-
Fresh Complaint
- Stories
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Eugenides, Ari Fliakos, Cynthia Nixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $24.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Worth Waiting It Out
- By D. N. Meads on 08-28-09
-
Happy-Go-Lucky
- By: David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most.
-
-
Great except for an audio glitch
- By Rynnkins on 06-01-22
By: David Sedaris
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
-
It takes a lot for me to be spellbound
- By DIANE on 12-09-16
-
Wonderful Town
- New York Stories from The New Yorker
- By: Woody Allen, John Cheever, E. B. White, and others
- Narrated by: Tyne Daly, Timothy Jerome, Joe Morton, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.
-
-
Great stories and readers, but technically sloppy
- By Alison on 09-08-04
By: Woody Allen, and others
-
The Robber Bride
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments - one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony - university classmates decades ago - were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives.
-
-
Surprisingly enjoyable
- By Marjee on 03-30-12
By: Margaret Atwood
-
The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
-
-
Uniquely divisive book.
- By Richard Delman on 08-27-18
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Middlesex
- By: Jeffrey Eugenides
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
-
-
Worth Waiting It Out
- By D. N. Meads on 08-28-09
-
Happy-Go-Lucky
- By: David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most.
-
-
Great except for an audio glitch
- By Rynnkins on 06-01-22
By: David Sedaris
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
-
It takes a lot for me to be spellbound
- By DIANE on 12-09-16
-
Wonderful Town
- New York Stories from The New Yorker
- By: Woody Allen, John Cheever, E. B. White, and others
- Narrated by: Tyne Daly, Timothy Jerome, Joe Morton, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.
-
-
Great stories and readers, but technically sloppy
- By Alison on 09-08-04
By: Woody Allen, and others
-
The Robber Bride
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments - one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony - university classmates decades ago - were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives.
-
-
Surprisingly enjoyable
- By Marjee on 03-30-12
By: Margaret Atwood
-
The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
-
-
Uniquely divisive book.
- By Richard Delman on 08-27-18
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Slade House
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you'll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't. Every nine years, the house's residents - an odd brother and sister - extend a unique invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it's already too late....
-
-
Awsome book
- By Paul on 12-02-15
By: David Mitchell
-
Crossroads
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 24 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads. A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.
-
-
Less than! an hour in and I'm hooked...
- By Delane Garrett on 10-05-21
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Unaccustomed Earth
- Stories
- By: Jhumpa Lahiri
- Narrated by: Sarita Choudhury, Ajay Naidu
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself.
-
-
Simply Beautiful
- By Eileen on 11-21-08
By: Jhumpa Lahiri
-
Olive, Again (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force”, and she has never done so more clearly than in this book, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine.
-
-
warning
- By Gloria Flores on 01-08-20
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Who Killed Jane Stanford?
- A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University
- By: Richard White
- Narrated by: Christopher P. Brown
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner's jury, of strychnine poisoning.
-
-
A Bay Area Story
- By Matt Javier on 05-30-22
By: Richard White
-
Homeland Elegies
- A Novel
- By: Ayad Akhtar
- Narrated by: Ayad Akhtar
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
-
-
a mishmash of political theory and porn
- By LC on 02-06-21
By: Ayad Akhtar
-
Norwegian Wood
- By: Haruki Murakami
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over four million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.
-
-
A Beautiful, Wistful...
- By Douglas on 02-18-16
By: Haruki Murakami
-
Blue Nights
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
-
-
Extremely moving memoir, well-narrated
- By Doggy Bird on 12-16-11
By: Joan Didion
-
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
- By: Carson McCullers
- Narrated by: Cherry Jones
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carson McCullers was all of 23 when she published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She became an overnight literary sensation, and soon such authors as Tennessee Williams were calling her "the greatest prose writer that the South [has] produced." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in the 1930s.
-
-
Beautiful Prose and Perfect Narration
- By Michael on 03-15-15
By: Carson McCullers
-
When We Were Vikings
- By: Andrew David MacDonald
- Narrated by: Phoebe Strole
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A heart-swelling debut for fans of The Silver Linings Playbook and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. When We Were Vikings is an uplifting debut about an unlikely heroine whose journey will leave you wanting to embark on a quest of your own, because after all...we are all legends of our own making.
-
-
Foul language
- By Jo on 06-09-20
-
Consider This
- Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
-
-
Poetic Justice
- By Dave Green on 01-20-20
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher's Summary
The first collection of short fiction from Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Marriage Plot.
Jeffrey Eugenides's best selling novels have shown him to be an astute observer of the crises of adolescence, self-discovery, family love, and what it means to be American in our times.
The stories in Fresh Complaint explore equally rich and intriguing territory. Ranging from the bitingly reproductive antics of "Baster" to the dreamy, moving account of a young traveler's search for enlightenment in "Air Mail" (selected by Annie Proulx for Best American Short Stories), this collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people's wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art founder under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in "Fresh Complaint," a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her immigrant family lead her to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged British physicist.
Narratively compelling, beautifully worded, and packed with a density of ideas despite their fluid grace, these stories chart the development and maturation of a major American author.
Critic Reviews
"It's not a surprise that Cynthia Nixon would be a good audiobook reader. It's surprising that she isn't hired to read every audiobook...Fliakos is endlessly entertaining while never letting theatrics outshine the characters on the page. This collection, Eugenides' first, includes 10 stories spanning three decades of the author's work. Hearing them read in a variety of voices emphasizes the changes in style and point of view that Eugenides has played with throughout his career." (Booklist)
"The theme of complaint extends beyond the title story, but for listeners the key takeaway is the word 'fresh.' Jeffrey Eugenides's fresh writing...showcases his originality and - since he also narrates it - his ability to navigate multiple accents and personalities." (AudioFile)
"Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, Eugenides writes like a man who is enjoying himself. The feeling is contagious." (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)
More from the same
Narrator
What listeners say about Fresh Complaint
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JLB
- 01-31-18
Skip the first story, but the rest are incredible!!
Jeffrey Eugenides is one of those authors who doesn't seem to write without throwing himself into the depths of research on characters, careers, cities, relationships, entire ways of life and all of the accompanying nuances. His stories are brilliant windows gleaming with details showcasing the banality and pain of not getting what we want out of life... but in a beautiful and charmingly light way. My only warning is that the first story is a depressing bore and I nearly returned the book midway thru it, but beyond that its full of gems.
Also, make sure you read The Marriage Plot first!!! It makes the story of Mitchell and Larry a lot more colorful. :)
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ouida Touchon
- 03-15-18
Quirky characters and compelling narrative.
I enjoyed the stream of short stories about complex and somewhat flawed characters. if there was continuity in the stories and repeated characters, I didn't sense it... maybe a hard copy would be easier to figure that out. otherwise, I love his writing style.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cynthia C. Stellar
- 11-13-17
You’ll love this book if you love hearing about bodily fluids on a regular basis.
Middlesexand and The Marriage Plot we’re excellent books. So, with that I mind, I️ thought I’d try Fresh Complaint. I️ had to return it. Maybe I’m getting old and I’ve always been a bit of a prude, but I️ just couldn’t take the delving into detail talk of bodily fluids. I️ listened to the first three stories and was a few minutes into the fourth, when up came more bodily fluid discussion. I️ couldn’t take it and had to let it go. So, let the buyer beware! The stories were interesting, but the bodily fluid descriptions ruined them for me.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- M.KIPNIS
- 03-01-18
blah. not enuf tension. characters plots incomplet
not his best book. characters in completely developed. narration at a monotone. never hooked me