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The Woman Upstairs
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children, a brilliant new novel: the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own.
Nora Eldridge, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who long ago abandoned her ambition to be a successful artist, has become the "woman upstairs", a reliable friend and tidy neighbor always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents - dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar and professor at the École Normale Supérleure; and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist - have come to Boston for Skandar to take up a fellowship at Harvard. When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who call him a "terrorist" Nora is drawn into the complex world of the Shahid family: She finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora's happiness explodes her boundaries, until Sirena's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill - and the devastating cost - of giving in to one's passions.
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Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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A Narrow Door
- By: Joanne Harris
- Narrated by: Alex Kingston, Steven Pacey
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely 40, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.
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Optional heading
- By TanyaB on 01-17-22
By: Joanne Harris
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The Wife
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
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A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
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Boy, Snow, Bird
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Language Arts
- By: Stephanie Kallos
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Marlow is a Seattle English teacher who instructs his students to expand their worlds through language. Lately, however, with one child off to college and the pressure from his ex-wife to make plans for their severely autistic son who's about to age out of the system, he prefers the company of the ghosts he turns up in the storage boxes in his crawl space.
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The beauty of the broken
- By SJ Evans on 04-27-18
By: Stephanie Kallos
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Gold Dust
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
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Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
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It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
- By Maria on 12-04-17
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In Malice, Quite Close
- By: Brandi Lynn Ryder
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
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French ex-pat Tristan Mourault is the wealthy, urbane heir to a world-renowned collection of art - and an insatiable voyeur enamored with Karen Miller, a 15-year-old from a working-class family in San Francisco. Deciding he must 'rescue' Karen from her unhappy circumstances, Tristan kidnaps her and stages her death to mask his true crime.
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In malice,Quite close
- By Wendy on 09-06-11
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
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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.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Russian Winter
- A Novel
- By: Daphne Kalotay
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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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).
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Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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An Available Man
- A Novel
- By: Hilma Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
When Edward Schuyler - a modest and bookish 62-year-old science teacher - is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching.
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Lovely book, easy read, wonderful characters
- By Molly-o on 02-17-12
By: Hilma Wolitzer
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The Finishing School
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- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
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One spring night in 1998, the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school.
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this book was just ok
- By Josh Fields on 02-26-20
By: Joanna Goodman
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Losing the Light
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- By: Andrea Dunlop
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
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When 30-year-old Brooke Thompson unexpectedly runs into a man from her past, she's plunged headlong into memories she's long tried to forget about the year she spent in France following a disastrous affair with a professor.
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Right book for right time
- By Pamela G. on 08-06-18
By: Andrea Dunlop
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What listeners say about The Woman Upstairs
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Michael Tocker
- 05-22-13
Will Avoid This Narrator in the Future!
What did you like best about The Woman Upstairs? What did you like least?
I think that we have all had moments in our lives when we come to a painful realization that a person or persons that we are enamored with, and have built our whole existence and fantasies around, does not feel the same way about us. Hopefully most of us, however, are not dealt the type of shattering betrayal experienced by Nora, the perpetual "woman upstairs". The story portrays this pain eloquently, although it left me with left me with an unsatisfied thirst for revenge! However, I did not like this narrator, Cassandra Campbell at all. Her excessively slow, pretentious melodramatic style of reading, and above all her overly enunciated diction, were highly annoying distractions which often tempted me to discontinue listening altogether. Some of her dialog was better, although again I found her Italian accents extremely annoying as well.
What did you like best about this story?
The emotional complexities of Nora's feelings toward each member of the Sayid family are very compelling.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Cassandra Campbell?
I think I would have liked anyone better. One of the narrators of The Help, maybe - they were all excellent
Do you think The Woman Upstairs needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
A Getting Revenge Book, maybe - seriously though, no follow-up needed - probably what happens next in Nora's life is best left to the imagination
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2 people found this helpful
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- Magical Unicorn
- 09-15-18
Riveting
Messud is a fabulous writer and the narrator is also talented. As a single woman who has recently turned 30 it was really interesting to read this story. I don’t want to be friends with Nora, but her story is interesting, terrifying, and thought-provoking.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Stacy Bray
- 05-25-16
Definitely Recommend
Would you listen to The Woman Upstairs again? Why?
