
Beautyland
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Narrated by:
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Andi Arndt
About this listen
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light.
As a child, she recognizes that she's different: she possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.
For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. But at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she's not alone?
A blazing novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life in our universe, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a remarkable evocation of feeling in exile at home and introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.
©2024 Marie-Helene Bertino (P)2024 Dreamscape MediaListeners also enjoyed...
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An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
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Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
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Godwin
- A Novel
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the United Kingdom, is a desperate young soccer agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin”—an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Lionel Messi.
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Not Netherland.
- By Amazon Customer on 10-31-24
By: Joseph O'Neill
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Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
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The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
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The Book of George
- A Novel
- By: Kate Greathead
- Narrated by: Blair Baker
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; sweet yet noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend; distant from but still reliant on his mother; charmingly funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.
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Lots of potential, little payoff
- By Chalin Smith on 10-24-24
By: Kate Greathead
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Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
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Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
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Moon of the Crusted Snow
- A Novel
- By: Waubgeshig Rice
- Narrated by: Billy Merasty
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.
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Really great book!!!
- By Malia on 04-23-19
By: Waubgeshig Rice
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The Book Censor's Library
- A Novel
- By: Bothayna Al-Essa, Ranya Abdelrahman - translator, Sawad Hussain - translator
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The new book censor hasn't slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish-allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians.
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Thought-provoking and original
- By Alex, artiste of the perfect pairing on 04-28-25
By: Bothayna Al-Essa, and others
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How to Be an American Housewife
- A Novel
- By: Margaret Dilloway
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington, Emily Durante
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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How to Be an American Housewife is a novel about mothers and daughters and the pull of tradition. It tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected. When illness prevents Shoko from traveling to Japan, she asks Sue to go in her place. The trip reveals family secrets that change their lives in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
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big disappointment
- By Kirsten on 04-12-12
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Fire Exit
- By: Morgan Talty
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of Roger and Mary raising their only child, Elizabeth from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from this family and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
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Wonderful story about love, family , truth and deception and identity
- By ReallyNelie on 06-23-24
By: Morgan Talty
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The Garden
- A Novel
- By: Clare Beams
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1948, Irene Willard, who’s had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now pregnant again, comes to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for her condition. Warily, she enlists herself in the efforts of the Doctors Hall to “rectify the maternal environment,” both physical and psychological. In the meantime, she also discovers a long-forgotten walled garden on the spacious grounds, a place imbued with its own powers and pulls.
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The sublimeness of motherhood
- By KA McNamara on 09-09-24
By: Clare Beams
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Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
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Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
What listeners say about Beautyland
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- B.K.
- 06-09-24
Observation of Americans
I liked the story enough to finish it, but -like the narrator-it left me with nothing.
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- Emily Allred
- 07-06-24
What do you believe?
Loved the narrator. Loved the story. Do we all have a delusion we believe? What does that say about ourselves? Who was answering this woman/alien?
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- Nancy tomlinson
- 02-12-25
Unique and creative
I liked it all, so original ! I think I have to listen to it again
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-04-24
Unforgettable
One of those books that perfectly hits the spot. It was a joy to listen to, and will stay with me for a long time.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Andrea
- 06-23-24
Such a wonderful book!
This book made me think, laugh, cry and wonder. I liked it so much I want the paper version as well!
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- Judy in Salt Lake
- 12-16-24
Alien or imaginative or highly observant snd somewhat neurotic human being?
I’m going to vote for the latter. There are countless novels about highly observant and somewhat neurotic human beings - so the author, who is a very good writer, chose to be clever and have her main character believe she was an alien. So interesting to see ordinary life through the eyes of an alien, right?
While there are many many, many, many clever musings about human nature and an equal number of clever turns of the phrase, character development is pretty much nonexistent in this novel.
I’m not sure how it made so many ‘best books of 2024’ lists. I almost gave up about halfway through but because of those lists I stayed till the end which was standard issue tear jerker author manipulation.
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- Celine
- 07-20-24
Brilliant!
A perfect, deeply human story—with a brilliant narrator. This is one that’ll stick with me.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-30-24
Strangely relatable
This book was great to listen to while multi_tasking. It’s observational, almost listicle style morphed into something chillingly touching.
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- paris1230
- 07-17-24
Glorious!
Strange, tender, bittersweet and completely compelling. So unlike my usual selections but I’m thrilled to have read this. Heartbreaking and lovely.
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- unco
- 05-04-24
Read This Book!
This book was an emotional roller coaster for me. I was very impressed by Marie-Helene Bertino's writing. She never really explained Adina's oddness. We are left to question her behavior throughout the book. Is it a vivid imagination or is she suffering from a mental disorder? The fact that the author leaves this up to us to decide was brilliant. I felt firmly planted in Adina's shoes. The story is so wonderfully odd. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was shredded. So many echoes of Spalding Gray at the end.
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2 people found this helpful