-
Black Swan Green
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.23
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
By the New York Times best-selling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year
A New York Times Notable Book
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
Winner of the ALA Alex Award
Finalist for the Costa Novel Award
From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.
Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for 13-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in dying Cold War England, 1982. But the 13 chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissinger-esque realpolitik enacted in boys' games on a frozen lake; of "nightcreeping" through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason's search to replace his dead grandfather's irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher's recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.
Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell's subtlest and most effective achievement to date.
Praise for Black Swan Green
“[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel.... The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods.... This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.” (The Boston Globe)
“[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer.... As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.” (Time)
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Slade House
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you'll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't. Every nine years, the house's residents - an odd brother and sister - extend a unique invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it's already too late....
-
-
Grief is an amputation
- By Darwin8u on 10-29-15
By: David Mitchell
-
Number9Dream
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses - through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck - a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer.
-
-
Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé
- By Darwin8u on 06-03-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Utopia Avenue
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?
-
-
1960s Nostalgia Served David Mitchell-Style.
- By Nick O. on 07-20-20
By: David Mitchell
-
Ghostwritten
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters - a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York - hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact.
-
-
An Embryonic Version of Cloud Atlas
- By Darwin8u on 05-29-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Cloud Atlas
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter....
-
-
thoroughly enjoyed
- By Elizabeth on 01-05-08
By: David Mitchell
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
Slade House
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you'll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't. Every nine years, the house's residents - an odd brother and sister - extend a unique invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it's already too late....
-
-
Grief is an amputation
- By Darwin8u on 10-29-15
By: David Mitchell
-
Number9Dream
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses - through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck - a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer.
-
-
Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé
- By Darwin8u on 06-03-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Utopia Avenue
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?
-
-
1960s Nostalgia Served David Mitchell-Style.
- By Nick O. on 07-20-20
By: David Mitchell
-
Ghostwritten
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters - a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York - hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact.
-
-
An Embryonic Version of Cloud Atlas
- By Darwin8u on 05-29-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Cloud Atlas
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter....
-
-
thoroughly enjoyed
- By Elizabeth on 01-05-08
By: David Mitchell
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection
- By: Stephen Fry, Washington Irving, M.R. James, and others
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.
-
-
Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
- By Michael Fuchs on 11-07-23
By: Stephen Fry, and others
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Gabrielle Zevin
- Narrated by: Jennifer Kim, Julian Cihi
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have heard before.
-
-
This book sucked the life out of me
- By RMan on 08-08-22
By: Gabrielle Zevin
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Sea of Tranquility
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.
-
-
An excellent listen.
- By Mark on 04-11-22
-
The Buried Giant
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"You've long set your heart against it, Axl, I know. But it's time now to think on it anew. There's a journey we must go on, and no more delay..." The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years. Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.
-
-
The beauty of the reveal
- By Anonymous User on 03-17-15
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
The Remains of the Day
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
-
-
Beautiful and ever relevant
- By bbots on 07-04-20
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
The Glass Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis's billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors.
-
-
Don't waste your time and money
- By Anonymous User on 03-26-20
-
Lord of the Flies
- By: William Golding
- Narrated by: William Golding
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marooned on a tropical island, alone in a world of uncharted possibilities, and devoid of adult supervision or rules, a group of British boys begins to forge a society with its own unique rules and rituals.
-
-
Great story - bad narration
- By A Mom on 03-05-08
By: William Golding
-
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Discover Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie's classic fantasy novel. Set in an exotic eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz.
-
-
Great story and great story teller
- By marce on 05-22-18
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The Giver
- By: Lois Lowry
- Narrated by: Ron Rifkin
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
December is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve-year-old receives a life assignment determined by the Elders. Jonas watches his friend Fiona named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant Director of Recreation. But Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man, the man called only the Giver, he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world.
-
-
This guy's mouth makes some serious noises...
- By Nikki Cole on 07-09-12
By: Lois Lowry
-
A Wrinkle in Time
- By: Madeleine L'Engle
- Narrated by: Hope Davis, Ava DuVernay, Madeleine L'Engle, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract", which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg's father had been experimenting with time travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?
-
-
Thank You for a New Narrator
- By Patricia on 02-01-12
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
Disappearing Act
- A Host of Other Characters in 16 Short Stories
- By: Robert Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robert Sheehan
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.
-
-
as strange as he is
- By DEKEY on 04-08-24
By: Robert Sheehan
-
Lionel Asbo
- State of England
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .
-
-
Jēz...us! Just don't buy it for your Grans.
