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The Ensemble
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
A sweeping debut novel about four young musicians - a story of art, ambition, and love.
Brit is the second violinist, a beautiful and quiet orphan; the viola is Henry, a prodigy who's always had it easy; the cellist is Daniel, the oldest, the angry skeptic who sleeps around; and on first violin is Jana, their flinty, resilient leader. Together, they are the Van Ness String Quartet.
In The Ensemble, each character takes the spotlight and picks up the melody, from the group's youthful rocky start through to middle age, through both devastating failures and wild success. As they navigate heartbreak and marriage, triumph and loss, betrayal and enduring loyalty, they are always tied together - by career, by necessity, by the intensity of their art, by the secrets they carry together, and by choosing each other over and over again.
The Ensemble is a heart-skipping portrait of artistic ambition, friendship, and the tenderness of youth. With heart, clarity, and poignant understanding, Aja Gabel examines the relationships between trust, love, and the magical, messy world of making music.
Critic reviews
"In Ms. Gabel’s terrifically entertaining debut, the frictions of long-term friendships are woven into the “webbed, collaborative endeavor” of the quartet. Their music doesn’t transcend the mess of living; it testifies to it." (The Wall Street Journal)
"Pitch-perfect." (People)
"Reminded me of Zadie Smith's Swing Time... The language that Gabel uses to describe both the pressures of prestige chamber orchestras and, simply, what it is to be a human in the world, is a work of art in and of itself. I found myself highlighting dozens of passages, marveling at just how impossibly relatable these people are... [I]t's the perfect form of escapism for me." (Entertainment Weekly)
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Story
Jen Beagin's quirky, moving, "frank and unflinching" (Josh Ferris) debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona - almost 24, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. Handing out clean needles to drug addicts, she falls for a recipient she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways. In search of healing, Mona decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of seekers and cast-offs, all of whom have one or two things to teach her.
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Are you kidding me??!!
- By Fleming on 07-19-18
By: Jen Beagin
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The Rachel Incident
- By: Caroline O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Clara Harte
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Rachel Incident is an all-consuming love story. But it's not the one you're expecting. It's unconventional and messy. It's young and foolish. It's about losing and finding yourself. But it is always about love. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back...
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Character development
- By Anonymous User on 05-08-24
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Astonish Me
- A Novel
- By: Maggie Shipstead
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Astonish Me is the irresistible story of Joan, a young American dancer who helps a Soviet ballet star, the great Arslan Rusakov, defect in 1975. A flash of fame and a passionate love affair follow, but Joan knows that, onstage and off, she is destined to remain in the background. She will never possess Arslan, and she will never be a prima ballerina. She will rise no higher than the corps, one dancer among many.After her relationship with Arslan sours, Joan plots to make a new life for herself.
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Not what I'd hoped for
- By Mimi on 04-17-14
By: Maggie Shipstead
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The Interestings
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Jen Tullock
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence.
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Needs a better title, but a good read (listen)
- By Tango on 04-12-13
By: Meg Wolitzer
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Congratulations, the Best Is Over!
- Essays
- By: R. Eric Thomas
- Narrated by: R. Eric Thomas
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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After going viral “reading” the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas finally knew who he was and where he was going. He was living his best life. But then everything changed. In this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas moves back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore (a place he never wanted to return, even to be buried) and behaving completely out of character.
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loved this so much
- By Jami on 04-24-24
By: R. Eric Thomas
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Family Family
- A Novel
- By: Laurie Frankel
- Narrated by: Laurie Frankel, Patti Murin
- Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero. Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.
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Interesting story but horrible language
- By Jed on 01-26-24
By: Laurie Frankel
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How to Stay Married
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key, Lauren Key
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking action of How to Stay Married, casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do?
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Spot On!
- By B. Summers on 12-07-23
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Olga Dies Dreaming
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
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Funny, romantic, serious, substantial—all of these things and more
- By Diana on 01-07-22
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
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Monsters
- A Fan's Dilemma
- By: Claire Dederer
- Narrated by: Claire Dederer
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
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I needed this book.
