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Language Arts  By  cover art

Language Arts

By: Stephanie Kallos
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
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Publisher's summary

Charles Marlow is a Seattle English teacher who instructs his students to expand their worlds through language. Lately, however, with one child off to college and the pressure from his ex-wife to make plans for their severely autistic son who's about to age out of the system, he prefers the company of the ghosts he turns up in the storage boxes in his crawl space. There he finds the totems that betray the darker moments of his youth - memories that were buried for decades when he met the ambitious and sparkling Alison LeFevre. But the complications of parenthood proved fatal to their marriage, and Charles has been stagnant ever since.

Language Arts is a wise and perceptive novel about how accumulated guilt and fear can embalm us in middle age and how one man who lost his way in life and love regains both. Kallos' previous novels include Broken for You and Sing Them Home.

©2015 Stephanie Kallos (P)2015 Recorded Books

What listeners say about Language Arts

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  • Overall
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great use of language

I enjoyed the language but found the story a little dark and disjointed. Narration was excellent

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1 person found this helpful

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

Loved. Bit awkward.

Loved the book, great story, great reading. But I found the actor's voicing of Dana a little uncomfortable/awkward.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The beauty of the broken

Every time I read a Kallos book, she breaks my heart and then she puts it together again and I am always the better for it.
What a gift she has.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Gobsmacking marvelous.

If you live with or among disadvantaged people, read this book. If you have never met a disadvantaged person, READ this book. If you are simply swept away by beautiful writing, read this beautiful book.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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excellent story

Compassionate story of family, told with ntelligence, wisdom and an abundance of love... well done!



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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Aptly Titled: Exemplifies Art of Language

This is not a casual "listen-while-you-work" type of story. It's not really a "story" at all. It's a literary documentary of sorts. A dramatization of the human struggle to make sense of the ugliness that comes into our lives and how it's possible to find the purpose, the positive, the profound in those experiences which seem designed to destroy. This book, like a lighted flare on the roadside, signals caution, danger but promises hope and rescue.

Listen to this book intently. You will be pondering selected words and phrases at night as you drift off to sleep and find them enlivened in your dreams.

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  • Overall
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    1 out of 5 stars

boring

I'm almost halfway through, and bored the whole way. I'm giving up. It drags way too much.

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