-
The Shipping News
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $18.71
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Barkskins
- A Novel
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years.
-
-
Awe-Inspiring, Far-Reaching Epic
- By W Perry Hall on 06-30-16
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Fen, Bog and Swamp
- A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
-
-
Enjoyable Discourse on Wetlands
- By T.J. on 10-29-22
By: Annie Proulx
-
Barkskins
- A Novel
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years.
-
-
Awe-Inspiring, Far-Reaching Epic
- By W Perry Hall on 06-30-16
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Fen, Bog and Swamp
- A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
-
-
Enjoyable Discourse on Wetlands
- By T.J. on 10-29-22
By: Annie Proulx
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Lessons in Chemistry
- A Novel
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
-
-
Making my 3 adult daughters read this
- By Teresa H. on 04-07-22
By: Bonnie Garmus
-
Empire Falls
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one, its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan (presided over by the last scion’s widow) now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. The working classes, meanwhile, continue to eke out whatever meager promise isn’t already boarded up. Miles Roby gazes over this ruined kingdom from the Empire Grill, an opportunity of his youth that has become the albatross of his life.
-
-
Hugely Enjoyable
- By margaret on 01-23-12
By: Richard Russo
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Goldfinch
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
-
-
Boy, am I in the minority on this one.
- By Bonny on 11-04-13
By: Donna Tartt
-
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.
-
-
Anything but middle.
- By Michael on 05-04-03
-
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
- By: Robert Olen Butler
- Narrated by: Robert Olen Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. This edition includes two subsequently published stories - "Salem" and "Missing" - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey with a return to the jungles of Vietnam.
-
-
RARE AND WONDERFUL STORIES!
- By Mimi Routh on 05-06-14
-
Where the Crawdads Sing
- By: Delia Owens
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.
-
-
Don't listen to the negative reviews.
- By Kyle on 12-03-19
By: Delia Owens
-
The Great Alone
- By: Kristin Hannah
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: He will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.
-
-
A Long, Hard Slog Through Endless Despair and Heartache
- By Morro Schreiber on 04-11-18
By: Kristin Hannah
-
The Only Good Indians
- By: Stephen Graham Jones
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From New York Times best-selling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American-Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American-Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a vengeful way.
-
-
this is the best book I've listened to maybe ever
- By Anthony on 07-15-20
-
The Memory of Running
- By: Ron McLarty
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 2003, in his column in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King called The Memory of Running "the best novel you won't read this year." This glowing endorsement of the audiobook resulted in Ron McLarty receiving a $2 million two-book deal from Viking Penguin. Also, Warner Brothers has shelled out big bucks for the movie rights to The Memory of Running, for which McLarty will write the script.
-
-
Funny and Fascinating, A Wonderful Book
- By Ripp on 02-18-04
By: Ron McLarty
-
Great Expectations
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most revered works in English literature, Great Expectations traces the coming of age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire.
-
-
The narrator!!
- By Dana on 06-13-13
By: Charles Dickens
Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 1994
National Book Award, Fiction, 1994
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News demonstrates why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
The Shell Collector
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take listeners from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties - metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts - and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power.
-
-
Narrator not appropriate to the book.
- By Janet on 02-18-17
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Sometimes a Great Notion
- By: Ken Kesey
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Here, Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
-
-
Sometimes a Great Novel Pops up out of Nowhere
- By Mr. Eyuz on 06-07-19
By: Ken Kesey
-
Cannery Row
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Jerry Farden
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack and his boys, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and most poignant works.
-
-
Five stars with a Caveat
- By Bette on 04-23-12
By: John Steinbeck
-
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
-
-
Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
-
The Boat Runner
- A Novel
- By: Devin Murphy
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in the summer of 1939, 14-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold the family in high esteem. On days when they aren't playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. When war breaks out, Jacob's world is thrown into chaos.
-
-
Not a typical World War II story
- By Marsha L. Woerner on 01-31-18
By: Devin Murphy
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
The Shell Collector
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take listeners from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties - metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts - and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power.