Yes, I already have listened to specific chapters again. The story was beautifully crafted and honest. It showed a depth of understanding of the experiences of the unmarried, childless woman in mid life. This is a subject matter rarely touched on in any form.
Who was your favorite character and why?
I did not have a favorite character as the perceptions of the narrator seemed to be the only character. The other characters were not seen from other points of view. I neither liked or disliked the narrator, didn't even wonder whether I liked or disliked the narrator. I instantly became fascinated with the honesty and bare vulnerability of the story and wanted to know the narrator's journey. I just do not often find this level of honesty. I made no judgments on her life, just interested in knowing her.
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- Karenique
- 06-12-21
What the hell was that? Hmmmm.
I couldn’t make it through the book. Rather than finishing it, I fast-forwarded to the last few chapters, thinking it would help. It did not. I then Googled the book and summary. Thankfully, it was a 2-for-1 special.
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- Karla
- 06-06-13
Two-Page Sample is great, and then it's downhill!
What would have made The Woman Upstairs better?
This novel, like the main male character in the work, needs to be less a talker. Lots of meaningless, seemingly endless chatter, or so it seems. A few lovely sentences but not enough to sustain all the noise.
Has The Woman Upstairs turned you off from other books in this genre?
I loved Messud's THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN and would still recommend that.
What about Cassandra Campbell’s performance did you like?
She captures most of the characters really well and performs a range of accents and age groups. She does least well with the main character, who is from New England--a slight Southern accent peeks through.
Any additional comments?
Skip this book and read the first one if you haven't.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Dephress
- 02-28-17
Meh
Nora is crazy, yes, but not interesting crazy. She's crazy in the way your coworker might be crazy, or even you yourself: in boring, predictable, slightly sad ways. This does not make for a very compelling story.
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- Stephanie
- 11-13-13
So Tedious
The good reviews sucked me in to listening to this rather tedious book. I found the main character to be generally unlikeable and, honestly, couldn't have cared less about what happened to her. The "surprising" ending I had been expecting was pretty anti-climactic and I was just happy to have it all end. Although well written, I can't say this was a particularly captivating story.
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- Anne
- 01-05-14
Why bother?
I may not feel fondness for them, but I can usually grow interested in unlikeable characters as I come to understand the history or motives that drive them, or even the necessities of the plot. Liking the character is the least of my requirements for a compelling read. In this special case, I spent the entire considerable length of this recording feeling my dislike grow into loathing for the main character and feeling worse and worse about listening. What was the point of this unremitting avalanche of hatred, with every plot development and nuance carefully detailed? She comes across not as mentally ill, but just as a really crummy person.
Why bother listening (or reading) about a person who is unremittingly self absorbed and selfish, who has no redeeming qualities and who is swindled by people equally selfish, albeit more glamorous and well dressed? In my case I guess I was holding out for some meaning beyond that there are people in life one should avoid. The only lesson I learned was to avoid Clare Messud.
I disliked the narration as well, but given how awful the character was, perhaps that was good reading.
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- Janice
- 05-20-13
Don't waste your time.
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Making it into a short story.
What could Claire Messud have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Less droning on about what the reader thinks.
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
The narrator did her best with the material.
Any additional comments?
Move on to another choice if you are thinking of listening to this.
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- Anastasia
- 03-05-14
Crazy Story
Would you try another book from Claire Messud and/or Cassandra Campbell?
No, I will not try another book by this author.
What could Claire Messud have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
It seems to me that the author used foul language for the purpose of making the story more sensational. I did not like the way it ended - was there even a REAL ending???
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
The performance was fine. If you have terrible material, it's hard to have a great performance, but the narrator did her part.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
This could have been a better story. The character deserve one another.
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