A Perfectly Good Family
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Narrated by:
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Susan Ericksen
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By:
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Lionel Shriver
About this listen
Each heir wants the house. Yet to buy the other out, two siblings must team against one. Just as in girlhood, Corlis is torn between allying with the decent but fearful youngest and the iconoclastic eldest, who covets his legacy to destroy it. A Perfectly Good Family is a stunning examination of inheritance, literal and psychological: what we take from our parents, what we discard, and what we are stuck with, like it or not.
©2009 Lionel Shriver (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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The Darkest Secret
- A Novel
- By: Alex Marwood
- Narrated by: Beverley A. Crick
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Real estate mogul Sean Jackson is throwing himself a splashy 50th birthday party, but trouble starts almost immediately: His ex-wife has sent his teenage daughters to the party without telling him; his current wife has fired the nanny; and he's finding it difficult to sneak away to his mistress. Then something truly terrible happens: one of his three-year-old twins goes missing. No trace of her is ever found. The attendees of the party, nicknamed the Jackson Associates by the press, become infamous overnight.
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Wow
- By Christina on 09-14-16
By: Alex Marwood
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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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Far From the Tree
- By: Virginia DeBerry, Donna Grant
- Narrated by: Fran L. Washington
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Celeste English and Ronnie Frazier are sisters, but they couldn't be more different. Celeste is a doctor's wife, living a perfect and elegant façade. But secretly, her marriage is falling apart and her need to control people around her threatens to destroy them all. Ronnie is an actress, living in New York. But she has no money, she has no home, and her life is held together by "chewing gum, paper clips, and spit." When their father dies, the sisters inherit a house in Prosper, North Carolina.
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My Favorite Book So Far, by Far!
- By Dee on 04-19-09
By: Virginia DeBerry, and others
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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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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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Tryin' To Sleep In the Bed You Made
- By: Virginia DeBerry, Donna Grant
- Narrated by: Fran L. Washington
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Gayle was the beauty who believed that a man could make her life complete. Patricia was the intellectual who thought that rising to the top of her career would make her happy. And then there is Marcus Carter, who has been linked to both Gayle and Pat since the tragedy that occurred when they were all children. Can either one save him from himself? Can friends survive a love that comes between them? Each of them gets what she wants, but no one counts on the price they have to pay.
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Better with each chapter!
- By Cyn B. on 02-09-16
By: Virginia DeBerry, and others
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Shriver's Super-sized Best!
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Very Good!
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Shriver's Super-sized Best!
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-04-13
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What listeners say about A Perfectly Good Family
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R. Moore
- 03-25-13
terrible narration
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
I loved we need to talk about Kevin which is why I choose this book by the same author - and perhaps It too is a great book, but the narratation is so monotonous that I couldn't even make it through the first half.
No Character voices no pauses between conversations or even pauses between paragraphs.
Do not waste your money
Would you ever listen to anything by Lionel Shriver again?
yes provided the narrator was different
What didn’t you like about Susan Ericksen’s performance?
No character voices very monotonous
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Perfectly Good Family?
couldn't Even finish the story unfortunately
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- Sydmace
- 08-31-23
Narrator ruins it
I love Lionel Shriver but could not get past one hour with this narrator’s voice
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- Lewis Teeter
- 01-16-23
A Bit Tedious
The relationship between the siblings grew tiresome as I kept waiting for something to happen. Ms Shriver has entertained me with so many of her other books I can't be mad at her. About to listen to another of hers.
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Overall
- Pamela Harvey
- 09-22-09
"Po-TAH-toes"?!
I am a Lionel Shriver fan, and this book, while good enough, is not up to "We Need To Talk About Kevin". The story's premise is promising - three siblings attempting to dispose of the family estate, with none of them having enough funding to buy the others out. However I missed the added layer of computers, internet, email, cell phones and texting, that books written before 1994, or "B.C.", i.e. "Before Personal Computers" conspicuously lack. There is the usual variety of distorted personalities, most of them interesting, compelling and amusing, with plenty of quirks and glitches, but the narrative style seems artificially antiquated, and this book feels much older than it is. I kept imagining a "Gone With The Wind" setting, rather than North Carolina circa 1993. Still, it's a good story, and the author's facility with dimensional characterization is evident. I did think she could have done more with the protagonist, however, IMO the only really likable individual in the story.
My low rating of 2 stars is mainly for the narration, which I thought was overly dramatic and shrill. And...I have never ever heard "potatoes" pronounced "po-tah-toes". The pronunciation made me laugh out loud! Narration should err on the side of the majority of listeners, and I would guess there are very few out there who pronounce the typical tuber with a long "a".
On balance, it's a good listen, excellent picaresque entertainment, and I recommend it - even though it's not quite up to my personal standards.
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- JC
- 11-14-17
The Mansion is Lovable
Sad that previous reviewers did not give this story a chance. True, the narration detracts from an otherwise insightful dissection of sibling relationships. The house the children inherit is the most lovable of the characters. If you are a fan of Shriver's, give this book a chance. You will be rewarded with an almost Dickensian heartfelt American novel.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-01-18
Ugh. PoTAHtoe?!
Didn't love it... because the english accent the main character was supposed to have was very very ordinary. PoTAHtoe is not how I have ever heard this word said. Ugh.
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- Muffin Drill
- 12-04-23
Infuriating, opinionated, and a genius
Lionel Shriver has gone from being a book club interest (the post-birthday world), to possibly my favorite living author. Her stories are raw and human in a way that few authors capture properly. And certainly one of the few who can do this without car chases, guns, or crime. This book is not my favorite of hers, those would be The Mandibles and So much for that. But even though it’s not at the top of my list, it’s still incredibly effective. I don’t think Shriver writes books that are meant to be “enjoyed”. She writes books that hold a mirror up to real life while not being too pretentious. I don’t think I would get along with Shriver, but only because she seems to be too much like me.
In conclusion, not the Shriver book to start with, but a must read for anyone who has read her other books and wants to continue building the whole picture. Also for anyone who has lived through a death that results in inheritance.
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 05-16-10
Get a life!
this book is like one long whine!!! I just wanted to scream "Get A Life!". It was actually painful to hear and I would imagine just as painful to read. We read it for my book group and one other woman said no one should ever have to read this book. I think it holds the top spot as the all time WORST book I have ever read/listened to.
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1 person found this helpful