-
-
Narrator not appropriate to the book.
- By Janet on 02-18-17
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Sometimes a Great Notion
- By: Ken Kesey
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Here, Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
-
-
Sometimes a Great Novel Pops up out of Nowhere
- By Mr. Eyuz on 06-07-19
By: Ken Kesey
-
Cannery Row
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Jerry Farden
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack and his boys, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and most poignant works.
-
-
Five stars with a Caveat
- By Bette on 04-23-12
By: John Steinbeck
-
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
-
-
Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
-
The Boat Runner
- A Novel
- By: Devin Murphy
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in the summer of 1939, 14-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold the family in high esteem. On days when they aren't playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. When war breaks out, Jacob's world is thrown into chaos.
-
-
Not a typical World War II story
- By Marsha L. Woerner on 01-31-18
By: Devin Murphy
-
The Mosquito Coast
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.
-
-
Dreadful in every sense of the word.
- By Joan on 07-12-15
By: Paul Theroux
-
The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
-
-
Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Signals: New and Selected Stories
- By: Tim Gautreaux
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.
-
-
Perfection! Amazing writer/amazing reader
- By Monique on 01-08-19
By: Tim Gautreaux
-
The Lighthouse Road
- A Novel
- By: Peter Geye
- Narrated by: Tara Ochs
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story moves back and forth in time from the arrival of Thea from her isolated village in arctic Norway in search of a new life in the near wilderness of a small town and logging camp on the shore of Lake Superior to the travails of her orphaned son, Odd, some twenty years later. When Thea’s aunt and uncle do not meet her boat as planned, she’s initially left abandoned with no money or prospects and without speaking the language.
-
-
Narrator wrecks storyline
- By customer on 12-01-17
By: Peter Geye
-
Without a Map
- A Memoir
- By: Meredith Hall
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.
-
-
Not Your Average "16 and Pregnant"
- By Susie on 12-11-12
By: Meredith Hall
-
Mannheim Rex
- By: Robert Pobi
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recently widowered and grieving, Gavin flees New York City for the quiet of the country. His new home on Lake Caldasac has surprisingly few visitors, and the author soon learns why: a suspiciously high number of people have gone missing in the small town. The deaths have all been ruled accidents, but Finn Horn, a handicapped boy obsessed with fishing, knows the truth. There’s a monster in the lake. And it wants to feed.
-
-
Interesting and fun
- By Bob on 01-14-13
By: Robert Pobi
-
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
-
-
Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
The October Country
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Haunting, harrowing, and downright horrifying, this classic collection from the modern master of the fantastic features: "The Small Assassin": a fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true - or her nightmare.... "The Emissary": the faithful dog was the sick boy's only connection with the world outside - and beyond.... "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone": a most remarkable case of murder - the deceased was delighted! And more!
-
-
The October Country
- By steven richard pohl on 09-17-19
By: Ray Bradbury
-
The Promise
- By: Ann Weisgarber
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him, but when Catherine travels to Oscar's farm on Galveston Island, Texas—a thousand miles from home—she finds she is little prepared for the life that awaits her.
-
-
Beautifully written and read
- By RueRue on 04-21-14
By: Ann Weisgarber
-
The Wettest County in the World, or Lawless
- A Novel Based on a True Story
- By: Matt Bondurant
- Narrated by: Erik Steele
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bondurant Boys were a notorious gang of roughnecks and moonshiners who ran liquor through Franklin County during Prohibition and after. The brothers played a central role in a major conspiracy trial and its violent end. In 1935, Sherwood Anderson, working on a magazine story, finds himself driving along the dusty red roads trying to find the brothers and break the silence that shrouds Franklin County.
-
-
Just outstanding!
- By Rich on 08-18-12
By: Matt Bondurant
-
Once Upon a River
- By: Bonnie Jo Campbell
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a rising star in contemporary fiction. Hailed by Booklist as a female Huckleberry Finn, Campbell’s heroine is 16yearold Margo Crane. Complicit in her father’s death, Margo flees home for the Stark River. And as she follows the current, she learns the ways of the world from the eccentric characters she meets.