- By Darwin8u on 01-03-13
By: Martin Amis
-
The Beautiful Dead
- By: Belinda Bauer
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Crime reporter Eve Singer's career is on the downward slope when a spate of bizarre murders - each carefully orchestrated and advertised like performance art - begin in her territory. Covering these very public crimes revives her byline, and when the killer contacts Eve to discuss her coverage of his crimes, she is suddenly on the inside of the biggest murder investigation of the decade. But as the killer becomes increasingly obsessed with her, Eve realizes there's a thin line between inside information and becoming an accomplice to murder.
-
-
What is this
- By J.Hamp on 02-09-21
By: Belinda Bauer
-
Gypsy Boy
- By: Mikey Walsh
- Narrated by: Mikey Walsh
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mikey's family were Gypsies. They live in a closed community and little is known about their way of life. As he didn't go to school, the caravan became his world. But although Mikey inherited a vibrant culture, his family had a dark hidden history. Eventually Mikey was forced to make a decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere to belong.
-
-
Beaten up
- By Bel on 06-10-21
By: Mikey Walsh
-
Some Kind of Fairy Tale
- A Novel
- By: Graham Joyce
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty years ago, 16-year-old Tara Martin disappeared from a small town in the heart of England. Now, her sudden return and the mind-bending tale of where she’s been will challenge our very perception of the truth. For 20 years after Tara Martin disappeared, her parents and her brother, Peter, lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. Then suddenly on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents’ home, and there, dishevelled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It’s a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara’s story just does not add up.
-
-
Extremely Well Done
- By Amanda on 07-11-12
By: Graham Joyce
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
Disappearing Act
- A Host of Other Characters in 16 Short Stories
- By: Robert Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robert Sheehan
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.
-
-
as strange as he is
- By DEKEY on 04-08-24
By: Robert Sheehan
-
Lionel Asbo
- State of England
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .
-
-
Jēz...us! Just don't buy it for your Grans.
- By Darwin8u on 01-03-13
By: Martin Amis
-
The Beautiful Dead
- By: Belinda Bauer
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Crime reporter Eve Singer's career is on the downward slope when a spate of bizarre murders - each carefully orchestrated and advertised like performance art - begin in her territory. Covering these very public crimes revives her byline, and when the killer contacts Eve to discuss her coverage of his crimes, she is suddenly on the inside of the biggest murder investigation of the decade. But as the killer becomes increasingly obsessed with her, Eve realizes there's a thin line between inside information and becoming an accomplice to murder.
-
-
What is this
- By J.Hamp on 02-09-21
By: Belinda Bauer
-
Gypsy Boy
- By: Mikey Walsh
- Narrated by: Mikey Walsh
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mikey's family were Gypsies. They live in a closed community and little is known about their way of life. As he didn't go to school, the caravan became his world. But although Mikey inherited a vibrant culture, his family had a dark hidden history. Eventually Mikey was forced to make a decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere to belong.
-
-
Beaten up
- By Bel on 06-10-21
By: Mikey Walsh
-
Some Kind of Fairy Tale
- A Novel
- By: Graham Joyce
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty years ago, 16-year-old Tara Martin disappeared from a small town in the heart of England. Now, her sudden return and the mind-bending tale of where she’s been will challenge our very perception of the truth. For 20 years after Tara Martin disappeared, her parents and her brother, Peter, lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. Then suddenly on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents’ home, and there, dishevelled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It’s a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara’s story just does not add up.
-
-
Extremely Well Done
- By Amanda on 07-11-12
By: Graham Joyce
-
Darling Jim
- A Novel
- By: Christian Moerk
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye, Justine Eyre
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When two sisters and their aunt are found dead in their suburban Dublin home, it seems that the secret behind their untimely demise will never be known. But then Niall, a young mailman, finds a mysterious diary in the post office's dead-letter bin. From beyond the grave, Fiona Walsh shares the most tragic love story he's ever heard---and her tale has only just begun.
-
-
Great Story
- By Book Worm on 05-28-09
By: Christian Moerk
-
The Wicked Girls
- By: Alex Marwood
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two 11-year-old girls meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, journalist Kirsty Lindsay is reporting on a series of sickening attacks on young female tourists in a seaside vacation town when her investigation leads her to interview carnival cleaner Amber Gordon. For Kirsty and Amber, it's the first time they've seen each other since that dark day so many years ago.
-
-
I didn't want to like these girls...
