
All the Lives We Ever Lived
Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf
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Narrated by:
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Brittany Pressley
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By:
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Katharine Smyth
About this listen
A wise, lyrical memoir about the power of literature to help us read our own lives - and see clearly the people we love most.
"Transcendent." (The Washington Post) • "You’d be hard put to find a more moving appreciation of Woolf’s work." (The Wall Street Journal)
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Town & Country
Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death - a calamity that claimed her favorite person - she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief.
Smyth’s story moves between the New England of her childhood and Woolf’s Cornish shores and Bloomsbury squares, exploring universal questions about family, loss, and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse, and her artful adaptation of its groundbreaking structure, Smyth guides us toward a new vision of Woolf’s most demanding and rewarding novel - and crafts an elegant reminder of literature’s ability to clarify and console.
Braiding memoir, literary criticism, and biography, All the Lives We Ever Lived is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.
Praise for All the Lives We Ever Lived
"This searching memoir pays homage to To the Lighthouse, while recounting the author’s fraught relationship with her beloved father, a vibrant figure afflicted with alcoholism and cancer.... Smyth’s writing is evocative and incisive." (The New Yorker)
"Like H Is for Hawk, Smyth’s book is a memoir that’s not quite a memoir, using Woolf, and her obsession with Woolf, as a springboard to tell the story of her father’s vivid life and sad demise due to alcoholism and cancer.... An experiment in twenty-first century introspection that feels rooted in a modernist tradition and bracingly fresh." (Vogue)
"Deeply moving - part memoir, part literary criticism, part outpouring of longing and grief.... This is a beautiful book about the wildness of mortal life, and the tenuous consolations of art." (The Times Literary Supplement)
"Blending analysis of a deeply literary novel with a personal story...gently entwining observations from Woolf's classic with her own layered experience. Smyth tells us of her love for her father, his profound alcoholism and the unpredictable course of the cancer that ultimately claimed his life." (Time)
©2019 Katharine Smyth (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"[Smyth’s] prose is so fluid and clear throughout that it’s not surprising to observe her view of her family, its cracks and fissures, sharpen into unsparing focus.... Her exploration of grown-up love, the kind that accounts for who the loved one actually is, not who you want him or her to be, gains power and grace as her story unfolds. I suspect her book could itself become solace for people navigating their way through the complexities of grief for their fallen idols. And they will be lucky to have it." (Radhika Jones, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice)
"This is a transcendent book, not a simple meditation on one woman’s loss, but a reflection on all of our losses, on loss itself, on how to remember and commemorate our dead." (Washington Post)
"Brilliant...Smyth’s beautiful debut is more tightly strung together than you’d imagine a memoir-cum-literary-requiem could be. It is innovative, like Woolf, in its power of association and its ability to transform the intangible nature of grief into a warm, graspable, fleshy mass." (Vulture)
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Story
At a time when society’s relationship with science is increasingly polarized while threats to human life on earth continue to rise, Townsend offers a balanced, moving perspective on the common ground between science and religion through the spiritual fulfillment he found in his work. Awash in Townsend's electrifying and breathtaking prose, THIS ORDINARY STARDUST offers hope that life can carry on even in the face of near-certain annihilation.
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Inspirational and touching!
- By Grace M on 08-18-24
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In Pursuit of Disobedient Women
- A Memoir of Love, Rebellion, and Family, Far Away
- By: Dionne Searcey
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2015, Dionne Searcey was covering the economy for The New York Times, living in Brooklyn with her husband and three young children. Saddled with the demands of a dual-career household and motherhood in an urban setting, her life was in a rut. She decided to pursue a job as the paper’s West Africa bureau chief, an amazing but daunting opportunity to cover a swath of territory encompassing two dozen countries and 500 million people. Landing with her family in Dakar, Senegal, she quickly found their lives turned upside-down as they struggled to figure out their place.
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A journalist's memoir
- By still reading on 07-26-20
By: Dionne Searcey
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A Place in the World
- Finding the Meaning of Home
- By: Frances Mayes
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Though Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on the idea of home, from the earliest imprint of four walls to the startling discoveries of feeling the strange ease of homes abroad, friends’ homes, and even momentary homes that spark desires for other lives. From her travels across Italy to the American South, France, and Mexico, Mayes examines the connective tissue among them through the homes she’s inhabited.
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Lovely meditation on the meaning of home
- By Pamela F Roper on 02-19-23
By: Frances Mayes
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The Travelers
- A Novel
- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet James Samuel Vincent, an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish-American background but hews to his father’s meandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie. Claudia’s mother - Agnes Miller Christie - is a beautiful African-American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life in the Bronx. Soon after, her husband, Eddie Christie, is called to duty on an air craft carrier in Vietnam.
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Each character is quite a character.
