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On Beauty
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
In this loose retelling of Howard's End, Zadie Smith considers the big questions: Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?
Set in New England mainly and London partly, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kippses - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kippses, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.
Critic reviews
2006 Orange Prize for Fiction
2005 Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award, Fiction
"[A] thoroughly original tale about families and generational change, about race and multiculturalism in millennial America, about love and identity and the ways they are affected by the passage of time. Ms. Smith possesses a captivating authorial voice - at once authoritative and nonchalant, and capacious enough to accommodate high moral seriousness, laid-back humor and virtually everything in between - and in these pages, she uses that voice to enormous effect, giving us that rare thing: a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)
"Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as On Beauty. It's a thing of beauty indeed. In tackling grown-up issues of marriage, adultery, race, class, liberalism and aesthetics, she thrillingly balances engaging ideas with equally engaging characters. As good as she is with big ideas, Smith is even stronger at capturing family dynamics, the heartbreak of broken trust as well as the lovely connections between siblings. (The Los Angeles Times Book Review)
"In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." (Kirkus Reviews)
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What listeners say about On Beauty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Cherokee
- 11-15-05
Somewhat Disappointed
After reading the listener's reviews, some literary reviews, and learning that On Beauty was shortlisted for the Mann Booker Prize,I chose this for my previous "listen" only to be disappointed by the plot contrivances. Zadie Smith can write beautifully and with humor, but she has no qualms about manipulating the plot so the characters go to the places she needs them to be (e.g., Jerome to England to intern with Kipps, no less; The Kipps's to Wellington; the Belseys back to England for Christmas; etc.). There are too many coincidences for me to suspend my disbelief for long. Also, what makes Howard Belsey so appealing to beautiful poet laureates and young, hot students? He is characterized as one dry, repressed academician who can't even get enough students to attend his classes or finish a book so he can achieve tenure. On a positive note, there are many other interesting characters in the book. Also, the narration is quite good.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Janis
- 11-01-05
Well done
This book is marvelous, in part due to the fantastic reading by the narrator. He captures each character's voice and makes them come alive. The book is engrossing, funny and an extremely well done audiobook.
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11 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Maryjo
- 11-04-05
I loved it!
this is a great book by a great author...at times laugh out loud funny, at other times poignant, with uncomfortably familiar human situations...it's great
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Sarah DeFeo
- 11-23-07
two thumbs up
I thoroughly enjoyed this-- the experience was greatly enhanced by the narration, which was truly outstanding. Great characters & portrait of marriage, family life, the personal and political.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ciara
- 03-12-07
Only if you're a fan of Smith
I only recommend this if you're a fan of Zadie Smith. The narration is excellent, but like many of her books her characters are the main focus rather than an entralling plot.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 01-23-08
listening better than reading?
I really enjoyed this audio book -- it's very long, though, so is a major time commitment. I liked it more than friends who read the book liked it, leading me to believe that when you can be carried along by the good performance you can overlook some clunky plot stuff.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jolinda
- 06-15-07
Don't Make it End!
This book is so fabulously written, with rich and poignant metaphor and simile, humor and a
BIG HEART and observant eye for life, that I
find myself listening in the car on the whole
5 minute trip to the high school and back. The
narration is almost as remarkable as the writing! Don't miss this one...and waiting to
find White Teeth and anything else Smith has ever written available on Audible soon!!
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Robin
- 12-01-05
good narrator - relationships tough to buy
The narrator is excellent, and does a good job navigating a variety of accents.
This is my first encounter with Smith's writing. The wide spread of character types made the relationship dynamics tough to buy. The members of the Belsey (sp?) household didn't seem to share any common traits or know much about each other. The academians wore on me. Like "cweather" I found it hard to accept that the dry teacher, Howard, could be alluring to the hottest young student in the story.
There were some interesting subplots - like Carl's foray into musical study, and Kiki's development.
Just not the tale for me...
I only finished listening, because I had already logged the hours to get through the first 2/3rds.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Davina
- 02-14-09
Fabulous in every way!
