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We Are Not Ourselves
- Narrated by: Mare Winningham
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
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Publisher's summary
Destined to be a classic, this "powerfully moving" (Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding) multigenerational debut novel of an Irish-American family is nothing short of a "masterwork". (Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End).
Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed.
When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she’s found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers Ed doesn’t aspire to the same, ever bigger, stakes in the American Dream.
Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house, but as years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son, Connell, try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future.
Through the Learys, novelist Matthew Thomas charts the story of the American Century, particularly the promise of domestic bliss and economic prosperity that captured hearts and minds after WWII. The result is a riveting and affecting work of art; one that reminds us that life is more than a tally of victories and defeats, that we live to love and be loved, and that we should tell one another so before the moment slips away.
Epic in scope, heroic in character, masterful in prose, We Are Not Ourselves heralds the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction.
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A good story with added features both intriguing and informational
- By A Signing Mom on 05-15-22
By: Sara Novic
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Tryin' To Sleep In the Bed You Made
- By: Virginia DeBerry, Donna Grant
- Narrated by: Fran L. Washington
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Gayle was the beauty who believed that a man could make her life complete. Patricia was the intellectual who thought that rising to the top of her career would make her happy. And then there is Marcus Carter, who has been linked to both Gayle and Pat since the tragedy that occurred when they were all children. Can either one save him from himself? Can friends survive a love that comes between them? Each of them gets what she wants, but no one counts on the price they have to pay.
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Better with each chapter!
- By Cyn B. on 02-09-16
By: Virginia DeBerry, and others
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Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
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Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
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The Wrong Sister
- By: T. E. Woods
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....
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Nothing like anything T E Woods has written B4!!!
- By shelley on 03-01-18
By: T. E. Woods
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Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
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Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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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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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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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
- Unabridged
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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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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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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Notes on a Banana
- A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression
- By: David Leite
- Narrated by: David Leite
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him, David looks back at the highs and lows of his life, from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to "turn straight" through Aesthetic Realism, a cult in downtown Manhattan, to becoming a writer, cookbook author, and web publisher, to his 23-year relationship with Alan, known to millions of David's readers and listeners as "The One", which began with (what else?) food.
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Finished it in a day!
- By Kathryn on 08-23-17
By: David Leite
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The Rest of Her Life
- By: Laura Moriarty
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy, the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community.
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Obnoxious musical interludes ruin the story
- By Joan on 12-25-11
By: Laura Moriarty
What listeners say about We Are Not Ourselves
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- sandra
- 10-22-15
great read.
well written , difficult to read due to subject. what would I have done if this happen to my family?
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- Julianne
- 06-14-15
Slow but good
Excellent reading. Wonderful vocabulary. Well told story. Plenty for discussion with book group and plenty on which to reflect personally. Story is slow moving but compelling.
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- Kenneth
- 08-25-14
Outstanding Novel about a difficult subject
If you could sum up We Are Not Ourselves in three words, what would they be?
empathy, sadness, reality
Who was your favorite character and why?
Eileen, because she was the energy of the three generations. She was the glue that connected her father to herself and to her son to become a teacher whhile managing a 51 year with Alzheimer's disease.
Have you listened to any of Mare Winningham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
First one.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Ed's letter written to his son when he first learned about the disease not to be given to him until after his death.
Any additional comments?
The book was very good, but for me would have been just as effective without the sexual references. We all know about those and don't need the distraction. It is the only thing that might keep this book from being a Pulitzer.
