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Freedom
- A Novel
- Narrated by: David LeDoux
- Length: 24 hrs and 9 mins
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Publisher's Summary
From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a darkly comedic novel about family.
Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become “a very different kind of neighbor,” an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
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Overall
- R. Spangler
- 12-13-10
Enjoyable book. Really liked the narration.
I am a non-fiction guy. I read (listen to) a lot of business books, history books and opinion based on fact (!) books, so it was rather odd that I purchased this nove. I had seen a very glowing review of it in National Review, so it caught my interest. I had just finished Ayn Rand's 51 hour epic, Atlas Shrugged, so I wasn't sure I was up for another stemwinder.
Some of the reviews of this audiobook disparaged David LeDoux's reading of it, especially his rendition of Lalitha, the Bengali girlfriend of Walter. Her voice was a bit contrived, but it was actually not a bad version of a man's Indian accent (albeit a man with a tenor voice.) Seriously, I thought his manner of speaking was soooooooo totally well-done. Some narrators just speak the words, others attempt to bring life to the words while not attempting to actually sound like the character, but LeDoux does it all and it really helped me make it through a 24 hour book.
Rather than review the substance of the book, which has already been well covered, I wanted to comment on the form. As an audiobook, I found it a bit tough to follow the timeline as well as some of the characters of the novel. Franzen's use of time shifting, sometimes in remembrances, sometimes in just seemingly random storyline movements were confusing to this listener. Also, in one chapter near the end when Patty was dealing with her family, the names became almost overwhelming to place without having a visual marker by which to sort them, but such is a hazard of audiobooks.
My hearty recommendation is to get this book. Don't be swayed by a few naysayers about the narration. Plus when you are done with it, you will feel soooooooo much better about your own situation in life. Reeeeally...
32 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Annie M.
- 09-17-10
Brilliant writing, difficult to like
I couldn't wait for Jonathan Franzen's new book to come out. And I have to say...I kinda sorta hated it. And I liked it. A lot. I did not, however, LOVE it.
I like difficult books with difficult characters. But, with the exception of one or two characters, this is a book filled with intensely selfish, deeply unlikeable people. Would that I could create characters so clearly defined! I mean, Franzen is brilliant in this regard. You know EXACTLY who these people are...and you would never want to invite them to dinner.
I had to struggle to get through it. I'm conflicted. Great writing, great story line. But really hard people to spend time with.
I will say, the ending was very satisfying, so I'm glad I hung in there. Getting to the final sentences, though, was a struggle for this voracious reader of comtemporary and classic literature.
131 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Karen Holbrook
- 10-25-10
Insightful
Franzen's characters are so well developed I felt they could be members of my own family. He writes in beautiful prose on how too much freedom can wreak havoc on our lives and our environment. I loved the narrator. He had just the right tone of cynicism in his voice.
12 people found this helpful
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- Tricia, Audible Editor
- 04-11-12
An epic, yet understated, great American novel.
This is a brilliantly written novel. One of the best I’ve read, or listened to, in quite a while. The story-line itself does not give an accurate picture of what this book is all about. When looked at superficially, the main characters are stereotypes of white, liberal, middle class Americans. The subject matter of teenage rebellion, strained relationships with parents, marital estrangement and infidelity can all be considered overdone and passé, but Franzen brings a new insight to these themes and explores them with an honesty and understatedness that is completely refreshing. Freedom is an epic story depicting contemporary American life in a distinctive, intimate and unique way.
David LeDoux, the narrator, does a great job, especially considering the fact that while the author is male, the majority of this story is told from the perspective of Patty Berglund, a female. Having a male narrator does not take away from things one little bit. This is also a long book and the story takes place over many years. The narrator keeps things moving in an entertaining and understandable way.
24 people found this helpful
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Overall
- L. Kerr
- 09-07-10
Believe the Hype
With so much maudlin advance-hype of the printed novel, I looked for reasons to criticize this audiobook. Alas, it lived up to, and in my opinion, exceeded expectations.
David LeDoux does a masterful job in performing the many voices in Freedom. I’ve watched several YouTube interviews of Fanzen. LeDoux’s voice and presentation are similar. He captures Franzen’s manner of speaking which is consistent with the tone and themes of this book. Whether this was intended by the producers is an open question since the narrator of the audiobook The Corrections had a smoky, older voice (though he did a good job).