- By Lesley on 08-30-13
By: Alex Marwood
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Boy Swallows Universe
- A Novel
- By: Trent Dalton
- Narrated by: Stig Wemyss
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eli Bell’s life is complicated. His father is lost, his mother is in jail, and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The most steadfast adult in Eli’s life is Slim - a notorious felon and national record holder for successful prison escapes - who watches over Eli and August, his silent genius of an older brother. Exiled far from the rest of the world in Darra, this 12-year-old boy with an old soul and an adult mind is trying to follow his heart, learn what it takes to be a good man, and train for a glamorous career in journalism. But life insists on throwing obstacles in Eli’s path.
-
-
A beautiful adventure both on paper and in audio
- By David on 06-17-20
By: Trent Dalton
-
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Emmie Lang
- Narrated by: Piper Goodeve, Peter Berkrot, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stopping a tornado was the first of many strange events that seem to follow Weylyn from town to town, although he doesn't like to take credit. As amazing as these powers may appear, they tend to manifest themselves at inopportune times and places. From freak storms to trees that appear to grow over night, Weylyn's unique abilities are a curiosity at best and at worst, a danger to himself and the woman he loves. But Mary doesn't care.
-
-
An Accidental Wonder!
- By Brandy Pendergrass on 02-16-18
By: Ruth Emmie Lang
-
Fragile Things
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marvelous creations, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his entertaining (and dark) sense of humor.
-
-
Perhaps a different format?
- By Karen on 11-03-10
By: Neil Gaiman
-
Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
-
-
Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
A Man's Got to Have a Hobby
- Long Summers with my Dad
- By: William McInnes
- Narrated by: William McInnes
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William McInnes' best-selling memoir, A Man's Got to Have a Hobby, takes us back to the long summer holidays of the 1960s and '70s and the last of the baby-boomer childhoods. William narrates with humour and affection about his family and especially his mum and dad, who talked to the TV set and enjoyed life in their house near the bay. William McInnes is a talented writer and a natural storyteller.
-
-
Wonderful story
- By Dodie on 08-05-22
By: William McInnes
-
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Bianca Amato
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even a life on the untamed plains of Africa can't prepare Wilhelmina for the wilds of an English boarding school in this lovely and lyrical novel from the author of Rooftoppers, which Booklist called "a glorious adventure". Wilhelmina Silver's world is golden. Living half-wild on an African farm with her horse, her monkey, and her best friend, every day is beautiful. But when her home is sold and Will is sent away to boarding school in England, the world becomes impossibly difficult.
-
-
Wonderful!
- By Clayton on 10-11-24
-
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Joy Osmanski, Kaleo Griffith, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.
-
-
Stylish modern magic realism
- By Ryan on 04-10-13
By: Karen Russell
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
Now and in the Hour of Our Death
- By: Patrick Taylor
- Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Patrick Taylor’s first novel of the Irish Troubles, Pray for Us Sinners, introduced us to Provisional IRA bombmaker Davy MacCutcheon and the love of his life, Fiona Kavanagh. Davy planned to leave the Provos after one final mission. But the deadly mission backfired, and Davy ended up in prison. Six years later, in Now and in the Hour of Our Death, Fiona Kavanagh has found sanctuary in Vancouver, Canada. But news of a breakout at the Maze prison brings back memories she thought she’d left behind.
-
-
The Perfect End of a Great Epic
- By J. Lindsey on 03-01-15
By: Patrick Taylor
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Utopia Avenue
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?
-
-
1960s Nostalgia Served David Mitchell-Style.
- By Nick O. on 07-20-20
By: David Mitchell
-
Slade House
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you'll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't. Every nine years, the house's residents - an odd brother and sister - extend a unique invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it's already too late....
-
-
Grief is an amputation
- By Darwin8u on 10-29-15
By: David Mitchell
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jonathan Aris, Paula Wilcox
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1799, the artificial island of Dejima lies in Nagasaki Harbor as Japan’s outpost for the Dutch East Indies Company. There, Jacob de Zoet has come to make a fortune large enough to return to Holland and marry the woman he loves.
-
-
Good But Uneven
- By Trustme on 07-28-10
By: David Mitchell
-
Number9Dream
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses - through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck - a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer.
-
-
Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé
- By Darwin8u on 06-03-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Unruly
- The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: David Mitchell
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects’ destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits.
-
-
Hugely Entertaining (If You Like English History)
- By Jean Ogg on 10-09-23
By: David Mitchell
-
Utopia Avenue
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968. David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?
-
-
1960s Nostalgia Served David Mitchell-Style.
- By Nick O. on 07-20-20
By: David Mitchell
-
Slade House
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you'll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't. Every nine years, the house's residents - an odd brother and sister - extend a unique invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it's already too late....
