A Calling for Charlie Barnes
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Narrated by:
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Nick Offerman
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By:
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Joshua Ferris
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
From the Booker-shortlisted author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour comes a novel about fathers, sons, thwarted dreams and confronting the reality of who we really are
Charlie Barnes is a mid-century man devoted to his newspaper and his landline. But Charlie is about to get dragged into our troubled age by his storyteller son, who has a different idea of him than he has of himself. Then there are his other children, his ex-wives, present wife, business clients, friends and acquaintances, all of whom have their competing opinions of Charlie.
He certainly seems simple enough: he's a striver, a romantic and a thoroughgoing capitalist. But suddenly blindsided by the Great Recession and a dose of bad news, he might have to rethink his life from top to bottom, and on short notice. What makes a man real? What makes him good? And how does the story we tell about ourselves line up with the lives that we actually live?
©2021 Joshua Ferris (P)2021 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
"Funny, moving, and formally a work of genius, A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write" (Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on Fire)
"Dazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest." (Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls)
"Wonderful: fast and deep, urgent and brilliant.... A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities." (Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia)
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