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Narrated by:
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Malcolm Hillgartner
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By:
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Ellen Ullman
About this listen
San Francisco, 1970s. Free love has given way to radical feminism, psychedelic ecstasy to hard-edged gloom. The Zodiac Killer stalks the streets. A disgraced professor takes a downtown office to plot his return. But the walls are thin, and he’s distracted by voices from next door—his neighbor is a psychologist, and one of her patients dislikes the hum of the white-noise machine. And so he begins to hear about the patient’s troubles with her female lover, her conflicts with her adoptive WASP family, and her quest to track down her birth mother.
The professor is enraptured. And the further he is pulled into the patient’s recounting of her dramas—and the most profound questions of her own identity—the more he needs the story to move forward. The patient’s questions about her birth family have led her to a Catholic charity that trafficked freshly baptized orphans out of Germany after World War II. But confronted with this new self—"I have no idea what it means to say "I'm a Jew'"—the patient finds her search stalled.
Armed with the few details he’s gleaned, the professor takes up the quest and quickly finds the patient’s mother in records from a German displaced-persons camp. But he can’t let on that he’s been eavesdropping, so he mocks up a reply from an adoption agency the patient has contacted and drops it in the mail. Through the wall, he hears how his dear patient is energized by the news, and so is he. He unearths more clues and invests more and more in this secret, fraught, triangular relationship: himself, the patient, and her therapist, who is herself German. His research leads them deep into the history of displaced-persons camps, of postwar Zionism, and—most troubling of all—of the Nazi Lebensborn program.
With ferocious intelligence and an enthralling, magnetic prose, Ellen Ullman weaves a dark and brilliant, intensely personal novel that feels as big and timeless as it is sharp and timely. It is an ambitious work that establishes her as a major writer.
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Catalina, grand-daughter of Spanish refugees, is a disciplined student with the School of the Paris Opera Ballet. Little gets inthe way of her career until the visit of an otherworldly being, who leaves her a mysterious pair of golden earrings. Given a quest, Catalina realises she must explore her own Spanish heritage and makes the connection between the visitor and ‘La Rusa’, a young Andalusian flamenco star. La Rusa died in exile in Paris in 1952, her death ruled as suicide. But as Catalina begins to discover, there were those in the community, who had good reason for wanting La Rusa dead.
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Fabulous story
- By Paddington on 10-19-12
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Margot
- By: Jillian Cantor
- Narrated by: Rachel Botchan
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Anne Frank has long been a symbol of bravery and hope, but there were two sisters hidden in the annex, two young Jewish girls, one a cultural icon made famous by her published diary and the other, nearly forgotten. In the spring of 1959, The Diary of Anne Frank has just come to the silver screen to great acclaim, and a young woman named Margie Franklin is working in Philadelphia as a secretary at a Jewish law firm. On the surface she lives a quiet life, but Margie has a secret: a life she once lived, a past and a religion she has denied, and a family and a country she left behind.
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Had higher hopes for this intriguing story...
- By Amy D. Caldwell on 11-21-14
By: Jillian Cantor
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The Voice of the Night with Short Story, "Silence"
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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No one could understand why Colin and Roy were best friends. Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was fascinated by Roy - and Roy was fascinated by death. Then one day, Roy asked his timid friend: “You ever killed anything?” From that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine - and too irresistible to stop.
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can not believe dean koontz wrote this book
- By Anonymous User on 10-05-21
By: Dean Koontz
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In Malice, Quite Close
- By: Brandi Lynn Ryder
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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French ex-pat Tristan Mourault is the wealthy, urbane heir to a world-renowned collection of art - and an insatiable voyeur enamored with Karen Miller, a 15-year-old from a working-class family in San Francisco. Deciding he must 'rescue' Karen from her unhappy circumstances, Tristan kidnaps her and stages her death to mask his true crime.
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In malice,Quite close
- By Wendy on 09-06-11
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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Duet
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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From the London pop scene, to the opera stages of Europe; from a tiny Greek island, to a stifling manor house full of secrets and deceptions; from the sun-drenched Queensland coast, to the silent outback; Angela and Ellie are two women both looking for something. One in search of her identity and her memory; the other in search of the love that she had and lost; theirs is a duet whose last note will not be sung until the heart-stopping climax, when a shadow from the past returns to claim them both.
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Gosh that was a great story!
- By Anonymous User on 06-10-09
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Russian Winter
- A Novel
- By: Daphne Kalotay
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In Russian Winter, the beautiful debut novel by critically acclaimed writer Daphne Kalotay, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalinist Russia. Called “tender, passionate, and moving” by Jenna Blum, the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us, Russian Winter is a perfect choice for fans of the novels of Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), and Ian McEwan (Atonement).
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Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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The Keep
- The Adversary Cycle, Book 1
- By: F. Paul Wilson
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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"Something is murdering my men." Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore - who just happens to be Jewish - to shed some light on the mysterious happenings.
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At long last, The classic horror novel on Audible
- By Shieldslinger on 07-22-20
By: F. Paul Wilson
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
What listeners say about By Blood
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michal A. Joyner
- 04-18-12
Hang in for the 2nd half
Very interesting read. I almost quit several times through the first half, but I'm glad I stuck with it as the ending was powerful. This is an excellent exploration for everyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to have different parents.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jennifer
- 02-25-13
Boring
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
A plot that was readily discernible would probably improve the rating of this listen. It was difficult determining the motive of the main character; why the other characters were pursuing their respective goals. It was an oblique story.
What do you think your next listen will be?
I suspect my next listen will be another mystery, suspense or thriller.
Did the narration match the pace of the story?
The narrator was limited by the material he was provided.
