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Simple Passion
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
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Simple Passion
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Publisher's summary
In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.
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-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 149
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 125
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
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The Lost Manuscript
- By: Cathy Bonidan
- Narrated by: Elodie Yung, Rupert Degas, Cécile Delepière, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
When Anne-Lise Briard books a room at the Beau Rivage Hotel for her vacation on the Brittany coast, she has no idea this trip will start her on the path to unearthing a mystery. In search of something to read, she opens up her bedside table drawer in her hotel room, and inside she finds an abandoned manuscript. Halfway through the pages, an address is written. She sends pages to the address, in hopes of potentially hearing a response from the unknown author. But not before she reads the story and falls in love with it. The response, which she receives a few days later, astonishes her.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Book of the year
- By Kmax on 06-24-21
By: Cathy Bonidan
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The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
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How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 543
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 453
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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The Zahir
- By: Paulo Coelho
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi, Emilia Fox
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 298
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 237
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 237
It begins with a glimpse or a passing thought. It ends in obsession. One day a renowned author discovers that his wife, a war correspondent, has disappeared leaving no trace. Though time brings more success and new love, he remains mystified - and increasingly fascinated - by her absence. Was she kidnapped, blackmailed, or simply bored with their marriage? The unrest she causes is as strong as the attraction she exerts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful and deep read!
- By Top 1% Buyer on 09-13-15
By: Paulo Coelho
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Myra Breckinridge
- A Novel (Myra and Myron, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal, Camille Paglia - introduction
- Narrated by: Michelle Hendley, Camille Paglia
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 54
"I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent, Myra's moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well performed
- By Kenny D on 06-08-19
By: Gore Vidal, and others
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The Museum of Innocence
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 318
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 238
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 238
Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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5 out of 5 stars
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one of the very best I've ever heard
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 03-06-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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The Secret Casella Baby
- By: Cathy Williams
- Narrated by: Louise Jane Underwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 39
How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people? This is a question ordinary girl Holly George never thought she'd be able to answer! Until one sizzling night with brooding Brazilian Luiz changes her life. Not only is Luiz Casella a billionaire - but now Holly is expecting his baby! Holly can don all the silk and diamonds Luiz can shower her with - but she'll always feel most comfortable working at her animal sanctuary. Yet it seems she might have to get used to living in the world of the rich and famous.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The story was rushed and accents wrong.
- By Pamela Sebastian on 07-19-20
By: Cathy Williams
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Thus Bad Begins
- A Novel
- By: Javier Marias, Margaret Jull Costa
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost, and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating plot, superb performance, psychological depth
- By Doctor George on 12-05-16
By: Javier Marias, and others
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Henry & June
- By: Anais Nin
- Narrated by: Cherie Lunghi
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 195
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 161
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 164
Anais Nin wrote her diary at the end of 1931, at the close of a sexually tumultuous and emotional year as part of a ménage a trois with fellow writer Henry Miller and his beautiful wife June Mansfield. 'I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife.' Nin's passionate and consuming relationship with Henry & June transformed a previously monogamous wife into an uninhibited and sexually liberated woman.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Confusing Narrator
- By Lauren on 07-11-09
By: Anais Nin
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
-
Distant Star
- By: Roberto Bolano
- Narrated by: Walter Krochmal
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 58
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 51
A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Omg
- By Sierra on 08-03-16
By: Roberto Bolano
-
This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 58
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
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Getting Lost
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer - translator
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall2.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 13
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Story2.5 out of 5 stars 13
In these diaries, it is 1989, and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris, and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there, and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write; she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world; she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.
