Ablutions
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Narrated by:
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Patrick Dewitt
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By:
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Patrick DeWitt
About this listen
In a famous but declining Hollywood bar works A Barman. Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. In the hope of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with the cast of variously pathological regulars .But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to serve himself more often than his customers, and the moments he lives outside the bar become more and more painful: he loses his wife, his way, himself. Trapped by his habits and his loneliness, he realizes he will not survive if he doesn't break free. And so he hatches a terrible, necessary plan of escape and his only chance for redemption.
Step into Ablutions and step behind the bar, below rock bottom, and beyond the everyday take on storytelling for a brilliant, new twist on the classic tale of addiction and its consequences.
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Editorial reviews
Books narrated by the author carry a special promise, a promise not always kept — to hear the text as spoken by its creator suggests that the listener will have a heightened experience of the story. In Ablutions, Patrick deWitt’s depressed drone projects the listless entropy of the committed barfly: his flat inflections are aimed squarely at the bottom of the glass, down among the dregs. It’s an apt choice: the narrator can’t seem to find the energy to leave his bar-bound existence, to make good by his wife and climb out of the rut.
There are unavoidable parallels with Bukowski, but these are superficial. This book is about the thirst for escape — from loneliness and from crushing routine, a thirst that is denied relief by deWitt’s joyless delivery. There is also a rich eye for detail: in a world where everything is blurred, the character sketches are vivid, like etchings drawn on the back of a dampened coaster. Regulars and freeloaders, dealers and thieves, has-beens and wannabes all parade for our benefit in a never-ending circle. The alcoholism and associated bad behavior aren’t the main draw here; it’s the colorful interrelations of the bar’s patrons, their need to foster ersatz friendships, bond over booze, and drink away the loneliness. Even the introduction of a supernatural element suggests that deWitt is more interested in commenting on a kind of spiritual vacuum. He is like an anthropologist looking at the bizarre behavior of a subterranean species, through a glass, darkly. He wants to try and understand these regulars in an attempt to understand himself, and whatever keeps him tied to this dead-end life. “You want to know what it is about their existence that fuels the need to inhabit not just the same building every night, but the same bar stool, on which they sip the same drink.”
While there is no judgement of the characters, there is precious little empathy in Ablutions, which serves to alienate. But the pictures deWitt creates are so vivid, like flashbacks to a night of debauchery; you’ll be glad that you dropped by, even happier to leave. —Dafydd Phillips
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
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Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
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Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
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I Can't Make This Up
- Life Lessons
- By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
- Narrated by: Kevin Hart
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.
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Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To
- By Sam Clear on 07-13-17
By: Neil Strauss - contributor, and others
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The Perfect Find
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Wesleigh Siobhan
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jenna Jones, former It-girl fashion editor, is broke and desperate for a second chance. When she’s dumped by her longtime fiancé and fired from Darling magazine, she begs for a job from her old arch nemesis, Darcy Vale. The beyond-bitchy publisher of StyleZine.com, Darcy agrees to hire her rival - only because her fashion site needs a jolt from Jenna’s old school cred. But Jenna soon realizes she’s in over her head.
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A-FREAKING-MAZING!!!
- By Bernadette on 05-30-21
By: Tia Williams
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American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
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Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
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CRAY
- By: Darrell Hammond, Elizabeth Stein
- Narrated by: Darrell Hammond
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Original Recording
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He is one of the longest-running cast members on Saturday Night Live, an American comedy genius renowned for his spot-on sendups of politicians and celebrities. But off-stage, Darrell Hammond’s life was anything but a joke. In CRAY, a special audio performance captured live onstage at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, Hammond brings to life his acclaimed memoir, God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem.
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Thanks for sharing
- By Nickisnotgary on 09-06-24
By: Darrell Hammond, and others
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Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Heads Will Roll
- By: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne
- Narrated by: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne, Tim Gunn, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Original Recording
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Heads Will Roll is an Audible Original from Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and her cocreator/costar (and real-life sister) Emily Lynne. Produced by Broadway Video, this is not an audiobook - it’s a 10-episode, star-studded audio comedy that features performances from Meryl Streep, Tim Gunn, Peter Dinklage, Queer Eye’s Fab Five, and so many more. Please note: This content is not for kids.
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More like this please
- By Anon893 on 05-03-19
By: Kate McKinnon, and others
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Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History
- By: Phil Mason
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.
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They just throw the facts too fast
- By Concerned_llama on 12-11-20
By: Phil Mason
What listeners say about Ablutions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Stephen
- 12-17-11
drunkenness is daft
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Funny style, seeing world from inside one guy's head inside a scene of drunks.
What does Patrick Dewitt bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Author narrates quite well.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes one session works well for this length and momentum.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 10-08-12
A fuzzy, high-energy migrane of a novel.
This is a novel equally about hating work and loving booze. No. That isn't true. This is a novel that is about hating work and drinking booze and hating yourself. It belongs on your untidy shelf next to Under the Volcano, Leaving Las Vegas, Appointment in Samarra and Tender is the Night. IT is a fuzzy, high-energy migrane of a novel and that is part of its clouded brilliance.
In general, listening to a novel that is read by the author is either an inspired or debased choice (like white pants on women). DeWitt was an inspired narrator.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Donna G. Mahoney
- 04-20-16
Loved the story like Barfly!
Made me feel I was in Barfly! It's hard to listen to a book and get the gist of what the reader wanted you to feel because you're hearing a performance. I hoped the author would be the perfect reader, so it was odd that I thought ihe should have been more animated. This was coming off of listening to "You" which was so well read!! Still a great book! I wish I had time to read!
I'm definitely going to add Patrick deWitt's others to my wish list!
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- Vicki L Dungan
- 12-03-18
Don’t bother
JMHOYMMV: This is bunch of boring self-wallowing and self-pitying angst delivered deadpan, droning on endlessly.
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- Robert
- 02-28-12
I wish I read this book rather than listened to it
I thought DeWitt’s ‘Sister Brothers’ was one of the best books of 2011 so I was anticipating listening to Dewitt’s first book Absolution.
I wish I read this book rather than listened to it. Structurally the work is a collection of character sketches of patrons at a dive bar. In book form these would probably compromise 1 or 2 pages and you could really savour the writing, descriptions, and gallows humour. But on audiobook the descriptions fade from one grotesque to another making the experience of listening to it just a hum of misanthropy.
The book itself is very much like the writing of Buckowski so if you are a fan you might like ‘Absolution’. I had nothing wrong with the message I just wish I experienced it in a different medium.
The narration suits the writing.
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3 people found this helpful