A Gambler's Anatomy
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mark Deakins
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By:
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Jonathan Lethem
About this listen
The author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a devilishly entertaining novel about an international backgammon hustler who thinks he's psychic. Too bad about the tumor in his face.
Handsome, impeccably tuxedoed Bruno Alexander travels the world winning large sums of money from amateur "whales" who think they can challenge his peerless acumen at backgammon. Fronted by his pasty, vampiric manager, Edgar Falk, Bruno arrives in Berlin after a troubling run of bad luck in Singapore. Perhaps it was the chance encounter with his crass childhood acquaintance Keith Stolarsky and his smoldering girlfriend, Tira Harpaz. Or perhaps it was the emergence of a blot that distorts his vision so he has to look at the board sideways.
Things don't go much better in Berlin. Bruno's flirtation with Madchen, the striking blonde he meets on the ferry, is inconclusive; the game at the unsettling Herr Kohler's mansion goes awry as his blot grows worse; and he passes out and is sent to the local hospital, where he is given an extremely depressing diagnosis. Having run through Falk's money, Bruno turns to Stolarsky, who, for reasons of his own, agrees to fly Bruno to Berkeley and to pay for the experimental surgery that might save his life. Berkeley, where Bruno discovered his psychic abilities, and to which he vowed never to return.
Amid the patchouli flashbacks and anarchist gambits of the local scene, between Tira's come-ons and Keith's machinations, Bruno confronts two existential questions: Is the gambler being played by life? And what if you're telepathic, but it doesn't do you any good?
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Big chewy novel, excellent narration
- By Sand on 08-21-14
By: Martin Amis
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Idoru
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is an intuitive fisher for patterns of information. But Laney knows how to sift for the dangerous bits. Which makes him useful - to certain people. Chia McKenzie is here on a rescue mission. Her idol is the singer Rez, of the band Lo,Rez. When the Seattle chapter of the Lo,Rez fan club decided that he might be in trouble in Tokyo, they sent Chia to check it out. Rei Toei is the idoru - the beautiful, entirely virtual media star adored by all Japan. Rez has declared that he will marry her. This is the rumor that has brought Chia to Tokyo.
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The narrator made me turn this off in 10 seconds
- By Rob on 12-02-18
By: William Gibson
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This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: Susan Boyce
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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With her husband Bernard two years in the grave, seventy-nine-year-old Harriet Chance sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise only to discover through a series of revelations that she's been living the past sixty years of her life under entirely false pretenses. There, amid the buffets and lounge singers, between the imagined appearance of her late husband and the very real arrival of her estranged daughter midway through the cruise, Harriet is forced to take a long look back, confronting the truth about pivotal events that changed the course of her life.
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Why I Didn't Like This Story
- By Kathy in CA on 10-02-15
By: Jonathan Evison
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A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
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Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
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The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
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I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
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Manic
- A Memoir
- By: Terri Cheney
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless facade lay a dangerous secret - for the better part of her life, Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal". In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty.
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Amazing
- By Kelly Ranasinghe on 04-26-18
By: Terri Cheney
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The Voice of the Night with Short Story, "Silence"
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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No one could understand why Colin and Roy were best friends. Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was fascinated by Roy - and Roy was fascinated by death. Then one day, Roy asked his timid friend: “You ever killed anything?” From that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine - and too irresistible to stop.
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can not believe dean koontz wrote this book
- By Anonymous User on 10-05-21
By: Dean Koontz
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The Year's Top Short SF Novels 5
- By: Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, John P Murphy, and others
- Narrated by: Tom Dheere, Nancy Linari
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.
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Narrator sounds like Tony Danza
- By Sean on 03-05-16
By: Cory Doctorow, and others
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Millard Salter's Last Day
- By: Jacob M. Appel
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In an effort to delay the frailty and isolation that comes with old age, psychiatrist Millard Salter decides to kill himself by the end of the day - but first he has to tie up some loose ends. These include a tête-à-tête with his youngest son, Lysander, who at 43 has yet to hold down a paying job; an unscheduled rendezvous with his first wife, Carol, whom he hasn't seen in 27 years; and a brief visit to the grave of his second wife, Isabelle. Complicating this plan, though, is Delilah, the widow with whom he has fallen in love in the past few months.
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great storytelling....
- By Anna Marie Bair on 01-18-20
By: Jacob M. Appel
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High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
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Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
What listeners say about A Gambler's Anatomy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Darwin8u
- 10-24-16
Not Chabon's Best, wait no...Lethem's
"Not everything needed to rise to converge: It could just drift together into the indiscernible middle, and bewilder you."
- Jonathan Letham, A Gambler's Anatomy
The more I read of Jonathan Lethem, the more difficult it becomes to separate him from Michael Chabon. They seem like literary twins writing around the same hipster Brooklyn/Berkeley geography. This novel seems grown from Pynchon, Hesse, Carey, Dostoevsky, Dumas, Leroux, Nabokov, Mann, and of course Chabon.
I probably sound more irritated than I am, it just seriously is odd to read a book that centers around a hipster shop on Telegraph Avenue, written by a Jewish writer, born in the early 60s, who loves comic books, vinyl, flowery prose, etc., and discover it wasn't Telegraph Avenue. Perhaps, I should just accept that when I buy Lethem, I might get Chabon and when I buy Chabon, I might get Lethem and move on. At this point, I'm pretty good with prose, but if you did the Pepsi/Coke challenge with me on Chabon/Lethem, I'm screwed.
The plot was interesting, the prose was above average, yet the book wasn't nearly Lethem's best I'm still not pissed about reading it. There WAS something there. It was good. The chapter told from the perspective of the brain surgeon (Dr. Noah Behringer, a Hendrix obscessed "mechanic of the meat") was one of my favorites and might just have earned the book an extra star all on its own. Obviously, this novel doesn't approach Dostoevsky's The Gambler, Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave, Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, or Carey's Oscar and Lucinda in terms of literary writing about games, chance, love, and life; but if you are seeking interesting hipster dialogue and the occasional kinky scene that includes a mask, well, buy the book and keep your Eyes Wide Shut and one hand on your wallet and you other hand on your pills.
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16 people found this helpful
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- colethomson
- 12-27-16
good book, but unsatisfying end.
this is a rather literary novel. It does have some genre conventions of Science Fiction and mystery. I don't typically enjoy literary novels very much, but I did enjoy this one. Unfortunately, I found the ending quite flat. It makes sense within the conventions of an intelligent and intellectual piece, but for the plot junkie in me it was not great.
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- Roger
- 01-07-17
Too Much Backgammon
I recommend this book to everyone who plays and loves backgammon. For remaining 99.9% of us, maybe you could fast forward through the many scenes that go on and on about the points and the primes and the doubling cube and moving those little checkers around, but then you would have to spend all your time in the company of the empty-headed protagonist and his entourage of irritating jerks, as he wanders an international landscape, trying to heal his soul I guess, but just being generally obtuse.
I did not like this book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Alan
- 11-08-16
What?? Nope.
Seriously, don't bother. Had potential at times to be interesteling. It failed. Miserably. The reader did a great job, but the book itself was a let down in every way.
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1 person found this helpful