
A Book of Common Prayer
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Narrated by:
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Marisa Vitali
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By:
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Joan Didion
About this listen
Writing with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made her one of our most distinguished journalists, Joan Didion creates a shimmering novel of innocence and evil.
A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women in the derelict Central American nation of Boca Grande. Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country's wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little. "Immaculate of history, innocent of politics," she has come to Boca Grande vaguely and vainly hoping to be reunited with her fugitive daughter. As imagined by Didion, her fate is at once utterly particular and fearfully emblematic of an age of conscienceless authority and unfathomable violence.
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Critic reviews
"A novelist with important things to say about the dislocations of our time.... Joan Didion is stellar." ( Newsday)
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Thought-provoking, riveting, memorable
- By Avalon on 08-23-13
By: Joan Didion
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South and West
- From a Notebook
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Nathaniel Rich
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles—and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention.
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"Notes" Are Not a Book
- By Carole T. on 03-11-17
By: Joan Didion
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Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
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California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
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The Last Thing He Wanted
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Elena McMahon walks off the presidential campaign she has been covering for a major newspaper to do a favor for her father. Elena's father does deals. And it is while acting as his agent in one such deal - a deal that shortly goes spectacularly wrong - that she finds herself on an island where tourism has been superseded by arms dealing, covert action, and assassination. The Last Thing He Wanted is a tour de force - persuasive in its detail, dazzling in its ambiguities, enchanting in its style.
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Ugh—find a different book
- By K. Hendry on 02-27-21
By: Joan Didion
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The Year of Magical Thinking
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.
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Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
- By Michael on 05-08-15
By: Joan Didion
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Joan Didion at the 92nd Street Y
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Joseph Lelyveld
- Length: 46 mins
- Original Recording
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Joyce Carol Oates called Joan Didion "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time." Ms. Didion is the author of the novels Play It as It Lays and The Last Thing He Wanted, the essay collections Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album, and the memoirs Where I Was From and The Year of Magical Thinking.
By: Joan Didion
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After Henry
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Hess
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her latest forays into the American scene, Joan Didion covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer's gargantuan "manor" to the racial battlefields of New York's criminal courts. At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and Patty Hearst; she charts America's rollercoaster ride through evanescent booms and hard times that won't go away.
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It'll blow a hole in your retina
- By Darwin8u on 10-03-15
By: Joan Didion
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The World According to Joan Didion
- By: Evelyn McDonnell
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion was a writer’s writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life’s telling details. Her insights continue to influence creatives and admirers, encouraging them to become close observers of the world, unsentimental critics, and meticulous stylists. The World According to Joan Didion is a meditation on the people, places, and objects that propelled Didion’s prose and an invitation to journalists, storytellers, and life adventurers to “throw themselves into the convulsions of the world,” as she said.
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Woke, revisionist retelling of Didion's life and work.
- By c on 02-10-24
By: Evelyn McDonnell
What listeners say about A Book of Common Prayer
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ken Boheim
- 11-15-22
Narration a problem
This is a well written good book by Joan Didion. However the narration just doesn’t seem to catch the mood of Grace a mature, dying, wealthy woman living in a Central American country. She rushes through important points as if she doesn’t understand the story she is telling.
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- Pamela
- 01-09-23
Excellent!!!
This is written in an almost surrealistic idiom and performed perfectly. I will enjoy this novel Adair and again.
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- Claire
- 04-12-23
Distractingly bad narration.
I am pretty tolerant of different narrator voices, but this one is so distractingly bad that I found it difficult to get into the story. I will probably re-read it from an actual book and hope the narrator’s voice hasn’t infected my memory.
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- Frank Donnelly
- 08-25-22
A SomewhatSlow Starting, Intricate Audiobook
As a product, the narration is excellent. However this is not an easy work to turn into an audiobook. It moves slowly at first. The story meanders. It is difficult to connect with many of the characters. I read and listened simultaneously. That helped. This is no reflection on the performance of the narrator. I love Joan Didion. However except for Run River, I very much like her non fiction more than fiction.
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- Dave
- 11-03-24
Fusion amazes.
Striking. Unique. Forceful. I was intrigued by the original style of Destin. I’m now a fan!
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- A reader in Berkeley
- 06-04-17
Strong tale badly told
This narrator reads Charlotte Douglas' voice like a child's, and she is not a child. Think how much more mysterious she would be if allowed to sound like the strong, sensual, grownup, maternal character she is.
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4 people found this helpful
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- JW
- 06-25-23
Great writing, awful reading
The narrator needs to develop a better range. Makes a wonderful book a test to finish.
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- NFH
- 06-28-18
Meh...
Found the plot boring. Only finished the book so I could talk about it at book club.
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- Reader
- 05-12-21
Horrible reader
It's impossible to know if the story is good or not, because rendered by this reader it is impossible to listen to.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Coast Poet
- 01-19-22
Badly narrated
I could not bear to listen beyond the first few sentences. I will need to read the book the old fashioned way, and hope I find the time to do it.
In a nutshell, the reader rushed through every phrase like a robot on speed, tonal shift or consideration of Didion’s beautiful spare, emotionally nuanced writing.
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