- By Anonymous User on 01-01-22
By: Regina Porter
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An Onion in My Pocket
- My Life with Vegetables
- By: Deborah Madison
- Narrated by: Deborah Madison
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Madison’s “insightful memoir” (The Wall Street Journal) is “a true delight to read as she uncovers her love for all real foods, peeling off layer by layer like an onion, recounting her own personal, culinary, and gardening experiences” (Lidia Bastianich). Thanks to her beloved cookbooks and groundbreaking work as the chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Deborah Madison, though not a vegetarian herself, has long been revered as this country's leading authority on vegetables.
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A little hard to listen to
- By Linda D. Tillman on 04-26-21
By: Deborah Madison
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The Beneficiary
- Fortune, Misfortune, and the Story of My Father
- By: Janny Scott
- Narrated by: Janny Scott
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A parable for the new age of inequality: part family history, part detective story, part history of a vanishing class, and a vividly compelling exploration of the degree to which an inheritance - financial, cultural, genetic - conspired in one person's self-destruction.
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Buy A Hard Copy
- By NFox on 06-08-19
By: Janny Scott
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The Gilded Edge
- Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America
- By: Catherine Prendergast
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Nora May French and Carrie Sterling arrive at Carmel-by-the-Sea at the turn of the twentieth century with dramatically different ambitions. Nora, a stunning, brilliant, impulsive writer in her early twenties, seeks artistic recognition and Bohemian refuge among the most celebrated counter-culturalists of the era. Carrie, long-suffering wife of real estate developer George Sterling, wants the opposite: a semblance of the stability she thought her advantageous marriage would offer, threatened now that her philandering husband has taken to writing poetry.
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Why?
- By UMICHReader on 01-18-22
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The Good Girls
- An Ordinary Killing
- By: Sonia Faleiro
- Narrated by: Sonia Faleiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The girls' names were Padma and Lalli, but they were so inseparable that people in the village called them Padma Lalli. Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic. They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in Western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started. Then one night in the summer of 2014 the girls went missing; and hours later they were found hanging in the orchard.
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Absolutely heartbreaking
- By Bradley T. Collins on 05-18-21
By: Sonia Faleiro
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Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them
- By: Maeve Higgins
- Narrated by: Maeve Higgins
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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As an eternally curious outsider, Maeve Higgins can see that the United States is still an experiment. Some parts work well and others really don’t, but that doesn't stop her from loving the place and the people that make it. With piercing political commentary in a sweet and salty tone, these essays unearth answers to the questions we all have about this country we call home; the beauty of it all and the dark parts too.
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Wanted to love it
- By D34 on 06-14-22
By: Maeve Higgins
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Sleeping with Strangers
- How the Movies Shaped Desire
- By: David Thomson
- Narrated by: David Thomson
- Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies - and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality.
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Another good read from David Thomson
- By Boxing Fan on 07-23-23
By: David Thomson
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Love Unknown
- The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop
- By: Thomas Travisano
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Elizabeth Bishop's friend James Merrill once observed that "Elizabeth had more talent for life - and for poetry - than anyone else I've known." This new biography reveals just how she learned to marry her talent for life with her talent for writing in order to create a brilliant array of poems, prose, and letters - a remarkable body of work that would make her one of America's most beloved and celebrated poets. In Love Unknown, Thomas Travisano, founding president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society, tells the story of the famous poet and traveler's life.
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Love the book, just OK with the narration
- By Amazon Customer on 06-05-20
By: Thomas Travisano
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Possessed by Memory
- The Inward Light of Criticism
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
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What an endowment!
- By Norman on 04-03-21
By: Harold Bloom
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Still Writing
- The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Dani Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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From Dani Shapiro, best-selling author of Devotion and Slow Motion, comes a witty, heartfelt, and practical look at the exhilarating and challenging process of storytelling. At once a memoir, a meditation on the artistic process, and advice on craft, Still Writing is an intimate companion to living a creative life. Writers - and anyone with an artistic temperament - will find inspiration and comfort here.
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Inspiring but dark, better to read than listen
- By Raquel on 10-22-21
By: Dani Shapiro
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Unsolaced
- Along the Way to All That Is
- By: Gretel Ehrlich
- Narrated by: Gretel Ehrlich
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the enduring classic The Solace of Open Spaces, here is a wondrous meditation on how water, light, wind, mountain, bird, and horse have shaped her life and her understanding of a world besieged by a climate crisis. Amid species extinctions and disintegrating ice sheets, this stunning collection of memories, observations, and narratives is acute and lyrical, Whitmanesque in breadth, and as elegant as a Japanese teahouse.
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A journey worth taking
- By Jay on 10-30-23
By: Gretel Ehrlich
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The Sirens of Mars
- Searching for Life on Another World
- By: Sarah Stewart Johnson
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own.
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A Masterpiece for the Ages
- By Richard T. Mahoney on 07-19-21
Mixed review.
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the cross between the storyline
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Processing grief though literature
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Surprised I Finished This
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