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1 out of 5 stars
-
one of the worst books I have ever read
- By sara a. conti on 06-12-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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Happening
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep the child. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist and ended up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly died. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Heartbreaking
- By Lynn Thompson on 05-19-23
By: Annie Ernaux
-
A Woman's Story
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.” She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
A stiff and uninteresting story
- By Ellen on 11-19-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
A Girl's Story
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 32
In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits a night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It was the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18, and the man she had given herself to had moved on. She'd submitted her will to his and then found that she was a slave without a master.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
horrifying pronunciation
- By melinda on 02-08-24
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
A Man's Place
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 29
Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Superb
- By E Ray Stewart on 06-04-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
Getting Lost
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer - translator
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall2.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 13
-
Story2.5 out of 5 stars 13
In these diaries, it is 1989, and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris, and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there, and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write; she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world; she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
one of the worst books I have ever read
- By sara a. conti on 06-12-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Happening
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep the child. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist and ended up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly died. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Heartbreaking
- By Lynn Thompson on 05-19-23
By: Annie Ernaux
-
A Woman's Story
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.” She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
A stiff and uninteresting story
- By Ellen on 11-19-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
A Girl's Story
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 32
In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits a night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It was the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18, and the man she had given herself to had moved on. She'd submitted her will to his and then found that she was a slave without a master.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
horrifying pronunciation
- By melinda on 02-08-24
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
A Man's Place
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 29
Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Superb
- By E Ray Stewart on 06-04-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
A Frozen Woman
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
This narrative charts Annie Ernaux's teenage awakening and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is 30 years old, a teacher married to an executive, a mother of two infant sons.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
On Point
- By Michelle C. on 11-29-22
By: Annie Ernaux
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Shame
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie - translator
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 13
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 13
My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon, begins Shame, the probing story of the 12-year-old girl who will become the author herself and the single traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. With the emotionally rich voice of great fiction and the diamond-sharp analytical eye of a scientist, Annie Ernaux provides a powerful reflection on experience and the power of violent memory to endure through time, to determine the course of a life.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Very French, Very Catholic
- By Dennis J Gallagher on 09-24-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
The Young Man
- By: Annie Ernaux, Alison L. Strayer - translator
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story3 out of 5 stars 1
This is Annie Ernaux’s account of her passionate love affair with A., a man some thirty years younger, when she was in her fifties. The relationship pulls her back to memories of her own youth and, at the same time, leaves her feeling ageless, outside of time—together with a sense that she is living her life backwards. Amidst talk of having a child together, she feels time running its course and menopause approaching. The Young Man recalls Ernaux as the “scandalous girl” she once was but is composed with the mastery and the self-assurance she has achieved across decades of writing.
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
The Possession
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Self-regard, in the works of Annie Ernaux, is always an excruciatingly painful and exact process. Here, she revisits the peculiar kind of self-fulfillment possible when we examine ourselves in the aftermath of a love affair, and sometimes, even, through the eyes of the lost beloved.
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Look at the Lights, My Love
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 2
For half a century, the French writer Annie Ernaux has transgressed the boundaries of what stories are considered worth telling, what subjects worth exploring. In this probing meditation, Ernaux turns her attention to the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, a ubiquitous feature of modern life that has received scant attention in literature. Recording her visits to a store near Paris for over a year, she captures the world that exists within its massive walls.
By: Annie Ernaux
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
Hot Milk
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Romola Garai
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 138
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 125
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 125
Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant - their very last chance - in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis. But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Protagonist's journey of self
- By Saleh on 02-11-17
By: Deborah Levy
-
The Lover
- By: Marguerite Duras
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 13
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 13
Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.
By: Marguerite Duras
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All the Names
- By: Margaret Jull Costa - translator, José Saramago
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 238
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 220
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 220
Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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effortless abstract conections
- By ron on 02-20-12
By: Margaret Jull Costa - translator, and others
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L'événement
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Claire de La Rüe du Can
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story5 out of 5 stars 23
"Depuis des années, je tourne autour de cet événement de ma vie. Lire dans un roman le récit d'un avortement me plonge dans un saisissement sans images ni pensées, comme si les mots se changeaient instantanément en sensation violente. De la même façon entendre par hasard "La javanaise", "J'ai la mémoire qui flanche", n'importe quelle chanson qui m'a accompagnée durant cette période, me bouleverse."
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5 out of 5 stars
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A woman’s encounter with life
- By Patricia J. Oconnor on 12-31-22
By: Annie Ernaux
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Vladimir
- A Novel
- By: Julia May Jonas
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 386
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 326
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 323
A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Please do not judge this book by its cover
- By Sabrina N. Frang on 02-18-22
By: Julia May Jonas
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Les années
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Marina Moncade
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Au travers de photos et de souvenirs laissés par les événements, les mots et les choses, Annie Ernaux nous fait ressentir le passage des années, de l'après-guerre à aujourd'hui. En même temps, elle inscrit l'existence dans une forme nouvelle d'autobiographie, impersonnelle et collective. Marina Moncade est la voix sensible et délicate d'Annie Ernaux qui regarde en elle-même pour retrouver le monde, la mémoire et l'imaginaire des jours passés.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Marina Moncade leads me from Ernaux to Ferrante 📗
- By Grimod on 08-13-23
By: Annie Ernaux
What listeners say about Simple Passion
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- John A.
- 10-07-22
A wonderful book
A fantastic book that I found to be developmental and maturative for a young man coming of age such as myself. I found this book to be intelligent and very nicely written. I further highly recommend this book.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Humberto
- 10-21-22
Essay about selfish love
From a very personal point of view here is the story of a love affair and how that affected a life beyond love. Does the aliveness of being in love requires reciprocity? Read this book before answering
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Kimberly
- 10-17-22
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Short memoir, honest portrayal of a love affair and the pain it brings. A little over an hour long makes a great pick for a drive.
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2 people found this helpful