Fanzen has been criticized for his sarcastic and cynical interviews, but to me he is entertaining, sincere, and very, very smart. Many great authors such as Joyce, Hemmingway, and Fitzgerald had big egos. They took their writing seriously and expected the same from their readers. This is not a bad thing.
I have listened to a little over 300 unabridged audiobooks, many of them recordings of classics such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Joyce, etc. I don’t give inflated reviews. Offhand, the only performance that meets or exceeds LeDoux’s performance is Jeremy Iron’s reading of Lolita. This audiobook is worth the time and money, and then some. It’s that good.
173 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kat
- 09-14-10
An American Classic
I spent a wonderful 24 hours listening to "Freedom", examining my own political leanings and marital history and consumerist tendencies as Franzen's characters displayed theirs. I am roughly the same age as Walter and Patty Berglund, so the subject matter - a beautiful and complex story of a modern American family - was as familiar to me as my own personal history.
The narration was excellent (except for the female Indian character, who tended to sound like a caricature at times). I found myself rapt with attention, stopped in my driveway, unable to bring in the groceries and unwilling to tend to my email and cell phone messages.
Highly recommended.
67 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Michael
- 09-12-10
Perfection
Franzen peels back the the American psyche with the same empathy for flaws as Updike and all of the pathos of Roth. Each character is at war with themselves in a battle to be the excessive American role model. The conflicts are both rich and subtle and every word is like a scalpel. This is a story for the ages.
40 people found this helpful
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Overall
- J
- 09-26-10
Franzen invents emote-a-man, droning ensues
How stupid, really. On and on and on. The first chapter is magical, spare and transcendent with not a word out of place. I recalled reading this select piece as a short story back in 2009 in The New Yorker as "Good Neighbors" and loved it then as now. What follows is 20-hours of pointless and relentless nattering of men getting in touch with their real feelings and "finding themselves". Shut up already. And the over-baked political and social justice commentary that infuses the novel everywhere is so over-done it comes across as pantomime, almost The Colbert Report for liberals. [I'm a committed tree-hugger and could not stand it myself]. Content-wise either society in general has spent so much time these past 10 years exposing the dark side of previously private lives; or maybe my own life has become so particularly disturbing that the twisted family issues that were so shocking back in The Corrections here just seem par for the course. Throw in as extra bonuses an ending that out of nowhere gives minor and tiny characters full wrap-up appearances; a bizarre caricature of a south eastern Indian young woman and a tidy everything-wrapped-up-in-a-bow ending. I found the narration and sound perfectly fine. Go ahead and buy Freedom, it is worth reading just to be able to talk about it. At the end though you will be rooting for Bobby the killer cat rather than the songbirds. I certainly was.
33 people found this helpful
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Overall
- loix
- 09-08-10
Well worth sticking it out
Many good books, even from my favorite writers, often fizzle out; this is one of those rare and welcome exceptions. I did find the middle part a little bloated, the contemporary cultural references a bit too numerous for my taste, and the rantings somewhat tiresome, indulgent, and cheap, but was ready to forget and "forgive" all those weaknesses when I was on the last chapter. Definitely among the top ten downloads, both in content and narration, in my collection of 382.
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Overall
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Performance
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- james
- 06-13-17
Worth it
Would you listen to Freedom again? Why?
I would if I listened to audio recording more than once. However, I do not.
What did you like best about this story?
Good story and clever writing
Have you listened to any of David LeDoux’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have not listened to his other performances, but this one was great.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Not particularly, it was a great book, though.
11 people found this helpful
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Story
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence.
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Top Listen for 2013 - A+++
- By Beth Anne on 05-24-13
By: Meg Wolitzer
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The Leftovers
- By: Tom Perrotta
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What if - whoosh, right now, with no explanation - a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened - not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.
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The title is the best part
- By Pamela Harvey on 09-03-11
By: Tom Perrotta
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The Breakdown Lane
- By: Jacquelyn Mitchard
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Where can a woman turn when her own life threatens to overwhelm her ability to keep her children safe? New York Times best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard takes the readers of her newest novel on a wry and moving journey of loss and healing.