-
-
Great Narrator - Horrific story
- By J. Kromrie on 11-04-20
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Joy
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as a gifted and original writer. When Quoyle, a 36-year-old, third rate newspaperman, learns that his two-timing wife has abandoned him and their two daughters, he returns to his ancestral home on the Newfoundland coast, to rebuild his life. We also recommend Proulx's, Accordion Crimes.
-
-
Find the unabridged version!
- By Karen on 05-28-07
By: Annie Proulx
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Stone Diaries
- By: Carol Shields, Penelope Lively - introduction
- Narrated by: Deborah Drakeford
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
-
-
Excellent Narrative
- By Deborah H. Holloway on 03-10-24
By: Carol Shields, and others
-
Barkskins
- A Novel
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years.
-
-
Awe-Inspiring, Far-Reaching Epic
- By W Perry Hall on 06-30-16
By: Annie Proulx
-
I, The Divine
- A Novel in First Chapters
- By: Rabih Alameddine
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps.
-
-
Excellent if you forgive pronunciation
- By Anne on 06-05-18
By: Rabih Alameddine
-
Dogeaters
- By: Jessica Hagedorn
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo, Mia Katigbak, Rona Figueroa, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dogeaters follows a diverse set of characters through Manila, each exemplifying the country’s sharp distinctions between social classes. Celebrated novelist and playwright Jessica Hagedorn effortlessly shifts from the capital’s elite to the poorest of the poor. From the country’s president and first lady to an idealist reformer, from actors and radio DJs to prostitutes, seemingly unrelated lives become intertwined.
By: Jessica Hagedorn
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Joy
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as a gifted and original writer. When Quoyle, a 36-year-old, third rate newspaperman, learns that his two-timing wife has abandoned him and their two daughters, he returns to his ancestral home on the Newfoundland coast, to rebuild his life. We also recommend Proulx's, Accordion Crimes.
-
-
Find the unabridged version!
- By Karen on 05-28-07
By: Annie Proulx
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Stone Diaries
- By: Carol Shields, Penelope Lively - introduction
- Narrated by: Deborah Drakeford
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
-
-
Excellent Narrative
- By Deborah H. Holloway on 03-10-24
By: Carol Shields, and others
-
Barkskins
- A Novel
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years.
-
-
Awe-Inspiring, Far-Reaching Epic
- By W Perry Hall on 06-30-16
By: Annie Proulx
-
I, The Divine
- A Novel in First Chapters
- By: Rabih Alameddine
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps.
-
-
Excellent if you forgive pronunciation
- By Anne on 06-05-18
By: Rabih Alameddine
-
Dogeaters
- By: Jessica Hagedorn
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo, Mia Katigbak, Rona Figueroa, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dogeaters follows a diverse set of characters through Manila, each exemplifying the country’s sharp distinctions between social classes. Celebrated novelist and playwright Jessica Hagedorn effortlessly shifts from the capital’s elite to the poorest of the poor. From the country’s president and first lady to an idealist reformer, from actors and radio DJs to prostitutes, seemingly unrelated lives become intertwined.
By: Jessica Hagedorn
-
Mating
- By: Norman Rush
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The narrator of this splendidly expansive novel of high intellect and grand passion is an American anthropologist at loose ends in the South African republic of Botswana. She has a noble and exacting mind, a good waist, and a busted thesis project. She also has a yen for Nelson Denoon, a charismatic intellectual who is rumored to have founded a secretive and unorthodox utopian society in a remote corner of the Kalahari - one in which he is virtually the only man.
-
-
Could not finish...
