Shell Game

Getaway Collection

De: Rumaan Alam

Narrado por: Fajer Al-Kaisi

2023 Audie Award Winner for Best Short Stories/Collection Audiobook

An extended family’s Cape Cod vacation reveals uncomfortable truths that threaten one man’s illusion of happiness in this incisive short story by the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.

Mark has a wife and two kids, a sense of purpose, financial security, and a fragile contentment. However wistful his visions of the future, Mark knows who he is. But a summer trip with his abrasive brother-in-law and unhappy sister-in-law leave Mark questioning everything he thinks he knows about his family—and himself.

Shell Game by Rumaan Alam is part of Getaway, a collection of six stories about dream escapes that take unimaginable, even sinister, turns. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single sitting.

©2022 Rumaan Alam. (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Did I miss something?

I feel like this was an epilogue or a something to wet your appetite for a main course. I don’t see how it can be stand along and completed.

maybe I missed the point

To be totally transparent, I was busy doing other things while listening to this one, but I couldn't get into the story. Overall, it sounded like a short recollection of a boring family vacation.

Waste of Time!!!

Shell Game by Rumaan Alam
28 pages Kindle story starts on 3
53m narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi
Getaway Collection #6

Genre: Short Stories

Featuring: Cape Cod, Twins, Family Vacation

Rating as a movie: R

My rating: ⭐️¾

My thoughts: There was no point to this story and no reason for its ending directionless plot. This is the weakest of the collection and the only one written by a man, that's not how you end a short story collection. It's not even literary fiction because the characters lacked depth.

Recommend to others?: No. This was a waste of a good setting.

It missed the mark

I enjoyed the book series, but didn’t understand how this book fit into the collection. Nor did I fully understand the storyline…

Family Dynamics

This story actually was interesting, seeing family
dynamics from a father/husband/brother-in-law's perspective. The ending is jarring though as we go from a normal family vacation to a stark and apparent sad scene in the future, I wish there was more and I would have listened much longer. The narrator did awesome, and I chuckled a couple times at his frankness. This wasn't a thriller or super suspenseful, just wondering when something big will happen (it doesn't), a single perspective into the human condition and family dynamics. It made me sad though how inconsequential it makes being a human going about their life seem.

Not worth the time

This was horrible. No real storyline. Seemed to be about some guy fixated on sex. I wish I had that hour plus of my listening time back.

Jarring and real

I am not sure the point of this novella, other than it’s exceptionally real and raw. The author absolutely captures the human condition in an inevitability jarring way.

No plot

It’s terrible and I never gathered the plot of the story. I do not recommend.

Odd story

Did not quite enjoy the nation type of story and how he was read and described. Very confusing.

Na

Not very interesting. Not for me anyway!
Would not recommend this reading to anyone!
Thanks