• Surviving in Spirit

  • A Memoir about Sisterhood and Addiction
  • By: Mélanie Berliet
  • Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
  • Length: 1 hr and 52 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (176 ratings)

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Surviving in Spirit  By  cover art

Surviving in Spirit

By: Mélanie Berliet
Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
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Publisher's summary

What prompts a young woman to abandon the safe bounds of convention for the unknown?

At first, all Mélanie Berliet understood was that she'd lost her sense of what "supposed to" meant. And that her older sister, Céline, was sick.

While it's tough to understand what leads a person into addiction - to witness someone you love kind-of kill herself - the truth is that you can learn from it. By the time Céline died at age 30, she was Kermit The Frog green and she vomited blood more frequently than she was able to eat. In less than a decade, she had gone from summa cum laude Columbia graduate to NYU PhD student to unemployed, rambling, stumbling drunk saddled with a cirrhotic liver beyond repair. By the time Céline died, her younger sister, Mélanie, was no longer a Miss Goody Two Shoes from a waspy Connecticut suburb trotting down the sensible path. She was an adult who had abandoned a secure job on Wall Street to establish a career as a writer committed to exploring fascinating subcultures.

As Céline's illness escalated, you see, a basic lesson crept up on Mlanie: Life is beautifully short, and fragile as hell. Life happens. Gradually, Mélanie stopped agonizing over what she was supposed to do/think/know/read/listen to/watch/feel, or who she was supposed to be/befriend/love/like/learn from. So she pitched projects that sounded crazy and/or dangerous to most, but which gave her a thrill and helped her establish a career as an immersive journalist. She grew some balls, so to speak, after freeing herself from caring about what others might think.

The devastating beauty of what happened to Céline forced Mélanie to question who she is. However unwittingly, in dying, Céline empowered her younger sister to take risks - to live. This is their story.

©2014 Mélanie Berliet (P)2014 Audible Inc.

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What listeners say about Surviving in Spirit

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Awful amateur writing

I couldn't even finish it. Author can't seem to keep to the simple outline of story, tracking and describing the decline and death of her sister to alcoholism. It's full of about the boring details of her own life, how she gave up a job on Wall Street to pursue writing.

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7 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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  • me
  • 04-22-21

Self absorbed, 0 self awareness

This is easily the worst “book” I’ve ever listened to...more like a long (or at least it seems long..), rambling, self congratulatory episode of sex and the city? That’s being generous, however, it’s a somewhat satisfying hate listen, only because it’s free and the author is just awful. Writing is passable at the level of an online click bait article. But any bits of redeemable writing are made ridiculous by the elderly sounding narrator. The sex scenes are somewhat disturbing as they sound like they are being recounted by someone’s grandmother. The author doesn’t even try to reach the most basic level of understanding of her sister’s alcoholism and takes every opportunity to disparage and judge her while going on and on about how great she is by contrast. Recommend only if you have literally nothing else to do or are completely dry of actual interesting audio material- and if you are in the mood for listening to a middle aged millennial Karen congratulate herself for her relatively unremarkable life through the voice of a 75 year old.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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great

super writing and narration. funny and sad. thought provoking. I will read this author again.

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3 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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this was seriously worse than

anything else I've ever tried to listen to
the voice of the narrator was as bad as the writing wouldn't wish this reading on my worse enemy
seems like a narcissistic writing.
the author shouldn't ever left her day job

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3 people found this helpful

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Not for Me

I couldn’t get past the snark and self indulgent attitude while the sister lay in the hospital bed. My sense was there seemed to be a lot of hostility toward the attention lavished on the sister in the throes of addiction, while the author is symbolically flailing her arms yelling at her family, “Look at ME, I’m successful and don’t cause you worry”. Five minutes in, I knew I was out. Nope. Not for me. We all have our trauma stories. Hopefully, they cause one to develop character and empathy. maybe try retelling it without the contempt?

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderfully written story about life and loss

i liked the frankness of this memoir, as well as the thoughtful descriptions of life used throughout. This story will resonate with anyone who has a strong sense of humor while simultaneously facing an unexpected·loss.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

heartfelt

beautifully written story evoking all of the various emotions of having a sibling with addictions

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent!

What a fantastic audiobook! I found her story relatable and I absolutely loved the honesty and the wry humor by which it was delivered. The narration is excellent.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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  • yo
  • 02-25-22

Overpriced—and it was free.

I don’t know what was worse—the writing or the narrating. I couldn’t listen to more than 20 minutes as the prose was so sophomoric and the narration so creepy/weird. Ugh.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Not what I expected…. But we’ll done

Just a preceptive view on Addiction. I loved hearing her take on it keep up the good work

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