Ironweed
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Ironweed
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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By:
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William Kennedy
About this listen
Ironweed is the best-known of William Kennedy's three Albany-based novels. Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally – and fatally – dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.
As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of William Kennedy's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Russell Banks about the life and work of William Kennedy – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.
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Editorial reviews
The living and the dead, the past and the present linger together in William Kennedy's haunting, lyrical masterpiece, Ironweed. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1984 and one of the best books in Kennedy's deservedly-praised "Albany cycle", Ironweed reads like a classic novel James Joyce would have written if he had grown up in upstate New York in the late 19th century. One sentence flows seamlessly into the next, the words lingering in your mind like the lyrics of a melancholy ballad sung by an Irish tenor who's lived a hard, heart-breaking life.
Set on Halloween and the day after in 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, Ironweed tells the story of Francis Phelan, a middle-aged, self-described "bum" who once dazzled fans playing third base for the Washington Senators but who's now simply struggling to get through one day at a time. Phelan's life went off track years earlier when he accidentally dropped his 13-day-old son on the floor, killing the baby.
The baby's death and other tragic events in Phelan's past haunt him. Phelan vainly tries to forget such incidents. But the harder he tries, the more real his demons become. So as the novel unfolds, many of the people Phelan once knew who died years ago now appear more real to him than the living who walk the streets of Albany. And yet Phelan never asks for anyone's pity. Kennedy wisely avoids sentimentalizing Phelan's struggle to come to terms with his past. Instead, Kennedy bestows honor and dignity on Phelan and his fellow dispossessed friends, writing about the down-and-out with a touch as light and graceful as a concert pianist.
And like Jack Nicholson, who famously portrayed Phelan in a film adaptation of Kennedy's grim novel, narrator Jonathan Davis delivers an astounding reading of Ironweed in the Audible Modern Vanguard production of this book. Like Nicholson, Davis gives an understated yet powerful performance, allowing the grandeur of the author's vivid language to speak for itself. And like Kennedy, Davis veers from a gritty, hardscrabble tone of voice one second, to a solemn, elegiac whisper when expressing Phelan's yearning to set things right in his life once and for all. Ironweed will cling to your memory long after you've parted ways with Phelan and his memorable cast of friends. -Ken Ross
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 2,873
Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Beware of Mysterious Sexy Women with Big Suitcases
- By Jefferson on 02-13-11
By: Walter Mosley
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The Gospel Singer
- By: Harry Crews, Kevin Wilson - foreword
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
A gifted, idolized singer returns to his poor hometown and a life and family he is so far removed from he now holds them in contempt. The Gospel Singer reveals the absurdity of blind religious faith and idol worship and the hypocrisy that results with the offering of money or sex. Crews grapples with race, gender, religion, and place and steps back to divulge the secrets of his characters - including a dead girl awaiting the gospel singer’s melodious eulogy, his dysfunctional family, a murderer, the zealous town residents, and a traveling freak show.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The gospel singer
- By L. Welsh on 07-13-22
By: Harry Crews, and others
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Provinces of Night
- By: William Gay
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
E.F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after 20 years of roaming. The wife he walked out on has withered and faded, his three sons are grown and angry. Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is driven by jealousy to hunt down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mamma's porch. Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, treats him with the respect his age commands, and sees past all the hatred to realize the way it can posion a man's soul.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Story and Narration a perfect match
- By 99hedys on 10-03-15
By: William Gay
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 249
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 211
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Sula
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,724
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,720
Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
- By Karen on 04-11-11
By: Toni Morrison
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 513
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 364
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Story4 out of 5 stars 362
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
- By: Rebecca Wells
- Narrated by: Judith Ivey
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 993
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 986
When Vivi and Siddalee Walker, an unforgettable mother-daughter team, get into a savage fight over a New York Times article that refers to Vivi as a "tap-dancing child abuser", the fallout is felt from Louisiana to New York to Seattle. Siddalee, a successful theater director with a huge hit on her hands, panics and postpones her upcoming wedding to her lover and friend, Connor McGill. Vivi's intrepid gang of lifelong girlfriends, the Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back together.
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5 out of 5 stars
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As usual the book is better than the movie
- By Denzil and Judy's Account on 03-25-10
By: Rebecca Wells
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,859
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,399
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,397
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
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The Hollow Ground
- By: Natalie S. Harnett
- Narrated by: Luci Christian
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 534
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 469
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Story4 out of 5 stars 472
The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
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Sometimes a Great Notion
- By: Ken Kesey
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 860
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 744
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 735
A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Here, Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sometimes a Great Novel Pops up out of Nowhere
- By Mr. Eyuz on 06-07-19
By: Ken Kesey
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The Lost Country
- By: William Gay
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the finest novels I have read!
- By Donald B. Eager on 09-06-21
By: William Gay
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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Cannery Row
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Jerry Farden
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,467
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,986
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,969
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack and his boys, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and most poignant works.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Five stars with a Caveat
- By Bette on 04-23-12
By: John Steinbeck
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The Missing
- By: Tim Gautreaux
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4 out of 5 stars 32
In this spellbinder by critically acclaimed author Tim Gautreaux, Sam Simoneaux returns from World War I to rebuild his life. But when a girl is snatched from the New Orleans department store where he's working, he hops aboard a Mississippi steamboat to find her - and dredges up ghosts from his painful past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Missing
- By Michael L. Wintory on 07-11-09
By: Tim Gautreaux
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Some Sing, Some Cry
- By: Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 26 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 643
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 367
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Story4 out of 5 stars 365
Audible presents the multigenerational epic Some Sing, Some Cry. Created by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza, this audiobook takes listeners on a journey through Reconstruction, two world wars, the Harlem renaissance, and Vietnam to modern day America.Some Sing, Some Cry begins at the threshold of one family’s freedom. We meet Betty Mayfield, newly emancipated from Sweet Tamarind, a lush and haunted rice plantation off the Carolina coast.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I Sang, I Cried
- By Jo on 09-29-10
By: Ntozake Shange, and others
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Midnight Cowboy
- By: James Leo Herlihy
- Narrated by: Michael Urie
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck's fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel's emotional nucleus.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb
- By Macala Shon on 01-26-21
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Legs
- By: William Kennedy
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
Legs inaugurated William Kennedy's cycle of novels set in Albany, New York. True to both life and myth Legs evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond, who was finally murdered in Albany. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond's attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s.