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Autobiography of a Face
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent 15 years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."
At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.
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Critic reviews
Featured Article: The top 100 memoirs of all time
All genres considered, the memoir is among the most difficult and complex for a writer to pull off. After all, giving voice to your own lived experience and recounting deeply painful or uncomfortable memories in a way that still engages and entertains is a remarkable feat. These autobiographies, often narrated by the authors themselves, shine with raw, unfiltered emotion sure to resonate with any listener. But don't just take our word for it—queue up any one of these listens, and you'll hear exactly what we mean.
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Manic
- A Memoir
- By: Terri Cheney
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless facade lay a dangerous secret - for the better part of her life, Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal". In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty.
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Amazing
- By Kelly Ranasinghe on 04-26-18
By: Terri Cheney
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Murphy's Boy
- By: Torey Hayden
- Narrated by: Loretta Rawlins
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.
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want to meet Kevin
- By Cherish on 10-14-15
By: Torey Hayden
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A Happy Marriage
- A Novel
- By: Rafael Yglesias
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret’s life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, children, and Enrique.
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A Difficult Review -- A Difficult Read
- By Lulu on 06-04-12
By: Rafael Yglesias
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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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How to Get Run Over by a Truck
- A Memoir
- By: Katie McKenna
- Narrated by: Katie McKenna
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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People often say, "I feel like I've been run over by a truck." Katie actually was. On a sunny morning bike ride in Brooklyn, 24-year-old Katie McKenna was forever changed when she was run over by an 18-wheeler. Being crushed under a massive semi wasn't something Katie should have survived. After 10 hours of emergency surgery, she woke to find herself in a body and a life that would never be the same.
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Funny and an amazing story.
- By T. Thompson on 12-16-16
By: Katie McKenna
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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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Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
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Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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After the Fire
- A True Story of Friendship and Survival
- By: Robin Gaby Fisher
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On January 19, 2000, a fire raged through the freshman dormitory at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, killing three students and injuring 58 others. Among the victims were Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, roommates from poor neighborhoods who made their families proud by getting into college. They managed to escape the fire, but both were burned terribly.
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Incredibly Inspirational
- By Angie on 01-13-12
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Katherine Itacy was born deformed and, by the age of four, had developed both a dangerous spinal disorder and an incurable disease. Yet, 13 years later, she'd amassed five state and eight national high school championship titles in track and field. She went on to compete in the Division I NCAA Championships and, later, to graduate fourth in her law school class. By 25, she was operating her own law firm and by 29 was serving on three boards of directors for civil rights and criminal justice nonprofit organizations.
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Fiction is an Art in every way, worthy to be called the sister and the equal of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Poetry; that is to say, her field is as boundless, her possibilities as vast, her excellences as worthy of admiration, as may be claimed for any of her sister Arts.
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It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
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A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
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Patchett Has It
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Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind - but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of 38, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work.
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Travels with Corky
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The Year of Magical Thinking
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"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.
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Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
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What listeners say about Autobiography of a Face
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tamara Smith
- 11-11-20
Heartwrenching, but perspective building...
This is a tale that reminded me to appreciate the gifts of childhood that I squandered and recognize the impact my parents insecurities had on my judgment of myself. Powerful recollections from a human with awe inspiring strength.
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- ezkeyl
- 05-05-22
I never knew...
I was a high school classmate of Lucy and never knew the struggles she went through in her life...
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- Martin C.
- 03-24-24
Not at all how I remember this book
I read this book a decade ago and it has always stayed with me as a rebuttal (even though it came first) to Ann Patchetts memoir Truth and Beauty. In my mind it demonstrated how completely differently two people can experience the same thing. Ann P’s beautiful tribute described Lucy’s procrastinating on submitting her book and meeting deadlines. I remember that Lucy’s book contained a multitude of justifications for delaying her work and the opposite ways of looking at the same situation was interesting and human.
However, upon listening to it now, it was simply a long list of the surgeries and misery that Lucy Grealy endured and I didn’t find it at all interesting, surprising or enlightening. I’m a bit bewildered that the things I most loved about this book and remembered… are simply not there.
This isn’t a great listen unless you like to more yourself in surgical tales.
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- Ela B.
- 08-18-18
Rewarding listen even if memoir is not your thing
I hesitated thinking it might be an unbearably sad memoir but glad I went ahead and used my credit. Beautifully written, Lucy Grealy became a lauded poet and taught at Bennington College. I was hooked from the prologue. Also looks at the medical advances or not in reconstructive surgery and the failings of our medical profession.. A wonderful narrator which made listening a pleasure. Don't hesitate. Get this.
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2 people found this helpful
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- eBrightwing
- 11-15-18
Pathos and Resilience
I read the memoir by her friend first, but couldn't resist going back to read this. Her resilience is amazing. Her honesty truly surprising and she details her life very matter-of-factly I high recommend it, especially if you enjoy memoirs from unique voices.
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- Cori P
- 08-07-21
A startling real and raw accounting.
A must read companion to Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchette. inside the mind and life of a true artist struggling to come to grips with illness, disfigurement and our cruel societal notions of beauty.
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- Janeen
- 05-14-21
my love for Lucy...❤
I listened to Ann Patchett's book Turth and Beaty and This Is A Story Of A Happy Marriage that gave such a beautiful introduction into Lucy's life and struggles. I adore this reflection piece that Lucy, an incredible poet and written created to share with everyone the trials and grief she went through in her life. ❤
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- ElianaT.
- 05-26-22
Worth reading twice
I read this when it came out and put it on the shelf for rereads and favorites. Listening to it again after a couple of decades it still holds up as a beautiful telling of what it is like to try to navigate this world when you look different from everyone. (and that’s is everyone to differing degrees.) Though her deformity was extreme I could really empathize with her anxiety just going through normal life. Whether you identify with that or not, I believe her experience can expand our humanity to include everyone and treat them accordingly whatever their appearance. After listening to it again I’m reading it from a point of wholeness and health while before I was broken and struggling. Her courage is still striking. Though she later ended her life, she fought the good fight and if you like to read about survivors you will love this. To me she is still a survivor for every day that she fought through, and that was every day. Let her show you another example of the human spirit to overcome dreadful circumstances. I hope this book keeps her story alive.
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- Ellen
- 09-15-23
Fascinating memoir
Moving account of an extraordinary journey. But it's one we can all see ourselves in to some extent.
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- Candy Shannon
- 10-25-24
the pain and loneliness
incredible story, wonderful narration. I was amazed at what she went through. i felt so much of her physical pain but also her great emotional pain.
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