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A Book of Common Prayer
- Narrated by: Marisa Vitali
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Release date: 03-22-13
- Language: English
- Publisher: Audible Studios
- Whispersync for Voice-ready
Regular price: $17.96
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
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I love it...
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4 out of 5 stars
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I admire that she gave herself so much permission.
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A 17th-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a body in motion not only through space but through time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What an incredible experience!
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Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible use of language
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The year is 1975 and Reno - so-called because of the place of her birth - has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world - artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Stories come gushing out of this book
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Publisher's Summary
Writing with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made her one of our most distinguished journalists, Joan Didion creates a shimmering novel of innocence and evil.
A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women in the derelict Central American nation of Boca Grande. Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country's wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little. "Immaculate of history, innocent of politics," she has come to Boca Grande vaguely and vainly hoping to be reunited with her fugitive daughter. As imagined by Didion, her fate is at once utterly particular and fearfully emblematic of an age of conscienceless authority and unfathomable violence.
Critic Reviews
"A novelist with important things to say about the dislocations of our time.... Joan Didion is stellar." ( Newsday)
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- A reader in Berkeley
- Berkeley, CA
- 06-04-17
Strong tale badly told
This narrator reads Charlotte Douglas' voice like a child's, and she is not a child. Think how much more mysterious she would be if allowed to sound like the strong, sensual, grownup, maternal character she is.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- NFH
- 06-28-18
Meh...
Found the plot boring. Only finished the book so I could talk about it at book club.