- By Jamie on 07-06-14
By: Norman Rush
-
Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
- By: Oscar Zeta Acosta
- Narrated by: Henry Levya
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Authored with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this audiobook is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic '60s, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Nacho macanas on 11-16-20
-
The Mountain Lion
- By: Jean Stafford
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eight-year-old Molly and her 10-year-old brother, Ralph, are inseparable, in league with each other against the stodgy and stupid routines of school and daily life; against their prim mother and prissy older sisters; against the world of authority and perhaps the world itself. One summer, they are sent from the genteel Los Angeles suburb that is their home to back-country Colorado, where their uncle Claude has a ranch. There the children encounter an enchanting new world - savage, direct, beautiful, untamed - to which, over the next few years, they will return regularly.
-
-
a heartbreaking coming of age story
- By Kelly on 07-29-20
By: Jean Stafford
-
A Summons to Memphis
- By: Peter Taylor
- Narrated by: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in 1917, Tennessee author Peter Taylor won the Pulitzer Prize for this exceptional work of literature. The well-to-do Carver family moves to Memphis from Nashville, where they become embroiled in a domestic dispute over the widower patriarch's decision to remarry.
-
-
Not at all interesting
- By Nichole on 06-01-09
By: Peter Taylor
-
I Hotel
- By: Karen Tei Yamashita
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Ramon De Ocampo, Jenny Ikeda, and others
- Length: 22 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Karen Tei Yamashita has been honored with the American Book Award and Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A stunning portrait of Asian Americans in 1960s and ’70s San Francisco, I Hotel is a remarkable collection of 10 related novellas. Touching on such topics as Japanese internment camps and the Marcos dictatorship, the book presents readers with characters of rich design.
-
-
Expansive and Breath Taking
- By Elana on 01-15-12
-
Family Life
- A Novel
- By: Akhil Sharma
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his highly anticipated second novel, Family Life, he delivers a story of astonishing intensity and emotional precision. We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju play cricket in the streets, waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their father in America. America to the Mishras is, indeed, everything they could have imagined and more: When automatic glass doors open before them, they feel that surely they must have been mistaken for somebody important.
-
-
A Moving Family Drama
- By The Reading Date on 05-31-14
By: Akhil Sharma
-
The Known World
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
-
-
A meandering audiobook...
- By Daniel on 09-03-04
By: Edward P. Jones
-
Dancer from the Dance
- A Novel
- By: Andrew Holleran
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now in audio for the first time! Award-winning actor and two-time Tony Award nominee David Pittu narrates one of the most influential books in gay literature. Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance defined gay life in late 1970s New York. Published in 1978, the novel captures the time post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS where sexual freedom was celebrated and the future appeared limitless.
-
-
Excellent
- By Charles Lloyd on 12-25-22
By: Andrew Holleran
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
- A Novel
- By: Oscar Hijuelos, Ann Patchett - introduction
- Narrated by: Jason Canela, Betsy Foldes, Gustavo Rex
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1949 and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection.
By: Oscar Hijuelos, and others
-
Native Speaker
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces listeners to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.
-
-
Great novel. Strange narrator choice.
- By Andy P on 08-10-22
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
Couples
- A Novel
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The provocative novel about sex in suburbia, striking in its complete sexual frankness and rightly praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrayal of love, marriage and adultery in America.
-
-
This book made me feel replete
- By LH on 01-10-24
By: John Updike
What listeners say about The Shipping News
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Polly
- 03-06-12
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
This book is written in a style I've never come across before. The sentences are short, almost choppy. The characters are equally strange, and the story took me by surprise many times. In reading this book, I felt as though I was on a child's roller coaster; it seemed slow and easy, but suddenly and unexpectedly jerked to the right or left. I felt sure that certain characters had secrets, and so I listened with building interest.
The setting (Newfoundland, Canada) was new to me as well, and wrapped its cold grey arms around me. As I look back, I think the locale may be the main character of this novel. Very powerful.
And, as I say in my title, I am not sure why I loved it, but I did. I recommend this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
26 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kindle Customer
- 05-19-12
A great companion
Where does The Shipping News rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I really enjoyed reading this book years ago and having grown tired of listing to the radio have taken to exclusively listing to audible books while driving to and from work. I now relish the traffic and find myself sitting in the driveway for a few more momments when i get home to continue to listen. The Shipping news is a favorite of mine and i greatly enjoyed listening to the narration. Paul Hecht did a fantastic job; bringing the characters back to life for me. So far it is my favorite audiobook.
