The Dakota Winters

A Novel

By: Tom Barbash

Narrated by: Jim Meskimen

Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

An evocative and wildly absorbing novel about the Winters, a family living in New York City’s famed Dakota apartment building in the year leading up to John Lennon’s assassination.

It’s the fall of 1979 in New York City when 23-year-old Anton Winter, back from the Peace Corps and on the mend from a nasty bout of malaria, returns to his childhood home in the Dakota. Anton’s father, the famous late-night host Buddy Winter, is there to greet him, himself recovering from a breakdown. Before long, Anton is swept up in an effort to reignite Buddy’s stalled career, a mission that takes him from the gritty streets of New York to the slopes of the Lake Placid Olympics, to the Hollywood Hills, to the blue waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and into close quarters with the likes of Johnny Carson, Ted and Joan Kennedy, and a seagoing John Lennon.

But the more Anton finds himself enmeshed in his father’s professional and spiritual reinvention, the more he questions his own path, and fissures in the Winter family begin to threaten their close bond. By turns hilarious and poignant, The Dakota Winters is a family saga, a pause-resisting social novel, and a tale of a critical moment in the history of New York City and the country at large.

©2018 Tom Barbash (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Wonderful reading,love John Lennon as a character

Such a delightful creative read i just purchased his other two books. If you lived through the 70s in MY you will get goosebumps.

Worth your time.

Enjoyed a nostalgic trip back in time, to a NY of my younger days. I was struck by the familiarity with fictional characters that caught the mood of the times. At the end, I felt satisfied with the use of my time and selected the first novel Barbash had written 16 years earlier for my next read.

An Enjoyable Diversion

The author took me on an enjoyable excursion to the past, some of it factual, some fictional. There were a lot of references and remembrances of those times that sparked my imagination. The story seems to me to suggest that America changed in that time. Being roughly the same age as the protagonist, I remember how America felt to me before and after that time. I agree, but everyone has a point in life where perspective changes, the scales fall away, and we can see the world with better balance. That's what seems to be the vague direction of the story. The author never really gets the story to a point, but I gather my own from it. It's sad too, to hear the imagined character and dialogue from John Lennon as he unknowingly approaches the day he's assassinated. At the end the story left me melancholy, and pessimistic, the same way I felt that day. Sometimes there is no point.

No Plot At All Really

But when I was halfway through the book I finally realized there was no plot....it was just meandering through misc. history, true or not, I don't know. But once I realized it wasn't really going anywhere I just enjoyed the story and didn't stress out if I missed a few minutes.

Excellent! Very original!

Well written with a great mix of truth, fiction and a tender story of family and personal discovery.

The narrator was exceptional! Easy to listen to and really inhabited the story. He also did spot on accents and impersonations without being cheesy.

Forgot that it is a work of fiction!

This one reads like a bio. So much that I forgot that much of this is not fact. It's very entertaining and I even had to google Buddy Winters just to make sure that there wasn't really such a person.

Good going, Tom Barbash. Loved it!!

Excellent, But....

I like historical fiction, and this book is wonderfully written, but the gap between history and fiction is too great. Worse than Forest Gump, which I wouldn't have thought possible. The research is obviously top-notch, and there is a lot of name-dropping, people and places and companies and bands, that provide context. The basic outline of John Lennon's life during the Dakota years is fairly accurate, but the author got too carried away with that aspect of the story. It felt more of a sacrilege than anything else. Otherwise, the book is excellent, as is the narration.

Interesting Back Story

Really enjoyed the story of the Winters entwined with celebrity. Anyone over 50 would enjoy this era and know who they are talking about.

A Good listen

The story was interesting but a little anticlimactic. I expected more . I got tired of all the details towards the end and couldn't really keep up. I did enjoy the book and I visited New York during the time frame so that aspect was fun. The narrator was great!

This one is in my top 5 for 2020

I loved it !
the narrator was excellent! the voices were not just different they were impersonations.