
A Perfect Day to Be Alone
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $11.17
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Mirai Mirai
About this listen
The English-language debut of a prize-winning Japanese author, this touching, subtly funny novel evokes the daily struggles and hopes of two women from different generations.
When her mother emigrates to China for work, twenty-year-old Chizu moves in with seventy-one-year-old Ginko, an eccentric distant relative, taking a room in her ramshackle Tokyo home, with its two resident cats and the persistent rattle of passing trains.
Living their lives in imperfect symmetry, they establish an uneasy alliance, stress tested by Chizu's flashes of youthful spite. As the four seasons pass, Chizu navigates a series of tedious part-time jobs and unsatisfying relationships, before eventually finding her feet and salvaging a fierce independence from her solitude.
A Perfect Day to Be Alone is a moving, microscopic examination of loneliness and heartbreak. With flashes of deadpan humor and a keen eye for poignant detail, Aoyama chronicles the painful process of breaking free from the moorings of youth.
©2007 Nanae Aoyama; English translation copyright 2024 by Jesse Kirkwood (P)2025 Tantor MediaPeople who viewed this also viewed...
-
She's a Lamb!
- By: Meredith Hambrock
- Narrated by: Stephanie Willing
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters. No, she is bound for greatness, and that’s why the part of Maria in the theater’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it’s going to be.
-
-
Like a decent into madness in the best way possible
- By Lindsey on 04-11-25
-
A Woman of Pleasure
- By: Kiyoko Murata, Juliet Winters Carpenter - translator
- Narrated by: Susan Momoko Hingley
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on real-life events in Meiji-era Japan, award-winning and critically acclaimed veteran writer Kiyoko Murata re-creates in stunning detail the brutal yet vibrant lives of women in the red-light district at the turn of the twentieth century—the bond they share, the survival skills they pass down, and the power of owning one's language.
-
-
Loved!
- By Christian George on 05-23-24
By: Kiyoko Murata, and others
-
The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
-
-
Tolstoy was wrong
- By tallybroom on 06-01-25
-
Love, Literally
- By: J. T. Tierney
- Narrated by: Marnye Young, Charlie Thurston
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hallie Bancroft's forty-two-year-old life is in shambles. The universe has been dishing out lemons to her at Mach speed: laid off from her job as a theater-set designer, abandoned by her boyfriend, and saddled with an apartment she can no longer afford. When her best friend intervenes, Hallie finds herself with five others in a Cape Cod mansion so gigantic it could have its own ZIP code. There, she meets Quinn O'Neill, a dashing widowed professor in his early fifties who, much to Hallie's surprise, loves wordplay and literature as passionately as she does.
By: J. T. Tierney
-
Make Sure You Die Screaming
- A Novel
- By: Zee Carlstrom
- Narrated by: Major Curda
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The newly nameless narrator of Make Sure You Die Screaming has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender to end all benders. A call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car.
-
-
Not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 06-14-25
By: Zee Carlstrom
-
The Convenience Store by the Sea
- By: Sonoko Machida, Bruno Navasky - translator
- Narrated by: Yuriri Naka
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An international bestseller with over half a million copies sold between Japan and South Korea, The Convenience Store by The Sea tells the delightfully quirky and heartfelt stories of the store’s customers and employees, offering us all a unique recipe for a good, fulfilling life.
By: Sonoko Machida, and others
-
She's a Lamb!
- By: Meredith Hambrock
- Narrated by: Stephanie Willing
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters. No, she is bound for greatness, and that’s why the part of Maria in the theater’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it’s going to be.
-
-
Like a decent into madness in the best way possible
- By Lindsey on 04-11-25
-
A Woman of Pleasure
- By: Kiyoko Murata, Juliet Winters Carpenter - translator
- Narrated by: Susan Momoko Hingley
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on real-life events in Meiji-era Japan, award-winning and critically acclaimed veteran writer Kiyoko Murata re-creates in stunning detail the brutal yet vibrant lives of women in the red-light district at the turn of the twentieth century—the bond they share, the survival skills they pass down, and the power of owning one's language.
-
-
Loved!