What other book might you compare The Shipping News to and why?
I would compare the Shipping News to anything by John Irving, Anne Tyler, Amy Tan. All favorites. the stories that encompass a lifetime and all its events are the best to me. Full character development, historical references, and characters so rich and deep. They are my companions of the road. A true travel companion that keeps you entertained and removed from the mondane while reminding you that life is more complicated and deeply enriched.
Which character – as performed by Paul Hecht – was your favorite?
Quoyle - Paul has gripped the vulnerability of the character without making him a sap.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Judy
- 12-11-12
Far better than the movie
What did you love best about The Shipping News?
I love the atmosphere and the characters.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Billy Priddy - tough old guy who remembers everything
What does Paul Hecht bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The wonderful voices add so realism much to the the story -- I'd never get that just reading the book.
Any additional comments?
The book scarcely resembles the terrible movie -- Annie Proulz should sue the screen writer.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Moxie1
- 12-12-19
Nothing happens
This book has been praised for its lyrical writing, but for me it just didn't connect. There is almost a sense that you have to love Newfoundland in order to appreciate the book. The story follows a shy, apparently incompetent newspaper reporter living in a dark, frigid corner of Newfoundland as he matures and grows in self-confidence, both as a person and, somewhat magically it seems to me, as a newspaperman and writer. The plot is slow and word-heavy and, as one might expect in such an isolated location, very little happens. Even a few scenes near the end that contain some energy and excitement (his near-drowning in a storm, a drunken party) seem to come out of nowhere and fail to generate the emotions that you might expect a reader to feel. Many readers seem to have enjoyed this book, but I think you need a fair amount of patience to appreciate it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 06-08-16
Odd yet compelling story beautifully told
I would be hard-pressed to say exactly why this novel is so transportive, there doesn't seem, at first glance, to be anything extraordinarily poetic about the writing, but nevertheless it utterly carried me away to another place. Who am I to argue with the Pulitzer committee?
Well worth the read and unexpectedly moving.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kelly
- 12-28-18
I think I have now traveled to Newfoundland!
Annie Proulx's Pulitzer winner is so vivid and unique. The descriptions of the culture and the landscape of Newfoundland was tangible and beautiful. I could feel the cold wind in the winter. I could taste the fish. I could hear the flat, nasal accents of the region. Everything about this book makes you feel like you have actually been to the cliffsides of the small seaside villages in the arctic. I love when a book transports me, and this one did. This is a new favorite.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jannali
- 05-17-15
Not bad
I really liked the narrator, some male performers can't do female characters well but this narrator didn't bother me for once. I really love the movie of this book so perhaps I am biased, but I enjoyed the story. I felt Quoyle was a very relatable character with all his insecurities and uncertainties about life.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Laura H.
- 10-20-11
comsi comsa
I like this story though there were several times the author got a little list happy, to the point I though OMG enough with the lists. I really liked Paul Hecht's voice. It is very pleasing and easy to listen to, however, I didn't like his interpretation of the cadence or flow of the narrative at times. It just seemed a little off and took me most of the book to get used to. I would have given 2 stars for performance his voice hadn't had such a pleasant timbre.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Starshine
- 12-23-13
Rough listening
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Annie Proulx' prose is purposely stilted, and this author does nothing to make it feel more natural. The book is depressing and it's hard to want to keep listening to the disappointments plaguing this unextraordinary protagonist.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kira
- 08-13-12
Nice story
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, it is well written, wonderful imagery
What other book might you compare The Shipping News to and why?
Not sure
What does Paul Hecht bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Personality, excellent accents
If you could take any character from The Shipping News out to dinner, who would it be and why?
Petal, so I could give her a piece of my mind
Any additional comments?
nope
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful