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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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- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
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Held me hostage for way too long without payoff
- By Fay on 12-25-24
By: Kelly Link
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Dead in Long Beach, California
- A Novel
- By: Venita Blackburn
- Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles—and triples—down on posing as her brother.
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Great Literary Work
- By Dr Ag on 02-25-24
By: Venita Blackburn
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We Were the Universe
- A Novel
- By: Kimberly King Parsons
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh, Justis Bolding
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.
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The author’s use of detail is exceptional
- By Jane Roth on 06-17-24
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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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Performance
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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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The Extinction of Irena Rey
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Lanessa Tremblett
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece.
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Unique plot
- By Kinga on 03-30-24
By: Jennifer Croft
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Parakeet
- A Novel
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the internet? Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother. In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.
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Well written, but lackluster main character
- By GG on 06-12-20
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The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
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Held me hostage for way too long without payoff
- By Fay on 12-25-24
By: Kelly Link
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Dead in Long Beach, California
- A Novel
- By: Venita Blackburn
- Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles—and triples—down on posing as her brother.
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Great Literary Work
- By Dr Ag on 02-25-24
By: Venita Blackburn
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We Were the Universe
- A Novel
- By: Kimberly King Parsons
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh, Justis Bolding
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.
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The author’s use of detail is exceptional
- By Jane Roth on 06-17-24
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Godwin
- A Novel
- By: Joseph O'Neill
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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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The Extinction of Irena Rey
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Lanessa Tremblett
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece.
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Unique plot
- By Kinga on 03-30-24
By: Jennifer Croft
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The Coin
- A Novel
- By: Yasmin Zaher
- Narrated by: Sarah Agha
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
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Interview of author on podcast piqued interest
- By amybarnard on 08-03-24
By: Yasmin Zaher
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Ghostroots
- Stories
- By: Pemi Aguda
- Narrated by: Délé Ogundiran, Ore Apampa-Araba
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.
By: Pemi Aguda
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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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Overall
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Performance
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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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Fire Exit
- By: Morgan Talty
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
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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Good Material
- A Novel
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Arthur Darvill, Vanessa Kirby
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
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not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
By: Dolly Alderton
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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
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2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Angela Goethals
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Madeleine Altimari is a smart-mouthed, rebellious nine-year-old who also happens to be an aspiring jazz singer. Still mourning the recent death of her mother, and caring for her grief-stricken father, she doesn't realize that on the eve of Christmas Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day - and night - of her life. After bravely facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she's determined to make her on-stage debut.
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An Enchanting Original
- By Regina-Audible on 08-05-14
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Someone Like Us
- A Novel
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Junior Nyong'o
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth.
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I did not enjoy this
- By MarcB on 09-17-24
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Bluff
- Poems
- By: Danez Smith
- Narrated by: Danez Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.
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Wow!
- By Andre on 10-28-24
By: Danez Smith
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Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The Empusium
- A Health Resort Horror Story
- By: Olga Tokarczuk
- Narrated by: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Natasha Soudek
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
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Never ending Misogyny
- By Nina O on 10-11-24
By: Olga Tokarczuk
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Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
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One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- Michele Elizabeth
- 06-02-24
Unique story
Really well written. Unique story. Good pace. I really enjoyed and definitely recommend. I was never quite sure . , .
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