A Whole Life
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mark Bramhall
About this listen
An international best seller that recalls the quiet power of John Williams' Stoner and Marilynne Robinson's Lila.
Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home.
Set in the mid-20th century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and, above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.
©2016 Robert Seethaler (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
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Edge of Eternity
- By: Randy Alcorn
- Narrated by: Roger Marsh, Phil Ross
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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Nick Seagrave is a disillusioned business executive who has lost loved ones to tragedy and his family to neglect. Now, at a point of great crisis, he finds himself inexplicably transported to what appears to be another world. Suddenly he's confronted with profoundly clear views of his own past and personality. And he's enabled to see, hear, taste, and smell the realities of both heaven and hell - realities that force him to face dangers and trials far greater than any he's known before.
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AMAZING
- By Julie R. VanderMate on 08-12-10
By: Randy Alcorn
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The Trees
- By: Ali Shaw
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.
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Post apocalypse with a little bit of magic
- By Tam on 09-20-16
By: Ali Shaw
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Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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To a God Unknown
- By: John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott - introduction
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in familiar Steinbeck territory, To a God Unknown is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and, ultimately, to understand the ways of God.
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My Favorite Steinbeck; Terrible and Beautiful
- By Michael on 04-28-13
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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The Shell Collector
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take listeners from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties - metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts - and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power.
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Narrator not appropriate to the book.
- By Janet on 02-18-17
By: Anthony Doerr
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The Ritual
- By: Adam Nevill
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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When four old University friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect with one another. But when Luke, the only man still single and living a precarious existence, finds he has little left in common with his well-heeled friends, tensions rise. With limited experience between them, a shortcut meant to ease their hike turns into a nightmare scenario that could cost them their lives. Lost, hungry, and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, Luke figures things couldn't possibly get any worse.
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AMAZING AND SCARY
- By Emily McDonald on 02-15-18
By: Adam Nevill
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A Shadow on the Glass
- By: Ian Irvine
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Once there were three worlds, each with their own human species. Then, fleeing out of the void came a fourth species, the Charon. Desperate, on the edge of extinction, they changed the balance between the worlds forever. Karan, a sensitive with a troubled heritage, is forced to steal an ancient relic in repayment of a debt. It turns out to be the Mirror of Aachan, a twisted, deceitful thing that remembers everything it has ever seen.
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Not quite good enough.
- By Scott S. on 03-13-12
By: Ian Irvine
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Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English
- By: Natasha Solomons
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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At the start of World War II, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum flee Berlin for London with their baby daughter, Elizabeth. Upon arrival, Jack receives a pamphlet from the German Jewish Aid Committee on how to act like a proper Englishman. He follows it to the letter -Saville Row suits, the BBC, trips to Covent Garden, a Jaguar - and it works like a charm. The Rosenblums settle into a prosperous new life.
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Endearing
- By Emily on 09-09-11
By: Natasha Solomons
What listeners say about A Whole Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Susan
- 04-05-21
Extraordinary
The message is sublime. With great skill expressing a philosophy that cannot be ignored. It will reach you deeply and you will not be able to let it go.
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- patricia
- 05-04-21
enchanting, you will want to listen all at once
Love the voice of the narrator, the life and story. I recommended to many to hear.
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- Deborah Batjer
- 11-13-23
Lovely Story
This is a little gem of a tale. It’s narrated gently and authenticly to match the slow movement of a simple man’s whole life. The language is beautiful, making me guess that the translator must be a poet - certainly someone who loves language.
My only criticism is that I thought the book could have ended before it actually did. I stopped listening prematurely (when I thought it was the end, so I need to go back).
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- Mel
- 04-08-17
Quiet Power
Beautifully translated from its original German in October 2015, A Whole Life feels like a reflection of a life with a meditative quality. It was the smallest of the finalists for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, nominations for both its author and the translator, Charlotte Collins. I listened and read the modest novel and agree with the publisher's little blurb that author Seethaler has a way similar to the purity and simplicity of John Williams' Stoner:
"Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life
is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite
novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move
thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the
moments, big and small, that make us what we are."
[I included the publisher's summary because I didn't see it included on this site.] Short, 3 1/2 hrs; less than 150 pages, but within, the whole life of Andreas Egger. Stoner remains probably my favorite novel for reasons I'm unable to articulate. Sometimes Montaigne's words explain most eloquently my feelings when my words fail me: "I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I." Williams' himself may have given the best description for Seethaler's A Whole Life by chance, when he attempted to describe his own novel, Stoner:"an escape into reality." Most readers feel the book is about *contentment,* *adapting;* that in spite of tribulations, Andreas Egger finds beauty and peace with his life in a little village in the shadow of the towering Austrian mountains. A powerful man of little words and a strong work ethic, Andreas is a survivor.
At the age of four, the boy is pawned off to relatives by an unmarried young mother that wants nothing to do with raising a child. He arrives in the remote little village at his Uncle's farm in a hay cart, a leather pouch hanging around his neck containing a small amount of money. The Uncle is a brutal man, he sees the young boy as another mouth to feed, but also another laborer. Young Andreas is ill-treated and suffers horrible beatings for the smallest infractions: a hiccup, a stutter, a spilled bowl of milk, one beating so severe the boy's leg is fractured and leaves him with a life-long limp. [When a gruff employer asks him what good is he with a limp on such a mountain?! Andreas tells him straightforwardly that his limp is exactly why he is better for the steep mountain.]
Andreas grows quickly into a large boy with great physical strength, invaluable to the Uncle. But the Uncle is more vicious than wise, and when the brawny young Andreas spills a bowl of soup, the Uncle commands him to soak the switch and meet him in the barn. Andreas meets him in the barn, but says, “If you hit me, I’ll kill you.” He sets off and finds a small piece of land he makes his home; enough for a shelter and a small vegetable garden, and he thinks proudly about one day holding open the gate for someone. His strength and tenacity become legendary in his village, but Andreas remains aloof.
The years go by in sentences The village at the foot of those soaring mountains stretches further across a landscape that lies in the path of historic avalanches. Tourists come for the skiing and climbing; industry and progress comes to the mountains -- and so does the war. Andreas adapts to each change the years bring; he marries; he goes to war; he sees men walk on the moon; and near the end of his life he takes a bus ride to the end of the vehicle's route.
I felt a heartbreaking sadness in this man whom others see as a contented adult who finds joy in mountain flowers, patching a hole in his cabin, contentment in his simple daily labors. I thought of the lines from Langston Hughes: "Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." And, I thought of the snarky and less poetic "Cows are contented." Europeans have a culture that seems to me more simple and authentic, so I have to take that into consideration. There is a peacefulness that I also feel when I escape the business that life throws at me, but sometimes there is a longing. Haven't we all experienced that wounded wing that might keep us momentarily grounded from loftier dreams? Andreas felt to me like a wounded gentle animal; a supposed beast that held captive for years then released into the wild, merely drops to his knees and looks vacantly out at the plains before him, craving the security and familiarity of his cage. At the end of his bus ride, Andreas stands up to go back to his little cabin and breaks into convulsive sobs. The bus driver puts his arms around the aging hulk and comforts him as if he were an inconsolable child. I wonder if within himself he held fast to that broken child.
"He did not suffer." Seethaler states.
...Much to think about. A little read that is gigantically beautiful and profound.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 09-08-18
Wonderful but dull
This novel has beautiful and inviting parts but some will bore you. Overall 3 1/2 rate.
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