- By Christian George on 05-23-24
By: Kiyoko Murata, and others
-
The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
-
-
Tolstoy was wrong
- By tallybroom on 06-01-25
-
Love, Literally
- By: J. T. Tierney
- Narrated by: Marnye Young, Charlie Thurston
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hallie Bancroft's forty-two-year-old life is in shambles. The universe has been dishing out lemons to her at Mach speed: laid off from her job as a theater-set designer, abandoned by her boyfriend, and saddled with an apartment she can no longer afford. When her best friend intervenes, Hallie finds herself with five others in a Cape Cod mansion so gigantic it could have its own ZIP code. There, she meets Quinn O'Neill, a dashing widowed professor in his early fifties who, much to Hallie's surprise, loves wordplay and literature as passionately as she does.
By: J. T. Tierney
-
Make Sure You Die Screaming
- A Novel
- By: Zee Carlstrom
- Narrated by: Major Curda
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The newly nameless narrator of Make Sure You Die Screaming has rejected the gender binary, has flamed out with a vengeance at their corporate gig, is most likely brain damaged from a major tussle with their now ex-boyfriend, and is on a bender to end all benders. A call from their mother with the news that their MAGA-friendly, conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing launches the narrator from Chicago to deep red Arkansas in a stolen car.
-
-
Not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 06-14-25
By: Zee Carlstrom
-
The Convenience Store by the Sea
- By: Sonoko Machida, Bruno Navasky - translator
- Narrated by: Yuriri Naka
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An international bestseller with over half a million copies sold between Japan and South Korea, The Convenience Store by The Sea tells the delightfully quirky and heartfelt stories of the store’s customers and employees, offering us all a unique recipe for a good, fulfilling life.
By: Sonoko Machida, and others
-
What Remains of Teague House
- A Mystery
- By: Stacy Johns
- Narrated by: Helen Laser, Gary Tiedemann, Patricia Santomasso
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For fans of Megan Collins with the taut character study of Angie Kim comes a searing mystery that follows three siblings as they reckon with the darkness hidden within their family after multiple graves are discovered behind their childhood home.
By: Stacy Johns
-
An Expensive Place to Die
- By: Len Deighton
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris in the 1960s caters for every taste, and nowhere more than at the private "clinic" run by the enigmatic Monsieur Datt on Avenue Foch, which supplies psychedelic drugs and sexual favors to the city's elite—all the while secretly filming guests in order to blackmail them. Into this decadent underworld steps a bespectacled British spy. Sent on what seems like a simple mission, he soon finds himself playing a game where the rules are unknown—and even victory could be fatal.
By: Len Deighton
-
The Mademoiselle Alliance
- A Novel
- By: Natasha Lester
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Morocco, 1928. Marie-Madeleine Méric is not the kind of woman who stays quietly at her husband’s side. Polyglot, pianist, and pilot, she is a woman of many skills, with unconventional interests—like driving in car rallies—that earn her a daredevil reputation. But dabbling in intelligence work to assist her military officer husband and the French government helps her recognize who she is at heart: an adventurer.
-
-
story
- By Daniela on 05-03-25
By: Natasha Lester
-
These Days
- By: Lucy Caldwell
- Narrated by: Lisa Dwyer Hogg
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
April 1941: Belfast has escaped the worst of the Second World War—so far. Over the next two months, it will be so destroyed from above that people will say, in horror, “My God, Belfast is finished.” Many won’t make it through, and those who do will be forever changed. Living amid the rubble are sisters Emma and Audrey. One is engaged to be married; the other is in a secret relationship with another woman.
-
-
Explanation of times past. How we might have behaved differently in those times.
- By T C Jarvi on 07-03-25
By: Lucy Caldwell
-
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
- A Novel
- By: Michiko Aoyama
- Narrated by: Hanako Footman, Susan Momoko Hingley, Kenichiro Thomson, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams.
-
-
The power of honesty and an open mind
- By ili pika on 09-10-23
By: Michiko Aoyama
-
Fun for the Whole Family
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer E. Smith
- Narrated by: Lauren Graham
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country. Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota.
-
-
Great story telling
- By CAMT on 06-07-25