Not only was this a deeply engaging story and the characters astutely drawn but the narration was absolutely superb! So few readers actually manage to create distinct and authentic voices for each character but this narrator had AMAZING range across gender, nationality, age, etc. You will absolutely not be disappointed by this listening experience.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- R. CASEY
- 09-02-08
great book
interesting characters, very well written. thoroughly enjoyed this book. if you like high quality fiction, you'll love this book.
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4 people found this helpful
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Story
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
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Very disappointing
- By Happy purchaser on 09-10-23
By: Zadie Smith
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Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
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There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
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Swing Time
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
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Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
- By Richmond Surrey on 07-27-17
By: Zadie Smith
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NW
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Karen Bryson, Don Gilet
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Somewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up there, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes - whatever that means....
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I believe this book is best listened to than read
- By BowedBookshelf on 09-28-12
By: Zadie Smith
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Intimations
- Six Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality - or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
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An eye-opener for me into our inequitable systems
- By Rashida L on 07-29-20
By: Zadie Smith
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White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
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4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
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The Fraud
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
-
-
Very disappointing
- By Happy purchaser on 09-10-23
By: Zadie Smith
-
Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
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There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
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Feel Free
- Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.
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great material, thoroughly brilliant narration
- By Mary E. Magin on 03-09-18
By: Zadie Smith
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Grand Union
- Stories
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Doc Brown
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving 11 completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction.
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In Defense of Zadie Smith
- By Andre on 11-11-19
By: Zadie Smith
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The Autograph Man
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Ben Barnes
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. A small blip in a huge worldwide network of desire, his business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them - all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the reinstatement of some kind of all-powerful, benevolent God-type figure, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of '40s movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.
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Maybe it's ...me? (But I don't think it's me.)
- By Ashley J. on 05-14-18
By: Zadie Smith
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Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Laura Miller
- Length: 1 hr and 21 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Author Zadie Smith discusses her much-anticipated third novel, On Beauty. Set on both sides of the Atlantic, the novel follows the chain of events when the son of a liberal British academic family falls in love with the daughter of an American right-wing icon. A brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, and the intersection of the personal and political, the book is also very funny indeed. Interviewed by Laura Miller of salon.com.
By: Zadie Smith
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Howards End
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger". When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home - Howards End - to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two families is precipitated that takes years to resolve.
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Fantastic Narration in Delightful Story
- By Wren on 05-05-18
By: E. M. Forster
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Howards End
- By: E.M. Forster
- Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
E.M. Forster's Howards End is a vivid portrait of London's golden age, before World War I forever changed its values and culture. Forster brings the great city's upper classes to life, detailing their grandiose spending habits, popular fads, Monet and Debussy, the rise of feminism, and the beginnings of urbanization. More than a mere idealization of pre-war London, Howards End provides insightful commentary on the rapid societal changes that occurred at the onset of the 20th century. Masterfully blending the stories of three vastly different groups of people - the independently wealthy, educated Schlegels; the nouveau riche Wilcoxes; and the ambitious but struggling Leonard Bast - Forster weaves a wonderfully rich, unforgettably poignant novel.
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very poor recording
- By carolyn benaroya on 01-14-06
By: E.M. Forster
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Reykjavík
- A Crime Story
- By: Ragnar Jónasson, Katrín Jakobsdóttir
- Narrated by: Bert Seymour, Tamaryn Payne
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík. In early August, the girl disappears without a trace. Time passes, and the mystery becomes Iceland‘s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there? Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lára's case.
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Enjoyable read
- By Katherine on 09-30-23
By: Ragnar Jónasson, and others
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Moo
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Everyone at the large agricultural college dubbed Moo U. has an agenda. Whether it's massaging data, running secret experiments, or seducing the powerful, each person is dedicated to a plan. Meet Dr. Lionel Gift, who feels that his economic principles come directly from God. Visit with "Earl Butz", who is being groomed to be the biggest hog in history. Mull over The Common Wisdom, what every secretary knows. As these agendas begin to collide, Moo trots toward a deliciously loony climax.
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Totally hilarious and too true
- By Barry on 09-14-12
By: Jane Smiley
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The Surprise
- By: Zadie Smith, Nick Laird
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Nick Laird
- Length: 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit—and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality.