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A Gesture Life
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Greg Watanabe
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
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A Gesture Life
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Publisher's summary
Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life is now available for the first time in audio!
His remarkable debut novel was called "rapturous" (The New York Times Book Review), "revelatory" (Vogue), and "wholly innovative" (Kirkus Reviews). It was the recipient of six major awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. Now Chang-rae Lee has written a powerful and beautifully crafted second novel that leaves no doubt about the extraordinary depth and range of his talent.
A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II.
In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee leads us with dazzling control through a taut, suspenseful story about love, family, and community - and the secrets we harbor. As in Native Speaker, he writes of the ways outsiders conform in order to survive and the price they pay for doing so. It is a haunting, breathtaking display of talent by an acclaimed young author.
Critic reviews
"A beautiful, solitary, remarkably tender book." (The New York Times Book Review)
"A Gesture Life is the touching, multilayered rumination of an uneasy psyche. It is also a tragic, horrifying page-turner, whose evocation of wartime victims is unforgettable.... A deeply involving tale, no less so because we realize, almost from the first chapter, that we can't trust Hata's version of events. [Lee] enlists the reader's full energies to interpret this enigmatic speaker, who saddens, baffles and unfuriates us all at once." (Chicago Tribune)
"Once again, this gifted young author has given us a beautifully tapestried story of seeking identity and acceptance in another culture while remaining separate from the tug of it." (The Christian Science Monitor)
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What listeners say about A Gesture Life
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
- BooksRLife
- 11-19-20
Superb
Lyrical prose that's both haunting and harrowing at times. The author speaks so eloquently about the consequences of our life choices. Excellent narrator, too.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Regina
- 11-20-20
Wonderful
The perfect narrator reveals the mesmerizing tale of an immigrant man, trying to live his life as properly as possible, working hard, observing all conventions, striving for perfection, while unable to connect with the daughter he adopted to atone for his failings in the War...
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Story4 out of 5 stars 380
On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee’s elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way listeners think about the world they live in. In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Literary dystopian fiction
- By David on 03-18-17
By: Chang-rae Lee
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My Year Abroad
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Lawrence Kao
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 261
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 233
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Story4 out of 5 stars 232
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Worst narration ever
- By Unhappy Sirius Camper on 02-07-21
By: Chang-rae Lee
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A Different Drummer
- By: William Melvin Kelley
- Narrated by: Jay Smooth
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story5 out of 5 stars 26
June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A wonderful and moving story
- By E. on 10-25-19
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The Surrendered
- By: Chang-Rae Lee
- Narrated by: James Yaegashi
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4 out of 5 stars 36
At the end of the Korean War, the lives of orphan June Han and American soldier Hector Brennan collide. Thirty years later, they meet again and are forced to come to terms with the secrets of their devastating past.
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2 out of 5 stars
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this bibliophile could not finish this book
- By Emily on 05-13-10
By: Chang-Rae Lee
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Aloft
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4 out of 5 stars 32
Aloft offers a reexamination of the American dream from the inside out. Jerry Battle's favorite diversion is to fly his small plane solo, slipping away for quick flights over his Long Island home or to the coastal towns of New England. Then a family crisis occurs, and Jerry finds he must face his disengagement in his relationships.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Truly Wonderful Listening Experience
- By Michelle on 12-23-04
By: Chang-rae Lee
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The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
- A Novel
- By: Jamie Ford
- Narrated by: Jennifer Lim, Mirai, Cindy Kay, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 559
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 506
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 505
Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living. As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.
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5 out of 5 stars
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You Won't Be Able to Put This Down
- By Susan Day on 08-21-22
By: Jamie Ford
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In the Beauty of the Lilies
- A Novel
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Faith ultimately bursts into flame as Updike's major new novel, charting the lives of one family through four generations, shows listeners an America whose dream of perfection is translated into an obsession with God and the moving picture. Paterson, New Jersey, 1910: When a Presbyterian minister suddenly loses his faith and leaves the pulpit to become a salesman, he becomes a movie addict as well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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In the Beauty of the Lillies
- By linda on 08-15-20
By: John Updike
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,053
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,369
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,362
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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Con/Artist
- The Life and Crimes of the World's Greatest Art Forger
- By: Tony Tetro, Giampiero Ambrosi
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone, Tony Tetro, Giampiero Ambrosi
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 226
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 182
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 182
The art world is a much dirtier, nastier business than you might expect. Tony Tetro, one of the most renowned art forgers in history, will make you question every masterpiece you’ve ever seen in a museum, gallery, or private collection. Tetro’s “Rembrandts,” “Caravaggios,” “Miros,” and hundreds of other works now hang on walls around the globe.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Incredibly interesting!
- By Carole Wooten on 12-07-22
By: Tony Tetro, and others
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Fellowship Point
- A Novel
- By: Alice Elliott Dark
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 19 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 455
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 399
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 396
Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too far fetched at the end
- By JMNE on 08-25-22
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The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19,747
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 13,623
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 13,629
Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
Related to this topic
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Cold Hand in Mine
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("Pages from a Young Girl's Journal") but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Aickman is unique
- By Stark on 08-19-23
By: Robert Aickman
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A Fall of Marigolds
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,869
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,547
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,537
September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries...and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she's made. Will what she learns devastate her or free her?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful!
- By R. Burnham on 03-29-15
By: Susan Meissner
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The Ambassador's Daughter
- By: Pam Jenoff
- Narrated by: Joanna Daniel
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 235
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Story4 out of 5 stars 211
Brought to the peace conference by her father, a German diplomat, Margot Rosenthal initially resents being trapped in the congested French capital, where she is still looked upon as the enemy. But as she contemplates returning to Berlin and a life with Stefan, the wounded fiancé she hardly knows anymore, she decides that being in Paris is not so bad after all. Bored and torn between duty and the desire to be free, Margot strikes up unlikely alliances: with Krysia, an accomplished musician with radical acquaintances and a secret to protect; and with Georg, the handsome, damaged naval officer who gives Margot a job.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Book 0 in the series
- By Stevon on 12-12-17
By: Pam Jenoff
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 355
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4 out of 5 stars 215
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
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The Unsettled Dust
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars