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South of the Border, West of the Sun
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Eric Loren
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels.
Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in South of the Border, West of the Sun the simple arc of one man’s life becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Murakami’s remarkable genius.
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Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.
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Great Story!
- By Kindle Customer on 01-09-13
By: V. C. Andrews
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Return to the Beach House
- Beach House, Book 3
- By: Georgia Bockoven
- Narrated by: Joell A. Jacob
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Alison arrives at the beach house in June to spend a month with her restless grandson before he leaves for his freshman year in college. Over a decade before, Alison lost her beloved husband, and has faced life alone ever since. Now she discovers a new life, and possible new love. August brings together four college friends facing a milestone. Across summer's final days, they share laughter, tears, and love-revealing long-held secrets and creating new and even more powerful bonds.
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I knew the 3rd book would be great!!!
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By: Georgia Bockoven
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The Unwelcomed Child
- By: V. C. Andrews
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Cottle
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Elle Edwards, who has been told she's a product of her mother's sinful mistake, has never gone to school, never met a teenager her own age, never even been allowed off of her grandparents' property. Convinced that their granddaughter is infected with evil, Myra and Prescott Edwards believe that only the harshest child-rearing methods will prevent Elle from becoming an instrument of the devil.
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I wanted it to be better.
- By A. Smith on 11-25-19
By: V. C. Andrews
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The Ramblers
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- By: Aidan Donnelley Rowley
- Narrated by: Erica Sullivan
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Set in the most magical parts of Manhattan - the Upper West Side, Central Park, Greenwich Village - The Ramblers explores the lives of three lost souls bound together by friendship and family. During the course of one fateful Thanksgiving week, a time when emotions run high and being with family can be a mixed blessing, Rowley's sharply defined characters explore the moments when decisions are deliberately made, choices accepted, and pasts reconciled.
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Lovely Portrait of The City
- By Dingo27 on 02-19-16
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Full Circle
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History professor Ned Brummel is living happily with his partner of 12 years in small-town Maine when he receives a phone call from his estranged friend - Jack - telling him that another friend - Andy - is very ill and possibly near death. As Ned boards a plane to Chicago on his way to his friend's bedside, he embarks on another journey into memory, examining the major events and small moments that have shaped his world and his relationships with these two very different, very important men.
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To Every Season...
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Gold Dust
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Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
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It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
- By Maria on 12-04-17
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Mr. Fox
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Keeper of the Light
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Dr. Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman's life, Olivia realizes who she is - Annie O'Neill, the woman Olivia's husband, Paul, is in love with.
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I can't finish this...
- By Calmeridian Tink on 03-31-16
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Strong Motion
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
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By: Jonathan Franzen
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Boy, Snow, Bird
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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dull
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The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
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WOW, WOW, WOW.
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The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.
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A short story collection full of wonder and magic
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The City and Its Uncertain Walls
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The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his fans will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.
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First Person Singular
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From the internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami comes a mind-bending new collection of short stories, all touching beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory...all with a signature Murakami twist. The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world.
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A Murakami novel ruined by the wrong narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 07-10-21
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Novelist as a Vocation
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In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author and famously private writer Haruki Murakami shares with listeners his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.
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Love Murakami - Struggled with this Narrator
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What listeners say about South of the Border, West of the Sun
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Darwin8u
- 10-12-13
A River of Unmindfulness
"...the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all things." - Plato
(***1/2) This was not my favorite Murakami, but it was still good, solid (OK, maybe no Murakami novel should be described as anything close to solid) second-shelf Murakami. It felt like a mystical combination of Descartes + Proust. His themes of love, memory, forgetting, the past, reality, etc., were all better developed in some of his other novels ('Kafka on the Shore', 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle', etc).
Still, there was something haunting and beautiful about the novel. For me, it was a story about the seductive and supernatural/surreal qualities of the past. It is, at heart, a dark love story where a man essentially becomes the lover to (and haunted by) the memory of his childhood sweetheart.
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23 people found this helpful
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The overlooked gem
This was unavailable in audio for many years. I am happy to see they've finally released it. I've read four Murakami novels and most of the short story collections. I don't think this book is as popular as 'Wind up Bird' and some of the others, but in my own opinion this is his best work. Wind Up Bird and Kafka are paced very slow with chapters and chapters of stuff that is intereting to read, but overall does not contribute to the story. This book is slim, to the point. Wistful romance of the only-child. It is very haunting without trying too hard. I've read the other Murakami novels once, but this book I've read at least five times. I am surprised it is not as popular as his other books. If you already like Murakami, I think you will like this. If you're new to Murakami, I can't think of a better novel to start with.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Kazuhiko
- 03-23-14
Not many metaphors in this book, but it's good
Like "Sputnik Sweetheart", among Murakami's books, this is a "lighter" but very good one, I think. To explain what I mean by "lighter" without mentioning the plot, a metaphor that Murakami used in one of his interviews may help (this was an interview for a Japanese literary journal in 2004; I am translating/para-phrasing - the original was longer):
"Human existence takes place in a "two-story house" (metaphorically, obviously) : the first floor is where people talk to each other; the second floor is where each individual does her/his own things, like reading books or listening to music; then there is the basement where people occasionally visit to reflect or look at things that lay there that are forgotten in daily life; then, below the basement, there is the second basement that most people don't get to visit. There is darkness in the second basement; people see the connections to their past and their souls. The entrance to the second basement is not obvious. You may not come back from there…"
Using this metaphor, the story in "South of the Border, West of the Sun" takes place mostly on the first and second floors and occasionally peeks at the basement. It does not get down to the second basement, I thought. In contrast, "Kafka on the shore" and "The wind-up bird chronicle" definitely spend some time in the second basement. But I don't mind Murakami's stories that take place mostly on the first and second floors, probably because I don't necessarily want to visit the basement or the second basement that often. It's just that it's good to know that Murakami can take me there. Unlike many of Murakami's stories, this book does not contain many metaphors, but I liked it.
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- Real Talk
- 04-15-15
Realism without the magic, feels just as Murakami
Murakami is known for his magic realism and many people emphasize the magic part of that equation. But it's the realism part I like best. His novels are so real but they also have a dreamlike quality to them which is why I guess his particular brand of magic works so well. Well in this one, it's all real and no magic. But it doesn't suffer one but for it, because while everyone likes to think they like Murakami for the magical/surrealistic/sci-fi elements it's really the realism makes the novels what they are. His simple yet poetic prose, his psychological depth, his vivid observations and perspective on the world. These are what make his novels special. The actual magical elements only accentuate, rather than constitute, the magic that can be found in the everyday and that Murakami so eloquently expresses and represents in his novels. If you can't tell, I'm a fan, and this one did not disappoint.
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- Joao
- 05-26-19
My first Murakami, I'm amazed
listened it to completion when driving back to the city, was completely immersed and addicted to it. just stood in the kitchen for 15 minutes till it ended, so enthralled and needing to see the ending
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- mdk
- 04-17-15
Great Performance, enjoyable but unsatisfying book
Would you listen to South of the Border, West of the Sun again? Why?
Maybe. The narrator did a fine job
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
The overall theme of the book; the big question: 'What if'. The way that question can haunt you.
Which character – as performed by Eric Loren – was your favorite?
The main character.
If you could rename South of the Border, West of the Sun, what would you call it?
'Roads Not Taken' or maybe 'In Search of Lost Loves'
Any additional comments?
The book was intelligent and bravely asked some big questions without being heavy handed about it. The 'getting there' was enjoyable; I love the way Murakami writes and I really did care about all of the characters. The ending, though, left a lot of story points unanswered and that really annoyed me. I know he may have done that on purpose but it still didn't work with me.
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- Lori Clifford
- 06-19-20
I've had an epiphany
This was a short enjoyable reading of a good book- well written, and well narrated.
I love that he presented himself honestly and we get to experience the truth of what infidelity does to others. I was so ready to hate these stereotypical characters and then he had them teach us an important lesson. a lesson that should be obvious to us but unfortunate isn't.
But my epiphany had nothing to do with the content of the story but what happened to me half way through listening. I found myself very uncomfortable with the erotic scenes that were very private and realized that I was embarrassed to hear read aloud erotic text from a 3rd person. I realized the sensual scene being read aloud were things I have personal experience with and not certainly NOT uncomfortable with erotica in and of itself, but its between the author and the reader and I found the narrator an intruder into my imagination, which was soooo awkward and made me irritated rather than titillated. If I read another book by Murakami, I may just read it!
(for reference; youtube video of Gilbert Godfrey reading 50 Shades of Grey-you'll get my meaning).
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- Pascale Matarazzo
- 08-04-19
Why is this book so short?
The book was read well, my issue is not with the audible production of it. My issue is the story. This is the first book I’ve read by Haruki Murakami, after hearing lots of good things, and I’ve gotta say I’m disappointed. I hope the other books delve a little deeper. This book was very well written, but it was too short! The book ended and nothing was answered or summed up, and not in the clever “let the reader interpret” kind of way, it’s like he wrote himself into a hole and just gave up. Didn’t want to explain ANY THING. This book left me wanting so much more! At least give the reader some clues, so they could draw their own conclusions, come up with their own theories. NOTHING. I’m dying to know the reasons! Explain yourself Mr. Murakami! Explain this book! Is there a sequel? If not, you better get to writing. This book is a serious let down. EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE PEOPLE AND WHY! FINISH YOUR BOOK D/\MNIT!
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- Anonymous User
- 05-09-20
Emotional, deep in thought
Loved the book! It's full real life situations and thoughts, ideas that actually leave you thinking after reading... Ideas that leave you deep in thought about your own love life, about how love feels like itself and how fragile a life and or relationships can be.
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- Michael C.
- 06-06-18
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Once again, I came into one of Murakami’s books thinking I might know what to expect and was blown away. Each one has its own world and strange powers, but still there is Murakami’s wonderful style and ability to write us straight into the core of an emotion. I love the way Murakami’s characters go from total strangers and slowly unravel into someone we know intimately. I felt the protagonist’s every emotion and this book left me deeply moved, like I gained something special by reading it. This is art, and those who love to read will recognize it as the very sort of book that makes us fall in love with reading. I hope you get the same things from Murakami’s writing as I do. This is my fifth book of his that I’ve read/listened to and I am hooked. If you loved Norwegian Wood, I think you’ll also find a similar love for this book.
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