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An Abbreviated Life
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Martha Plimpton
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
A beautiful, startling, and candid memoir about growing up without boundaries, in which Ariel Leve recalls with candor and sensitivity the turbulent time she endured as the only child of an unstable poet for a mother and a beloved but largely absent father, and explores the consequences of a psychologically harrowing childhood as she seeks refuge from the past and recovers what was lost.
Ariel Leve grew up in Manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as "a poet, an artist, a self-appointed troublemaker and attention seeker". Leve learned to become her own parent, taking care of herself and her mother's needs. There would be uncontrolled, impulsive rages followed by denial, disavowed responsibility, and then extreme outpourings of affection. How does a child learn to feel safe in this topsy-turvy world of conditional love?
Leve captures the chaos and lasting impact of a child's life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to survive later incapacitated her as an adult. There were material comforts but no emotional safety except for summer visits to her father's home in Southeast Asia - an escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody. Following the death of a loving caretaker, a succession of replacements raised Leve - relationships that resulted in intense attachment and loss. It was not until decades later, when Leve moved to the other side of the world, that she could begin to emancipate herself from the past. In a relationship with a man who had children, caring for them yielded clarity of what was missing.
In telling her haunting story, Leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic psychological maltreatment on a child's developing brain and to discover how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible: an unabbreviated life.
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Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Everything You Ever Wanted
- A Memoir
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Jillian Lauren
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei's harem, an experience she immortalized in her best-selling memoir, Some Girls. In her 30s, Jillian's most radical act is learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs.
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Great for adoptive families
- By berry bomb on 07-06-22
By: Jillian Lauren
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The Finishing School
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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One spring night in 1998, the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school.
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this book was just ok
- By Josh Fields on 02-26-20
By: Joanna Goodman
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The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
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If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Pieces of Me
- Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters
- By: Lizbeth Meredith
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1994, Lizbeth Meredith said good-bye to her four- and six year-old daughters for a visit with their noncustodial father only to learn days later that they had been kidnapped and taken to their father's home country of Greece. Twenty-nine and just on the verge of making her dreams of financial independence for her and her daughters come true, Lizbeth now faced a $100,000 problem on a $10 an hour budget.
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You really won't want to stop listening!
- By Artist's Eye on 07-17-18
By: Lizbeth Meredith
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Until I Say Good-Bye
- My Year of Living with Joy
- By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, Bret Witter
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Susan Spencer-Wendel's Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). After Spencer-Wendel, a celebrated journalist at the Palm Beach Post, learns of her diagnosis of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she embarks on several adventures, traveling to several countries and sharing special experiences with loved ones.
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Until I Say Good-Bye is a paradox for me.
- By Bonny on 03-19-13
By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, and others
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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Your Voice in My Head
- A Memoir
- By: Emma Forrest
- Narrated by: Emma Forrest
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Forrest, a British journalist, was just 22 and living the fast life in New York City when she realized that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity. In a cycle of loneliness, damaging relationships, and destructive behavior, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding, and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist--a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the dangerous tide after she tried to end her life.
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Great, quick read
- By Amazon Customer on 02-12-21
By: Emma Forrest
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The Wife
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
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A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
What listeners say about An Abbreviated Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Erin - Audible
- 03-28-17
Martha Plimpton, If You're Reading This...
Any additional comments?
Martha Plimpton needs to read all the audiobooks. ALL OF THEM.
I started journalist Ariel Leve’s gorgeous, riveting memoir on a plane and didn’t remove my earbuds once during the five-hour flight and one-hour commute home. Her larger-than-life mother (an unstable poet given to fits of alternating sweetness, uncontrolled rage, and disappearance) is as alluring a character as you’d find in a great novel. As Leve probes her chaotic childhood and subsequent struggle toward trust and stability, the super-talented Martha Plimpton elevates the material with intelligence, humor, and conviction. When I am super rich, I will have her read absolutely everything to me.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Cleo
- 01-02-19
Very rich
Explores all the nooks and crannies of a deeply distrupted and painful childhood. I did not want it to end. I was totally immersed and absorbed in her struggle.
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- Claudia
- 03-30-24
Wanted to know what she meant by “abbreviated”.
Loved this book. I cannot relate to all of it, but I can relate to some of it. Beautifully written from a place a both purity and rawness. Thank you so much for sharing your story.
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- Amber G
- 10-07-21
Wished it was longer
The story and Martha Plimpton as the narrator were simply incredible. I couldn't put it down. Hoping Ariel Leve has written more and I will listen to ANYTHING by Martha.
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- Steph
- 02-10-19
Amazing!!
If I could give a million stars to the performance, I would. Martha was the perfect narrator to give voice to Ariel’s story, and it’s a voice that needs to be heard.
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- Lori Rees
- 06-18-16
Beautifully written memoir
This is personal memoir at its best. The story is sad, tragic, funny, hopeful. The writing is excellent and the author clearly shows the emotional pain she has endured. It's not all maudlin. The author also paints a picture of healthy adults, and children, in her life. I loved the scenes of New York, the name-dropping, and her life overseas.
Martha Plimpton's narration is wonderful and was a perfect choice. All the best to the author and her mother.
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4 people found this helpful
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- philstopford
- 04-01-24
Offers a view into origins of mental health issues
This was something of a surprise and left me thinking about it for weeks afterwards. I'd be tempted to suggest this be required reading as part of a general education system, just because it would probably help avoid people leaping to conclusions when discussing mental health and social issues - it's all too easy to suggest "pull yourself up by your shoe laces) without giving thought to the root cause. This is a valuable account and I'm extremely glad to have been exposed to it.
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- FeistyRunner
- 01-01-19
Poignant & Riveting
Narration: Martha Plimpton should narrate EVERY audio book ever recorded. Absolutely not one criticism. Her inflections and change of tone were consistent and very helpful as the speaker in the book would change. Absolute perfection. Ariel's story was, of course, the real star. I feel the need to address some of the bizarre comments reviewers made regarding Ariel's privileged childhood somehow voiding the reality of her abuse. I had the EXACT same mother yet was raised in a paycheck to paycheck setting. Never, at any point, did I dismiss Ariel's feelings or experiences because she had a ritzy address or for the celebrities who partied in her mom's apartment in the wee hours of the morning as Ariel was trying to get to sleep for school the next day. Anyone who reads this book and has that as a takeaway 1. did not read the entire book and 2. has absolutely no concept of narcissistic abuse syndrome. I will listen to this book again. And again. I am Ariel's age and have had precisely the same circular, manipulative conversations with my mother. Ariel does an amazing job of painting, with excruciating detail, exactly what it's like to be indentured to a narcissist. I live with a hardcore narcissist right now (no surprise to other victims) and this book hit the nail on the head for his behavior as well. If you have a narcissist in your life, or suspect you have one, in any capacity, this book may be the validation you've been looking for.
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- LifeLearner
- 12-28-22
Courageous book dealing with the devil you know
Ariel Leve’s story is remarkable and validates the crazy / unpredictable family life we endured. Leve describes her struggles growing up in a toxic environment and how she finds her personal pathway to freedom from her mother’s grip. I finished this book with hope for the future.
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- Grace
- 04-11-20
I am savoring this story
The best narration for an audio book I have found so far. Am really enjoying listening on my nightly commute back home in 15 minute snippets.
Love the writing, the story and narration and the New York City backdrop. Nostalgic for me being a native New Yorker. I found out quickly that audiobooks are not all created equal. Very few of them have professional narration like this book by Ariel Leve has.
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