-
-
Grief is an amputation
- By Darwin8u on 10-29-15
By: David Mitchell
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jonathan Aris, Paula Wilcox
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1799, the artificial island of Dejima lies in Nagasaki Harbor as Japan’s outpost for the Dutch East Indies Company. There, Jacob de Zoet has come to make a fortune large enough to return to Holland and marry the woman he loves.
-
-
Good But Uneven
- By Trustme on 07-28-10
By: David Mitchell
-
Number9Dream
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses - through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck - a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer.
-
-
Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé
- By Darwin8u on 06-03-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Unruly
- The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: David Mitchell
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects’ destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits.
-
-
Hugely Entertaining (If You Like English History)
- By Jean Ogg on 10-09-23
By: David Mitchell
-
Dishonesty Is the Second-Best Policy
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: David Mitchell
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Mitchell’s 2014 best seller Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse must really have made people think - because everything’s got worse. We’ve gone from UKIP surge to Brexit shambles, from horsemeat in lasagne to Donald Trump in the White House, from Woolworths going under to all the other shops going under. It’s probably socially irresponsible even to try to cheer up.
-
-
Meant for UK listeners
- By Maggie May on 11-19-19
By: David Mitchell
-
Ghostwritten
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: William Rycroft
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters - a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York - hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact.
-
-
An Embryonic Version of Cloud Atlas
- By Darwin8u on 05-29-13
By: David Mitchell
-
Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: David Mitchell
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why is every film or tv programme a sequel or a remake? Why are people so f***ing hung up about swearing? Why do the asterisks in that sentence make it okay? Why do so many people want to stop other people doing things, and how can they be stopped from stopping them? These and many other questions trouble David Mitchell. Join him on a tour of the absurdities of modern life - from Ryanair to Richard III, Downton Abbey to phone etiquette, UKIP to hot dogs made of cats.
-
-
Good Book: Wrong Milieu
- By scott on 09-04-19
By: David Mitchell
-
Cloud Atlas
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter....
-
-
thoroughly enjoyed
- By Elizabeth on 01-05-08
By: David Mitchell
-
Paddy Clarke Ha-Ha-Ha
- By: Roddy Doyle
- Narrated by: Aiden Gillen
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Patrick Clarke is a 10-year-old boy trying to make sense of his world. He is confused. His Ma and Da fight too much. School seems like a joke. And love, though it has a good reputation, seems pretty cruel. Paddy sees everything, but has trouble understanding it all. His story is an exuberant romp through the triumphs, indignities, and troublemaking detours of an Irish childhood.
-
-
wrong order
- By Yuliya Melnyk on 01-31-16
By: Roddy Doyle
-
Prophet Song
- By: Paul Lynch
- Narrated by: Gerry O'Brien
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother of four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.
-
-
Painfully powerful Tale.
- By Tom on 01-30-24
By: Paul Lynch
What listeners say about Black Swan Green
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Leslie
- 11-09-14
Great intro to Mitchell's world: Black Swan Green
Any additional comments?
Five stars to David Mitchell's unrelentingly real portrayal of one boy's 13th year. Jason Taylor is disturbed, eloquent, sweet, bawdy (in a 13 year old kind of way), unintuitive and unable to be anyone but himself. That last part is the trouble: no one accepts a 13-year-old who is true to himself, so he gets beat up on a regular basis. He has a rough time of it--an unrelenting stammer, a highly developed intellect which does not usually work in his favor, and a vicious internal life--he names his alter egos the Unborn Twin, Hangman and Maggot. But his talent for language (I know, ironic) and the picaresque episodes with unexpected allies put him in the driver's seat for the bildungsroman which is 8th grade. He emerges victorious, to take the challenges of 9th grade on--whether he wants to or not.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dan SB
- 01-26-13
You say Tomato
Captures life in 1980's middle England perfectly, disturbingly realistic depictions of small village & comprehensive school drudgery.
A subtle coming of age story with one drawback, the narration.
If the lead character of a novel is a 13 year old boy please audible, pretty please hire an English actor.
The pronunciation of vowel sounds by this narrator are incredibly jarring. Pretty clearly an American doing an English accent and not all that badly EXCEPT for all of his vowel sounds!
Not being English also leads to the narrator woefully mispronouncing place names and butchering regional accents that are scattered throughout the book.
