Act of God
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Barbara Rosenblat
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By:
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Jill Ciment
About this listen
Jill Ciment’s books have been hailed as “stunning,” “powerful,” and “provocative.” Alice Sebold has called her works “beautifully written.” Now the author of Heroic Measures (“Smart and funny and completely surprising . . . I loved every page.” —Ann Patchett; “Brave, generous, nearly perfect.” —Los Angeles Times) has given us a contemporary noir novel that starts out a comedy of errors and turns darker at every hairpin turn.
It’s the summer of 2015, Brooklyn. The city is sweltering from another record-breaking heat wave, this one accompanied by biblical rains. Edith, a recently retired legal librarian, and her identical twin sister, Kat, a feckless romantic who’s mistaken her own eccentricity for originality, discover something ominous in their hall closet: it seems to be phosphorescent, it’s a mushroom . . . and it’s sprouting from their wall.
Upstairs, their landlady, Vida Cebu, a Shakespearian actress far more famous for her TV commercials for Ziberax (the first female sexual enhancement pill) than for her stage work, discovers that a petite Russian girl, a runaway au pair, has been secretly living in her guest room closet. When the police arrest the intruder, they find a second mushroom, also glowing, under the intruder’s bedding. Soon the HAZMAT squad arrives, and the four women are forced to evacuate the contaminated row house with only the clothes on their backs.
As the mold infestation spreads from row house to high-rise, and frightened, bewildered New Yorkers wait out this plague (is it an act of God?) on their city and property, the four women become caught up in a centrifugal nightmare.
Part horror story, part screwball comedy, Jill Ciment’s brilliant suspense novel looks at what happens when our lives—so seemingly set and ordered yet so precariously balanced—break down in the wake of calamity. It is, as well, a novel about love (familial and profound) and how it can appear from the most unlikely circumstances.
©2015 Jill Ciment (P)2015 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A gem of a book that ultimately focuses on the best parts about the human race. I kind of love it for that.” -My Bookish Ways
“Funny, scary . . . It’s human behavior that interests Ciment, and that runs the gamut from enjoyably ridiculous to surprisingly sublime in her tragicomedy of errors.” -Wendy Smith, The Daily Beast
“Ciment’s book is a compact, droll farce, light-hearted and pleasurable as a chocolate truffle, yet with a nugget of hard, somewhat unpalatable truths in the center . . . Ultimately, Ciment towers forth with her own brilliant voice . . . Her interweaving plotlines are so nimbly handled that every development seems simultaneously unpredictable, yet organically predetermined. The story might sometimes appear to be a massive clockwork, but it has the astonishing intricacy of the finest Old World municipal tower clock, where astonishing figures pirouette in and out of every niche . . . Ciment has the bracing mindset of Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain, George Alec Effinger or Tom Disch.” -Paul di Fillipo, Locus Magazine
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Boring, Pretentious Book
- By Marcos on 04-23-11
By: Jillian Lauren
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Breaking Night
- A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
- By: Liz Murray
- Narrated by: Liz Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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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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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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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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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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The Other Side
- A Memoir
- By: Lacy M. Johnson
- Narrated by: Lacy M. Johnson
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Lacy Johnson bangs on the glass doors of a sleepy local police station in the middle of the night. Her feet are bare; her body is bruised and bloody; U-bolts dangle from her wrists. She has escaped but not unscathed. The Other Side is the haunting account of a first passionate and then abusive relationship; the events leading to Johnson's kidnapping, rape, and imprisonment; her dramatic escape; and her hard-fought struggle to recover.
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Wow
- By katherine on 04-21-15
By: Lacy M. Johnson
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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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Crimes by Moonlight
- Mysteries from the Dark Side
- By: Charlaine Harris - author/editor
- Narrated by: Natalie Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris’s "Dahlia Underground,” venerable vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers survives an attack by an anti-vampire terrorist group, only to show them they tried to blow up the wrong bloodsucker. Bailey Ruth Raeburn, a ghost assigned to assist humans in trouble, steps into the middle of a marital dispute with surprising twists in Carolyn Hart’s “Riding High”....
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Pleasantly surprised
- By Bonnie on 08-06-11
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Trading Dreams at Midnight
- By: Diane McKinney-Whetstone
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.
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Hard to follow
- By Nevada on 08-13-10
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Dating Dead Men
- By: Harley Jane Kozak
- Narrated by: Deanna Hurst
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles greeting-card artist Wollie Shelley is dating 40 men in 60 days as research for a radio talk show host's upcoming book. Wollie is meeting plenty of eligible bachelors but not falling in love, not until she stumbles over a dead body en route to Rio Pescado - a state-run mental hospital - and is taken hostage by a charismatic "doctor" who is on the run from the Mob.
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Another Stephanie Plum
- By Don on 08-30-12
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After Perfect
- A Daughter's Memoir
- By: Christina McDowell
- Narrated by: Christina McDowell
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of New York Times best sellers What Remains by Carole Radziwill and Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey, Christina McDowell's unflinching memoir is a brutally honest, cautionary tale about one family's destruction in the wake of the Wall Street implosion.
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Mixed reaction
- By Margaret on 07-09-15
What listeners say about Act of God
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cyler
- 07-20-21
Barbara Rosenblat is a STAR
An entertaining story with a fantastic narrator. Full of hijinks and comedy, this novel will make you laugh out loud on the train. Highly recommend.
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- matt m
- 01-23-22
Growing fungus, shrinking plot
The overall subject of this book intrigued me, but I was mistaken. Instead of the plot having the fungus grow to encompass the whole city, country, then the world, the book somehow finds a way to shrink the plot the closer it gets to the end.
Interspersed with the shrinking fungus plot is a book about acting and an actor, and also NYC. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this is not a book about fungus ending the world by any means. It could have been, but that’s obviously not what the author wanted to do.
It’s decently written and short enough that the shrinking plot wasn’t too painful, at least.
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- Sharlotte
- 01-23-20
Not a Fan of Narrator
I like this author but not this narrator, whom I've heard before. I think it spoiled the book for me. She was far too dramatic to my taste.
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2 people found this helpful