- By Jennifer E. Glapion on 05-16-23
By: Claire Dederer
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The Neighbor Favor
- By: Kristina Forest
- Narrated by: Keylor Leigh, Malik Rashad
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Shy, bookish, and admittedly awkward, Lily Greene has always felt inadequate compared to the rest of her accomplished family, who strive for Black excellence. She dreams of becoming a children’s books editor, but she’s been frustratingly stuck in the nonfiction division for years without a promotion in sight. Lily finds escapism in her correspondences with her favorite fantasy author, and what begins as two lonely people connecting over email turns into a tentative friendship and possibly something else Lily won’t let herself entertain—until he ghosts her without a word.
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Excellent Story! Hope for improvements in the narration
- By brownskinblue on 04-08-23
By: Kristina Forest
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The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
- A Novel
- By: Shannon Chakraborty
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Amin El Gamal
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
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Not City of Brass, A Fun Swashbuckling Adventure
- By Pele on 03-23-23
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You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
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Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
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The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
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Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
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Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
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Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
What listeners say about The Ensemble
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R. Litchfield
- 05-23-19
Musicians will relate
This book gives a glimpse into the interpersonal relationships between members of a string quartet. Musicians of all sorts will relate to the dynamics of performers. Others who are curious about musicians may find this book interesting. The reader is excellent overall.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-16-23
Unexpectedly wonderful
I nearly passed on this book due to decidedly mixed reviews but I’m so glad I gave it a chance. I found the story compelling and cared about the characters, wondering what would come of the quartet and each of its members. The narration was excellent. It was easy to distinguish each of the characters and through those four voices, I heard and felt their joy, wonder, frustration, pain and angst. I will remember this book for quite a while, I think.
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- Tammie from Utah
- 05-30-18
A great glimpse into the world of classical musicians
I enjoyed the storyline, the characters and the intricate way each of them develops throughout the book, in a similar way that a work of classical music does. Having played violin most of my life, I loved the details about the various classical works described, as well as the challenges and triumphs of performing in general. It is well written - rich prosaic detail. I wish I had read the actual book instead of listening. I’m not a fan of this particular narrator, and I think I will try to avoid her audible books in the future. It might be just me because she has narrated many previous books and has received good reviews. This is the second book I’ve listened to that she has narrated, and I had the same reaction both times.
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- Kate Johnson
- 09-14-18
Beautiful Use Of Language
The tone and use of language in The Ensemble was more beautiful and interesting than the story line. Listening to the words was like listening to a quartet.
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- Darcy
- 05-28-18
Score!!!
Intelligent, funny and evocative. Beautiful language telling the tale. Luxurious exploration into character' pysches. Great production and narrator. Enjoy!
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- Jarrett
- 04-19-20
Took forever to get through
Finally finished The Ensemble. I started reading this book over a year ago for a book club I joined. The author’s talent is clear, but there is so much internal dialogue that it’s a bit maddening. It’s not a Jonathan Franzen internal dialogue, it’s different and great in some spaces, but it was dizzying. The ending was great, but it took a lot of time and effort to get to that point.
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- Shelly Dee
- 06-27-18
Classically Slow
Even though I'm not a classical music fan I figured a musical group is a musical group is a .... I think, though, one really needs to be into this scene to truly get the storyline of THE ENSEMBLE. Difficult to follow for me. If I have to work at remembering the characters and their individual plots, it's not worth my time. It's a bit more difficult with the audio version to follow along, but this book put me to sleep. 6/27/18
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- Helene Grotans
- 07-16-18
A wonderful journey for musicians
As a violinist, living in San Francisco, I fell right instep with this novel. The author guides you through the life, woes and successes of the Van Ness String Quartet with expert knowledge of string technique and the real world of musicians. Good drama and romance- I enjoyed it!
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- NCKitkat
- 11-01-23
I trudged through this book
The story line was good- I relate to the musicians and that part of the story. However, as another reviewer put it, it became tedious; there would be interactions between characters, then what became mind-numbingly long explanations of how each character related to the others-individually- and why. It was almost as if the author felt that every relationship must be explained because otherwise, the reader just wouldn’t get it.
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- N. Burmaster
- 09-25-19
uninteresting and repetitive
couldn't finish it, maybe it was the delivery but I was completely turned off by all the characters and the description of their lives. I felt like the same sentiments, literally some of the same sentences just kept being used over and over. I just stopped and returned it after 4 chapters.
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