The narrators rhythm and acting skills are really quite good but he shouldn't be reading English characters without some guidance. Easier just to hire a Brit in the future, PLEASE!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Mark
- 06-08-10
Not Amazing
I got this book because I recently met Kirby Heyborne and wanted to hear his narration. He did a awesome job but the book was very slow. The author didn't seem to finish what was going sometimes and would just jump a few months ahead in the story. Over all it is a just a ok book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Sammy J
- 06-02-06
Clear, gripping prose
Just a really great story and easier to follow than Mitchell's other work- Could Atlas. Of the two, I preferred this one, although both are beautifully written. On the surface the story appears straightforeward, but then makes strange turns. I generally dislike literal novels and prefer immersive fantasy, but this was some of both.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ryan
- 10-30-11
Touching, authentic portrayal of adolescence
Not as powerful as Mitchell's superb Cloud Atlas, but an authentic portrayal of adolescence, set in early 1980s England. The book's protagonist, Jason Taylor, is a quiet, uncertain boy who struggles with a stutter. Through his much more even inner voice, Mitchell recreates with unflinching honesty all the joys and terrors of adolescence. Jason maintains a precarious hold near the bottom of the school social ladder, endures relentless torment from bullies, and watches his parents' marriage unravel month by month. The bullies are especially effective characters, as Mitchell makes sure they're just as bad as adult readers have tried to forget they were, and just as overpowering in their cruelty.
But, it's not all trial: there's friendship, first love, and the eventual turning point of hard-won confidence and social acceptance. Nor does Mitchell skimp on all the ordinary details of being 13 -- classes, walks in the woods, encounters with neighbors, crushes on girls, conversations at the family dinner, accidentally seeing one's father drunk and naked -- it's really these moments, experienced intimately through a 13 year old point of view, that drive the book.
Though not to the same degree as Cloud Atlas, there are a few touches of the fanciful. In the course of the novel, Jason meets several oddball characters who seem at least as much like literary figures as real people. Their presence, though not crucial to the story, challenges, in a winking way, both Jason's and the reader's politely restrained attitudes about life. One character, in fact, is an aged version of someone who appears in Cloud Atlas.
The novel has a very episodic structure, with the larger plot arc unfolding at a leisurely pace, and a narrative that consists, for the first three quarters of so, of small daily events that feed Jason's inner life, rather than drastically altering the course of his outer one. But this inner life and its reflections are really the point of the book, and patient readers will find much to like (especially the 1980s British slang) in Mitchell's eyes-open portrait of an age, time, and place. As with Cloud Atlas, Mitchell shows a talent for taking simple, familiar scenes and giving them an elusive air of meaning above the scene's own significance.
Side note: Some readers have complained that Jason sounds a little too eloquent to be a 13 year old. Yeah, I agree that no 13 year old talks like him, but I don't think it was so much Mitchell's intent to capture what a 13 year old *says* as it was to capture how one *thinks*. Sometimes a writer has to take a few creative liberties to get inside someone's head. Our own voices are always more "adult" in there, anyway.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Cranberry
- 07-17-06
Very, very good
This is an enjoyable audiobook. Very easy to listen to, excellent narration. We've all been in similar situations to those encountered by Jason. We can all identify.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ryan F. Quadri
- 04-15-18
Delightful
I was initially worried that this would end up being just another story of a precocious teenage boy by an author who is a little too in love with his own cleverness. Well, maybe it is that, but I found the language delightful. And the narrator is a great match for the text.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Matthew
- 09-28-12
LOVED this book
I had just read this book six months earlier, but when I heard the audio sample wanted to buy it and listen to it anyway. They've chosen the ideal reader for this book: his accent is perfect, and his interpretation of the text and the characters is very sensitive. The book is a brilliant semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story by an author whose range is very impressive (from nightmarish futurism to historical fiction and plenty in between). This one is a realistic first-person narrative about a kid with a stammer and the usual tween anxieties. There's a full and convincing cast of secondary characters. The atmosphere is one of nostalgia for early 80s pop culture and sadness about the effects of an unhappy marriage; yet it is lightened by the humor and the fabulations of its bright 13 year old narrator. I'm sure that I'll listen to this again.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rose S
- 05-01-16
a peak inside the mind of a bright but bullied boy
Jason is brilliant but different. a dangerous combination at age 13 but he also stammers. How he deals with the resultant bullying and lifes many roadblocks hints at his future greatness.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Angie
- 06-28-06
Captivating
I absolutly loved this book and this author. I also have recently listen to Cloud Atlas. I love the voice of the character,13 year old Jason Taylor. He is a middle tier cool kid. This book is a funny, sensative and often heartbreaking look at how difficult it is to be a 13 year old boy and navigate your place in the food chain of boys in school, the mysterious draw of girls, world politics and family problems. The narrator is brillant. I couldn't stop listening because of his magical voice. He effortlessly breaths life into all of the characters in the book. I can't wait to read/listen to more by this author and I look to hearing more from this narrator.
I can't say enough good things about this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
10 people found this helpful