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Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
Bluebeard, published in 1987, is Vonnegut's meditation on art, artists, surrealism, and disaster.
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life, which are heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence. Vonnegut's intention here is not so much satirical (although the contemporary art scene would be easy enough to deconstruct), nor is it documentary (although Karabekian does carry elements of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). Instead Vonnegut is using art for the same purpose he used science fiction clichés in Slaughterhouse-Five: as a filter through which he can illuminate the savagery, cruelty, and essentially comic misdirection of human existence.
Listeners will recognize familiar Vonnegut character types and archetypes as they drift in and out through the background; meanwhile Karabekian, betrayed and betrayer, sinks through a bottomless haze of recollection. Like most of Vonnegut's late works, this is both science fiction and cruel, contemporary realism at once, using science fiction as metaphor for human damage as well as failure to perceive.
Listeners will find that Vonnegut's protagonists can never really clarify for us whether they are ultimately unwitting victims or simple barbarians, leaving it up to the listener to determine in which genre this audiobook really fits, if any at all.
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- Narrated by: Eric Conger
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical - he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly.
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More fun with Gruber
- By IVAL on 02-06-13
By: Michael Gruber
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Young Hearts Crying
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
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BUtterfield 8
- By: John O'Hara, Lorin Stein - introduction
- Narrated by: Gretchen Mol
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterpiece of American fiction and a best seller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy.
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Wildly Uneven
- By David P on 08-27-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
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The Reluctant Communist
- My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea
- By: Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Fredrick
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick).
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Excellent history and human story
- By Anonymous User on 09-16-21
By: Charles Robert Jenkins, and others
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Appointment in Samarra
- Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
- By: John O'Hara, Charles McGrath - introduction
- Narrated by: Christian Camargo
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
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Quite good, but not a classic
- By Michael on 04-25-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
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The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
- By: Sloan Wilson
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race - what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out.
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great read/listen
- By BBJ on 09-26-16
By: Sloan Wilson
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Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
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Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
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Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
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More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
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A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
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Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
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a fool and his self respect are soon parted
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Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
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Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
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If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
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Mother Night
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“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Galapagos
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Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
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The survival of the human race is a total bore!
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a fool and his self respect are soon parted
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Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth.
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If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
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Mother Night
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American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
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“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
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The survival of the human race is a total bore!
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Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Welcome to the Monkey House
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Sirens of Titan
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The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
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Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Timequake
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According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Cat's Cradle
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
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KV at his best.
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Slapstick
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- Unabridged
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Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
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Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Pity the Reader
- On Writing with Style
- By: Kurt Vonnegut, Suzanne McConnell
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.
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Unlistenable
- By Grant Swalwell on 01-06-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut, and others
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Slaughterhouse-Five
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- Narrated by: James Franco
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- Unabridged
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Palm Sunday
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- Unabridged
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In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
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Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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A Man Without a Country
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the greatest minds in American writing, Kurt Vonnegut shares his often hilarious and always insightful reflections on America, art, politics and life in general. No matter the subject, Vonnegut will have you considering perspectives you may never have regarded. On the creative process: "If you want to really hurt your parents...the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding."
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Good but uneven collection of essays
- By J. S. Koehler on 01-28-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Armageddon in Retrospect
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Rip Torn
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best seller from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five—a “gripping” posthumous collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s previously unpublished work on the subject of war and peace. A fitting tribute to a literary legend and a profoundly humane humorist, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of 12 previously unpublished writings. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor and outraged moral sense.
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Vonnegut should get the nobel peace prize
- By CHARLES on 05-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
What listeners say about Bluebeard
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- guerillaw
- 06-12-22
Underrated great work
As a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan I was late to this book because it always appears quite low on any “best of“ list.
I am writing this review to hopefully encourage others coming from a similar place, perhaps feeling like they don’t need to read “another Vonnegut“ book if it’s not as good as the others.
Well I certainly cannot speak to the motivations of people who made those lists it strikes me that the feminine and feminist points of view central to this book contributed to its being underrated by critics.
All of the classic Vonnegut characteristics are here, wonderful dialogue, imaginative situations, biding social critique, and historical context. In addition we get one of the most satisfying endings to any Vonnegut book – and I have read all but three of them.
Whether you are a Vonnegut fan wondering if you should read just one more or someone new to his work this book is highly recommended and enjoyable. Even more so in these modern times when, thankfully, a feminist point of you is being taken more seriously in terms of societal consequences.
Highly recommended.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jen Si
- 12-18-19
A tale of painting and war and one big secret
Vonnegut is in top form in this tale of a painter whose secret barn contains a mysterious project he will tell no one about. Coaxed by a roommate to write his autobiography, we read his life story as he types it, with frequent interjections of current events--a clever pacing technique that I quite enjoyed.
The title refers to the legend of Bluebeard, a man who tells every new wife that they can have the run of the mansion, as long as they do not look behind one certain door. Inevitably, the new wife looks behind the door and finds the bodies of his previous wives--who have looked behind the door. This short story is similar to the passion project (or is it nothing?) in the barn behind the protagonist's house.
Woven into the story is a surprising tale of how poorly women are treated throughout history, and particularly during war, that I found very moving.
Nicely paced and well narrated, I enjoyed this book very much and definitely recommend it.
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- Joseph
- 07-20-21
If you love Vonnegut
Another great Vonnegut work delving into what makes us tick as human beings. He always seems to find the real.
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- David Christensen
- 03-14-16
A great story of a fractured soul.
Was a good story of a man who could not come to terms with who he is. its not the words spoken by which he is defined as much as he attempted to make him self so shallow it was the background of a man who opened his home and his life to a cast of strangers over time his wanting to not care but none the less caring enough to shelter, feed, and look after others. being so terribly humble in thinking his failure in art was who he is and not seeing the great love of human that he is. his final painting giving homage to all those from all walks of life finding a home in his happy valley. that despite what they were he loved them all enough to paint them with story and all.
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- Robert
- 01-30-16
My first Kurt Vonnegurt book
I've had this book on my "to read" list for so long that I forgot my motivation. I know that Kurt Vonnegurt is a famous author, but I had no idea of what to expect. It was a good story, and I was only disappointed by the fact that I found out that many of his books are loosely tied together, and this is one of his later books. Still it was weird reading an autobiography of a fictional person. Yet, when you think about it, all fictions are somewhat autobiographical in a way.
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- Dale Joyner
- 08-12-20
Grew on me
At first I was uncomfortable with this book. As it and I progressed, a change happened and I began to like it. In the end, I think it’s one of the best books Kurt did. I really enjoyed it. It lingered with me.....a long while. And so it goes.
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- Jessica
- 08-09-21
Perfect narrator
This narrator should do every vonnegut book. He nailed it. The book is excellent too.
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- Barnaby
- 08-07-17
Masterful
A profoundly american experience of wit and solidarity with the world at large, history at large. The best critique of mid century art on record.
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- Hannah
- 01-20-18
A short, sad, but beautiful narrative
A gorgeous exploration into the definition of failure and success. Told from the point of view of a self-titled failure.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-19-18
One of the best narrator performances
Pretty standard Vonnegut (fun, provocative, beautifully written, etc) but I felt that it didn't come together in the end. But wow the narrator was amazing, he did a phenomenal job conveying emotion and tone, and especially with all sorts of subtle accents.
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