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A So-So Story
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 09-25-07
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You're Not Doing It Right
- Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations
- By: Michael Ian Black
- Narrated by: Michael Ian Black
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"You’re not doing it right." Michael Ian Black has been hearing these five words all his life. And now—on the eve of his 40th birthday—he is finally beginning to wonder why. As a husband and father living in the suburbs, Michael asks the questions so many of us ask ourselves at one point or another, including "How did I end up here?" The answers are painstakingly detailed in this, Michael Ian Black’s debut memoir.
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Funny, Heartfelt, and Honest
- By Grant on 04-09-12
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The Engagements
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Evelyn has been married to her husband for 40 years - 40 years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love - the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding - beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings - and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own.
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This story required some brain exercise.
- By Tifanismith on 03-15-14
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Purity
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Dylan Baker, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.
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4.64 stars....another excellent novel from Franzen
- By james on 01-02-18
By: Jonathan Franzen
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The Interestings
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Jen Tullock
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence.
-
-
Top Listen for 2013 - A+++
- By Beth Anne on 05-24-13
By: Meg Wolitzer
-
The Leftovers
- By: Tom Perrotta
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if - whoosh, right now, with no explanation - a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened - not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.
-
-
The title is the best part
- By Pamela Harvey on 09-03-11
By: Tom Perrotta
-
The Breakdown Lane
- By: Jacquelyn Mitchard
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where can a woman turn when her own life threatens to overwhelm her ability to keep her children safe? New York Times best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard takes the readers of her newest novel on a wry and moving journey of loss and healing.
-
-
A So-So Story
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 09-25-07
-
You're Not Doing It Right
- Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations
- By: Michael Ian Black
- Narrated by: Michael Ian Black
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"You’re not doing it right." Michael Ian Black has been hearing these five words all his life. And now—on the eve of his 40th birthday—he is finally beginning to wonder why. As a husband and father living in the suburbs, Michael asks the questions so many of us ask ourselves at one point or another, including "How did I end up here?" The answers are painstakingly detailed in this, Michael Ian Black’s debut memoir.
-
-
Funny, Heartfelt, and Honest
- By Grant on 04-09-12
-
The Engagements
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn has been married to her husband for 40 years - 40 years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love - the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding - beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings - and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own.
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This story required some brain exercise.
- By Tifanismith on 03-15-14
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The Brooklyn Follies
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore, a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York".
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Brooklyn IS Still the World
- By Roni on 04-12-07
By: Paul Auster
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Wilde Lake
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
- By: Ernessa Carter
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Four women. Two years.A friendship to last a lifetime.The only things that Sharita, Thursday, Risa, and Tammy have in common are their disastrous love lives. But the year three of them turn 30 will be different, they swear!Sharita, a plump and conservative accountant wants to make partner at her firm and find the man of her dreams. Thursday, the daughter of a formerly chart-topping political rapper, wants to stop being a serial one-month stander, and settle down into a stable life with a stable boyfriend.
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Love this author...
- By A. Endre on 05-19-16
By: Ernessa Carter
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A Necessary End: A Novel
- By: Holly Brown
- Narrated by: Khristine Hvam, James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At nineteen Leah bears a remarkable resemblance to the young woman Adrienne once was. Which is why Adrienne knows the baby Leah is carrying is meant to be hers. But Leah's got ideas of her own: Her baby's going to get a life in California; why shouldn't she? All she wants is to live in Adrienne's house for a year after the baby's born and get a fresh start. It seems like a small price for Adrienne to pay to get their baby. And with Gabe suddenly onboard, what could possibly go wrong?
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Long time audible listener.
- By Cherith DuBois on 07-11-15
By: Holly Brown
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Bridge of Sighs
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 26 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent all his 60 years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for 40 of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be: chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive.
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Wonderful
- By Victoria Wright on 10-08-07
By: Richard Russo
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Young Hearts Crying
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
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The Discomfort Zone
- A Personal History
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Franzen
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jonathan Franzen arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. The Discomfort Zone is his intimate memoir of his development from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person", through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions.
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Good narration, like some essays more than others
- By Doggy Bird on 05-30-08
By: Jonathan Franzen
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My Ex-Life
- A Novel
- By: Stephen McCauley
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
David Hedges’ life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7.