-
The Patron Saint of Liars
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 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 $36.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Bel Canto
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
-
-
Surprisingly engrossing
- By Nicky Gleason on 05-13-07
By: Ann Patchett
-
State of Wonder
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Research scientist Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on an extremely valuable new drug. The last person who was sent to find her died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding answers to the questions about her friend's death, her company's future, and her own past.
-
-
4.62 stars.......excellent
- By james on 03-19-18
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Stellar writing and narration-Pachett is a winner
- By Brian PDX on 06-18-12
By: Ann Patchett
-
These Precious Days
- Essays
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.
-
-
Heartfelt Essays, Beautifully Performed
- By Brent Holcomb on 11-23-21
By: Ann Patchett
-
Run
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's a winter evening in Boston and the temperature has drastically dropped as a blizzard approaches the city. On this fateful night, Bernard Doyle plans to meet his two adopted sons, Tip the older, and more serious and Teddy, the affectionate dreamer, at a Harvard auditorium to hear a speech given by Jesse Jackson. Doyle, an Irish Catholic and former Boston mayor, has done his best to keep his two sons interested in politics, from the day he and his now deceased wife became their parents, through their childhoods, and now in their lives as college students.
-
-
Not my favorite by this author
- By G.G. on 01-14-08
By: Ann Patchett
-
Truth & Beauty
- A Friendship
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The author of Bel Canto, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize, and long-running New York Times best seller, turns to nonfiction in a moving chronicle of her decades-long friendship with the critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.
-
-
It got better....
- By Suzn F on 02-20-12
By: Ann Patchett
-
Bel Canto
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
-
-
Surprisingly engrossing
- By Nicky Gleason on 05-13-07
By: Ann Patchett
-
State of Wonder
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Research scientist Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on an extremely valuable new drug. The last person who was sent to find her died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding answers to the questions about her friend's death, her company's future, and her own past.
-
-
4.62 stars.......excellent
- By james on 03-19-18
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Stellar writing and narration-Pachett is a winner
- By Brian PDX on 06-18-12
By: Ann Patchett
-
These Precious Days
- Essays
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.
-
-
Heartfelt Essays, Beautifully Performed
- By Brent Holcomb on 11-23-21
By: Ann Patchett
-
Run
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's a winter evening in Boston and the temperature has drastically dropped as a blizzard approaches the city. On this fateful night, Bernard Doyle plans to meet his two adopted sons, Tip the older, and more serious and Teddy, the affectionate dreamer, at a Harvard auditorium to hear a speech given by Jesse Jackson. Doyle, an Irish Catholic and former Boston mayor, has done his best to keep his two sons interested in politics, from the day he and his now deceased wife became their parents, through their childhoods, and now in their lives as college students.
-
-
Not my favorite by this author
- By G.G. on 01-14-08
By: Ann Patchett
-
Truth & Beauty
- A Friendship
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The author of Bel Canto, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize, and long-running New York Times best seller, turns to nonfiction in a moving chronicle of her decades-long friendship with the critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.
-
-
It got better....
- By Suzn F on 02-20-12
By: Ann Patchett
-
Commonwealth
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.
-
-
A Must Listen for Patchett fans
- By Jeanie M. Phillips on 09-19-16
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
-
-
Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
-
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 Lincoln Highway
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper, Vogue, and The Washington Post, form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love.
-
-
Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays
- By Bonny on 01-07-14
By: Ann Patchett
-
Uncommon Type
- Some Stories
- By: Tom Hanks
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of 17 wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. The short stories are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!
-
-
Old fashioned romp of stories, some real gems!
- By Lili on 11-13-17
By: Tom Hanks
-
Autobiography of a Face
- By: Lucy Grealy
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the taunts of classmates. In her memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses.
-
-
Pathos and Resilience
- By eBrightwing on 11-15-18
By: Lucy Grealy
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
We Are Water
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Wally Lamb, George Guidall, Maggi-Meg Reed, and others
- Length: 23 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh - wife, mother, outsider artist - has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets - dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.
-
-
Lamb writes Fine Literature/What a Book!
- By Suzn F on 10-27-13
By: Wally Lamb
-
Oh William!
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us.
-
-
My God, this is dull
- By Rhonda Morrison on 10-20-21
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Divergent
- By: Veronica Roth
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue - Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is - she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
-
-
It's not for me. Loved it anyway.
- By Grant on 05-24-12
By: Veronica Roth
-
Olive Kitteridge
- Fiction
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
-
-
It's a Short Story Collection
- By Kerr506 on 12-08-19
By: Elizabeth Strout
Publisher's Summary
St. Elizabeth's is a lovely old place in a small town in Kentucky that used to be the beautiful Hotel Louisa. In the 1960s, it is a home for unwed mothers run by nuns. Life at St. Elizabeth's is not unpleasant, but it is temporary. All the pregnant women who come there will go home within the year. Except for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman, who is neither unwed nor alone.
She is simply pregnant and doesn't want her husband or her mother to know. She plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother the baby needs.
But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. She cannot remain forever untouched by what she left behind and who she has become since the leaving.
