece
- A Novel of World War II Italy
- By: Laura Morelli
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Christa Lewis
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
In the summer of 1943, Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans is working as a humble typist at the Yale Art Gallery. When both women are called to Italy to contribute to the war effort, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world’s greatest masterpieces torn from the Uffizi Galleries and other Florentine art collections in her hands.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Saving ART!
- By Syd Young on 08-11-23
By: Laura Morelli
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The Great Unexpected
- By: Dan Mooney
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 231
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 203
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 203
Joel lives in a nursing home, and he’s not one bit happy about it. He hates being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to take his pills. He’s fed up with life and begins to plan a way out when his new roommate, a retired soap opera actor named Frank, moves in and turns the nursing-home community upside down.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Really enjoyed this
- By Carmen K. Pollic on 04-10-23
By: Dan Mooney
What listeners say about The Sadness of Beautiful Things
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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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
- David Kaplan
- 10-13-18
Heartwarming tales
Simon Van Booy is truly a masterful storyteller. The poignant tales in this collection seem to come from another time, echoing the deep humanity of such legends as Issac Bashevis Singer and James Joyce.
His ability to reach a reader’s soul is without peer and for this we are so fortunate. Highly recommended!
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