• Blessings

  • By: Anna Quindlen
  • Narrated by: Joan Allen
  • Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (471 ratings)

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Blessings  By  cover art

Blessings

By: Anna Quindlen
Narrated by: Joan Allen
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Publisher's summary

Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him. Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person or a life legitimate or illegitimate and who decides; and the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about whom The Washington Post Book World said, “Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family.”

©2002 Anna Quindlen (P)2002 Random House Inc., Random House Audio, a Division of Random House Inc.

Critic reviews

"Immensely appealing." (Publishers Weekly)
"Quindlen writes with power and grace." (The Boston Globe)
"Written with intelligence, clarity, and heartrending directness." (Newsday)

What listeners say about Blessings

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Read it for class

Not normally the kind of book that I read but the story was nice. Its more of a novel to curl up to versus using for class but there are some strong points related to the three different life stages described.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great listen!

I would recommend to a friend, really enjoyed listen to this book. I have also enjoy other books by Anna Quindlen, I like her writing style, the characters are really and believable.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Not so great

I adore Anna Quindlen, both as a columnist, and from her fiction, which I have previously read. So, I had high expectations from this book, which wer not realized. It was certainly fine, and exposed some good ideas and characters, but was just not that compelling. I kept waiting for the big turn to occur, and it never did. Certainly readable enough, but just not that great.

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  • Overall
    out of 5 stars

Blessings

Simplistic pedictable book Don't reccomend

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Very boring!

I had read or listened to other books by Anna Quindlen and loved them (One True Thing and Black and Blue). This was just boring. Half the book is flashbacks, and I never cared much about characters from the past. Even the modern story, which had my interest for a while, lot its momentum. In this story, a young man finds a baby in a basket and wants to raise it on his own. He befriends his boss, a strict 80 year-old. None of these characters were realistic to me, and so my heart was not broken, as happened with so many readers and listeners.

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5 people found this helpful