Great House

A Novel

By: Nicole Krauss

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo, George Guidall, Celeste Ciulla, Paul Hecht, Robert Ian Mackenzie

Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

From the internationally best-selling author of The History of Love comes this stunning novel. Great House follows the multiple owners of one writing desk and how the desk shapes their lives. A young novelist inherited the desk from a poet taken by Pinochet’s police. Then the desk is stolen from her by the poet’s supposed daughter. In its drawers, another man discovers a long-kept secret about his wife. And a Jerusalem antiques dealer uses the desk in his family’s study, which was devastated by the Nazis in 1944.

©2010 Nicole Krauss (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"This stunning work showcases Krauss's consistent talent.... The sharply etched characters seem at first arbitrarily linked across time and space, but Krauss pulls together the disparate elements, settings, characters, and fragile connective tissue to form a formidable and haunting mosaic of loss and profound sorrow. ( Publishers Weekly)

“The most heartbreaking part of Great House, the third novel by Nicole Krauss, is having to finish it…As the mysteries of this beautifully written novel come spooling out, you’ll marvel at how profoundly one brilliantly crafted metaphor involving a mute wooden artifact can remind us what it means to be alive.” (Rachel Rosenblit, Elle)

“Krauss’ masterful rendition of character is breathtaking, compelling.... This tour de force of fiction writing will deeply satisfy fans of the author’s first two books and bring her legions more.” ( Booklist, Starred Review)

Great House

I totally enjoyed this book. Haven't we all inherited some piece of furniture , or a book, or something that connects us with a very interesting past?

This book grabbed my attention from the very beginning. It is worth a good listen. I even sat down in my living room, after everybody else was in bed ... I enjoyed it.

creative

I recommend it. The book was unusual and creative. I think it fell a step short of connecting the stories. I'm going to listen to it again, something I don't normally do, to see if I missed something. I think it's a good book for a book club as it should elicit get great discussions.

Great rewards for the patient listener

It's easy to be put off this book...it is densely written, with each character focusing at an almost excruciating level on their inner life.

It's not a happy book. Plus, the multiple narrators relating seemingly unrelated stories could confuse anyone who's not paying attention.

However, this is one of those books that will definitely reward the patient listener.

About loss, death and ultimately the meaning of life, it is a powerful novel, with richly drawn characters. It definitely left me wanting to know more about what came next; and it's one of those rare books that I plan to re-read.

Deeply moving and beautifully written

Although the author has said she does not write with a plan for the story, each section is beautifully written and read. Her images jump out and make you want to hear them again. This audiobook is worth taking the time to really listen to Krause's words.

Beautiful writing, but probably better to read it

This novel and its mediations on loss and loneliness and the connections that the characters from different stories eventually have with each other are hard to dwell on when you are listening to it. I believe that reading it would be better. I got a hard copy and after reading certain sections and seeing words repeated, I was able to make the connections that a careful reader would pick up on, which answered a bunch of questions for me about who is who in the novel. Just listening in the car, this was not something I could do, and I was happy I read it. The different stories all have separate narrators and this was helpful as they are interspersed with each other, and otherwise it would have been hard to know who was talking.

It wasn't History of Love but....

it was still a good listen! Love the readers she has for her books!

Weirdly narrated.

What did you like best about Great House? What did you like least?

I think I would have liked this book more if the narration hadn't been so oddly directed. The women narrators were both like public radio announcers, completely without inflection or personality. I don't understand those choices at all. The men were much better, with the possible exception of Weiss at the end... again, very flat.

What gives?

Great Start

I was captivated by this story, but felt that it fell down about two thirds of the way through the book. Then it became somewhat convoluted. I would like to get hold of a hard copy from the library some time soon and see if I can make sense of some of the loose threads. I found the narration to be enjoyable.

Novel lacks urgency, but has other good qualities

These lines from a review from a site called Bookslut echo my main problem with the book:

"Such lyrical philosophizing is typical of Great House, a book told not in scene, but through memories. For this reason, the
novel at times feels slow. All action has already occurred and the tension comes not from the moment to moment situation of
the characters, but from the meta-narrative that ties the characters together. Though it reaches moments of elegant
reflection, the novel lacks urgency."

I liked the inner voice of characters reflecting deeply on their lives, but I was confused by one of the narrators who seemed to have zero connection with the desk. I felt like I missed something important, and I probably did, because in listening to a book you can't flip back through the pages.

Deep and deeply satisfying

The stories that comprise the story of the desk, the interconnectedness, the longing, loss and pain are so palpable, so immense that only the desk itself could sort and carry it all. Furniture as character, imbued with life and living, physical and psychological characteristics -- it works.

These are not "vignettes," they are different aspects of the same stories told technically out of chronological order, but artistically told in exactly the right order like the thread of Ariadne, unraveling slowly, surely and completely. Much is left unsaid/unresolved. Questions remain unanswered, but if you can enter the dream of this journey, everything is revealed. The writing is fresh and yet classically constructed. The allusions, ancient and new are guideposts; the characters are cut from one massive fabric of life and yet they are separate and whole. The story is not like a plot. It is a story of many people, many years and many artifacts. Will it change your life? Probably not. Will you laugh? Probably not? Will you weep? Maybe, maybe not. You will recognize yourself and your own thoughts in some passages and you will find nothing of yourself in others. Is it a page-turner? Absolutely? At the end, does it all make sense? Most of it, and yet nothing is senseless or falsely placed. Not for everyone, not nearly as accessible as Krauss' "The History of Love," it is deeper and more challenging. Terrific.