A beautiful debut novel about life and love and faith.
Critic Reviews
"Thoughtful....a complex character study." (Library Journal)
"In an assured, warm, and graceful style, a moving novel that touches on the healing powers of chance sanctuaries of love and fancy in the acrid realities of living." (Kirkus Reviews)
More from the same
What listeners say about The Patron Saint of Liars
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Carol T. Carr
- 05-11-10
Well-crafted, Painful But Worth Finishing
I dislike books where there are no likable characters - unfortunately this is one. While there are many characters that evoke sympathy from the reader, the book overall is a depiction of one unfortunate character after another passing through life with their own struggle, each isolated in a unique way. It would have been helpful to have shown the reason for this more clearly -- certainly the ending doesn't do it. But there is just no getting around the fact that it is a sad story.
That said, it is well-written and well-crafted. Patchett has taken difficult subject matter and woven a story through the viewpoint of three characters, each a unique voice. The weaving together of their lives is honest and believable. The story is rich in symbolism that remains subtle throughout.
I could have bailed out several times along the way, but I kept coming back, intrigued to know "what happened next." I'm glad I lasted to the end. The ending may be less than satisfying but then the entire story is. Nevertheless it does provide an ultimate resolution that it would be a shame to miss.
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Deborah
- 04-24-08
Incomplete
I liked this book but yet was disappointed. Reading other reviews one in particular stuck in my mind and I agree with it. I don't like people like Rose in real life and I didn't like this character. I couldn't understand how she could do those things to the most important people in her life. And, I couldn't understand how the people around Rose could love a person like her so much when she offered so little emotionally to them. I may have missed the point (am not sure if I got it or not) but they were all liars in one way or another so I guess they could overlook this. I was waiting for some kind of revelation to Cecelia at the end of the book and was disappointed when her father just kind of left. I felt I was left hanging by the "sign from God" explanation - I just didn't get it.
30 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Allen
- 09-07-11
A Little Lost
Ann Patchett has had finer moments. Her main character is so closed that she is hard to understand, and i didn't connect as much to this as I have to her other books. "Run" is my all time favorite of hers!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeanne
- 10-17-13
The narrator is incredibly irritating!
What disappointed you about The Patron Saint of Liars?
These audiobooks are so hard to listen to when the narrator is bad! I don't undertand why they aren't chosen more carefully?
What didn’t you like about Julia Gibson’s performance?
Accent was so unauthentically Southern....
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Marie
- 10-09-13
Not her best
I've listened to a few other Patchett books--Bel Canto was my favorite, I also liked State of Wonder and The Magician's Assistant. I found The Patron Saint of Liars rather disappointing. Patchett still has a beautiful flow to her writing, but I found the character arcs unsatisfying and the ending was baffling and inconclusive.
Still, it could be your cup of tea, and it's worth a try if you're a Patchett fan. Solid narration.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Elaina
- 03-16-13
My (second) Favorite Novel by Ann Patchett
I loved this book! Great story, great narration! I was hooked! This is my favorite Ann Patchett novel behind, "State of Wonder." I also really like "The Magician's Assistant," but this one is better. Happy listening!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- OshKoshG
- 03-11-13
Disappointed
I LOVE Ann Patchett, but this novel left me disappointed. Ann Patchett has a way of making her characters completely relatable. Even though they could not be less similar to you, you find yourself completely invested in him/her. I could not relate to the main character in this book, however. Instead, I came to despise her. I was also disappointed in the ending -- or lack there of. Too bad.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeanne
- 09-30-11
OK
Story was ok. Slow at parts. It left me with an empty sad feeling. Not much happiness.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ruth M. Penson
- 04-07-12
fabulous read!!!
What made the experience of listening to The Patron Saint of Liars the most enjoyable?
great story; wonderful performance
What did you like best about this story?
all the characters were wonderful. This woman did what we all wish we could sometimes do, but would not!
Have you listened to any of Julia Gibson???s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Yes, I have & always enjoy her performances. She has a beautiful speaking voice.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Elisa
- 04-03-21
Secrets and Lies
Since I'm just discovering Ann Patchett and her earlier novels (and have recently gotten hooked on Dani Shapiro's "Inheritance" memoir and subsequent "Family Secrets" podcast), this kind of story is ripe for 'Cecilla' to discover her family secret and have some peace in the unraveling of her story. A convenient plot twist to have another character dye her hair to give her a new look – hoping to cheer her up after her mother disappears and before her - [*SPOILER ALERT COMING" } - her "bio" dad unexpectedly shows up and they can't recognize that they might possibly be related - leaves me unsatisfied.
However, those were the secrets kept back in the 60s/70s and 80s and this is a fictional story - not a real one. All of Ann Patchett's novels are wildly different - although this story could have been created from someone she knew or had heard about. Nonetheless, (no pun intended), the story tries to examine that a child can grow up with love from strangers and establish a healthy sense of self – even if they don't get it from their biological parents. But, a lack of parental love can really screw someone up and the damage it does when it could be preventable leaves me feeling the lead character was selfish and hard to relate to.
1 person found this helpful