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19 people found this helpful
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- CPABookLover
- 02-05-15
Perfect in every way
My mom has Alzheimer's and this book deceived so well the feelings and emotions. But this book is so much more than a story involving a character who develops Alzheimer's. It a story of deep, abiding and respectful love; dreams; disappointments. I loved this book so much. The narrator is fitting. Her voice gives Eileen a smoky quality that adds to the story.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Georgia Burns
- 07-07-15
A punishingly realistic account of a family"s dreams and sorrows
I do not recommend this to a caregiver in a family. The brutality of the day to day suffering is almost unbearable. The rest of us can be grateful this isn't our fate....yet. It was so easy to feel superior as each made what seemed obvious bad decisions as they dealt with the emptiness within. The cover art of houses comes clear as the story progresses. That feeling that a new, better place is the answer to what ails you. That the problems are outside and so are the remedies. But trying to dismiss the mother as a self-centered, wrong-headed person was impossible once I was shown the condition of her feet. Would I have been as hard-working and determined given the same circumstances? Mare Winningham has just the right amount of steel beneath that soft, crisp voice of hers. A wonderful match for these flawed characters. Not a "happy" read/listen but there is truth in it.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Carol K.
- 08-19-15
Will it ever end?
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
The book needs serious editing. Pointless details, dragging narrative, and overdone reflections make this pretty boring. I kept waiting for something, anything to happen that I couldn't predict. Unfortunately, the plot was very predictable.
What could Matthew Thomas have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
As mentioned, editing would have removed some of the tedious narrative. The fundamental content was good, but was hidden in metaphors and meaningless conversation.
Have you listened to any of Mare Winningham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Her performance was very good although there were a few strange mispronunciations.
Could you see We Are Not Ourselves being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
In its current state, it would be boring. The basic plot would be interesting and would more than likely be enhanced by condensing the actions within the book to a more realistic pace.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-19-18
Best Book I have read in a long time!
Sometimes you read a book at the right time and it makes such an impact. This beautiful book is incredibly heartbreaking and real but is about everybody and every life. Not something outrageous or heroic but so identifiable. The writer is incredibly gifted in decribing a scene a person a feeling a time and place, human nature. Life.
Beautiful voice.
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- Augusta
- 05-25-15
Slow, Moving Testament to Family and Love
This book was deeply moving. It focuses on the story of 3 generations of an Irish American family, although the story is really told through the dreams and life of Eileen Leary (nee Tumulty). As a child she sees her parents as they try to find their place in America, with her father gregarious; however, as in many similar novel histories, vacillates between the drunk character and the wise, loving father. Eileen is determined to move away from the poverty and alcoholic issues of her childhood and has a determination to better herself and move into a higher class of society.
She meets and marries a scientist, Ed whom she deeply loves but also sees as a way to a better life. They have a son, Connell and she continues to press her husband to move into a higher academic level which would bring them into a higher level of society. She dreams of a new neighbourhood, a better life; however, Ed is reluctant and is content to stay in his job and their neighbourhood.
An unexpected disorder comes into their lives, and although the reader (listener) understands what is happening before Eileen recognizes it, it does not mitigate the sorrow as you see how it affects the family. At this point, the deep love between Eileen and Ed is put to the test, and the reader can keenly feel the difficulties in those changes.
At first I didn't understand the title, but as the book went on, I realized how disheartening it was that these characters (particularly Eileen), in some ways were unable to find contentment in their place in life, but always yearned for something more.
In some ways it could be considered a very melancholy book; however, it was written and orated in such a way that the love, commitment and even some humour that reminds us of the beauty of life, in every moment.
The narrator of the audible book, Mare Winingham was outstanding - allowing the words of the book speak to the reader rather than using her voice to try and insist you hear anything other than the voices of the characters.
It is a deeply affecting book, one that makes you reflect on your own life and desires - and a beautifully written testament to strength of family and love.
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- Walt
- 02-16-18
Powerful story of a family in New York
This book traces an Irish American family’s struggle with the challenges of ordinary middle class life in New York City and a nearby suburb. Seen mainly through the eyes of a determined, sensitive woman, the small triumphs and disappointments of an ordinary life achieve significance. I found this book powerful and very moving. The narration is nuanced and attentive. I recommend it highly.
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- Lea Zimmerman
- 07-17-15
I truly enjoyed this and hope to find more
I really cared about the characters and the storyline, just good solid fiction. will likely listen again!
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