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- Pamela Harvey
- 01-21-13
Story Lurches to a Stop, Leaving No Skid Marks
This book has an interesting premise, a conventional story arc (displaced persons after WWII) with an unconventional viewpoint, and has all the ingredients for a page-turning identity search. I've only given it a 4, so I must have kept reading for SOME reason...
However, since most of the characters are women, perhaps it could have been more dramatic if the professor/voyeur was a male voice, since he is a male character in the story.
In my opinion, the ending or resolution was abrupt and abortive, with no acknowledgement of the academic/voyeur's ends-justify-the-means success. There was no sense of "closure" - whatever that may mean right now - in "The Patient" letting go of her birth mother and others (might be spoiling if I get more specific). The voyeuristic and scamming techniques used by the academic who listened to the entire course of the therapy could be considered inappropriate, illegal, breach of confidentiality etc. but his results were successful. So it's a mixed bag.
Characters were well-drawn and thorough, without any paper doll cutouts, so I was interested in the minor and background characters as well as the three main players.
I just found myself wishing for more of a conclusive resolution. I am not a big fan of endings - I think what matters is the process, not how it all turns out, but it seemed that this story simply stopped, and whatever literary and plot arc energy that was generated by the search simply dissipated into the wind.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Amy
- 09-20-12
creative and different
Would you consider the audio edition of By Blood to be better than the print version?
not really though well read
i liked the accents
What other book might you compare By Blood to and why?
TV- In Therapy
What does Malcolm Hillgartner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Good grasp of language
If you could rename By Blood, what would you call it?
Admittedly not a great name
I'd have to think about it!
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- joanilla45
- 07-24-12
Plodding, anachronistic, and poorly read
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
What a dreadfully dull read. All the characters essentially had the same (Jane Austen era) narration style, and it made absolutely no sense at all. No "twist" in the second half (as some other reviewer suggested, and I blame that reviewer for time wasted in getting through this tripe), and no resolution. I can only assume that Ullman grew as bored with her story as the rest of us did.
Has By Blood turned you off from other books in this genre?
What "genre" is this? Is the genre "Too lazy to actually research how people lived in the 1970s, so basically set in the 1990s plus a few historical plot devices that require the story to be set in the 1970s"? Maybe some of these things (the N-Judah as night owl bus, the answering machine, mail taking four days within San Francisco) weren't 100% impossible, but so many anachronistic elements were highly implausible.
Would you be willing to try another one of Malcolm Hillgartner’s performances?
And what a terrible reader. Or terrible audio-editor. Really, did no one think to tell him that "analysand" is pronounced "anALlisand" rather than the ridiculous and incorrect "anaLIEsand"? Or the more forgivable but no less wrong pronounciation of the German school, "Gymnasium," as "jimNAHsium" (like American exercise) rather than "gimNASium"?
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Boring, boring, and unending. I will never rely on an Audible review again, particularly if the first half hour is as bad as this one.
Any additional comments?
I want my money back.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Kali
- 12-01-12
Top book of 2012 - dark, frantic, and fun.
By Blood by Ellen Ullman rates very high on my top 10 list for 2012. Quick and craggy, rough and honest in a way only the very best noir dares to be, this paranoid narrative takes us through that foggy period in San Francisco's history when the Zodiac killer was running loose and young men back from Vietnam were laying drunk in the streets.
From this dark time springs a dark tale - a man looking to escape troubles in distant cities overhears an intimate discussion in the therapist's office next to him and is drawn in to a tale of woe he is never meant to hear. And we, the Audible listeners, are drawn in with him. Lines divide as we all eavesdrop on this tale within a tale, and the picture blurs as we realize as the listener our narrator may be a bit short of a full deck. Boundaries are crossed, tensions are high, mysteries are developed and not always answered, scenes are set perfectly, and a wonderful listening experience is created in this book.
Malcolm Hillgartner's narration is perfect for By Blood. He manages, while still sounding pleasant to the ears, to also portray someone slightly unhinged with his tone and this perfectly portrays the words of the story's narrator. Just listening to him call out each chapter with a real intensity was a pleasure. Truly an A+.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Pam
- 02-17-13
Wanted to listen in one sitting
I didn't want to stop listening to this book, because I wanted to find out what happened. I became intensely involved in the lives of the characters, and felt like I learned new aspects of World War II as well.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Beth Anne
- 12-31-12
Creepy, intriguing story with history & mystery!
This book was a whole slew of crazy, creepy, intrigue. I loved every second of reading it.
The narrator was so shady. He starts off this normal guy...and as it all unfolds...I got more and more freaked out by him. I loved how he described the crows that haunted him. I thought he was so scary the more and more involved he became in the "patient's" story.
The historical aspect of the novel...the whole story about the patient and her family and WW2...was sad and rich and heavy. At times i found myself as engrossed as the narrator.
This novel was fantastic. I love the feeling I got while reading it. Like in a way I was as creepy as the guy listening in. Because I began to almost root for him to get more involved. I wanted the patient to find the truth, too.
I also liked Malcolm Hillgartner's reading of this book.
So so so good.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Teresa Lukey
- 04-29-12
Finding birth parents doesn't guarantee a happy en
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, especially to anyone who has been adopted or is interested in knowing more about incidents that occurred to Jewish women during the Nazi occupation of Germany.
Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?
The story starts slowly, but has you completely engaged by books end. Some people may not like the ending, due to a few loose ends, but I did not feel a need to know more.
Have you listened to any of Malcolm Hillgartner’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Reamde-that was a 5 out of 5 star rating for me as well.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I was very emotional at the explanations of Bergen Belsen.
Any additional comments?
By Blood is sort of a play off the main themes in this book. Are we related by blood? Can you be Jewish by blood? In this book a 30-ish woman, whose name remains unknown, knows she is adopted and seeks out her mother. To her surprise, she finds out her mother is Jewish and does not have any idea what to make of it. Here within these pages lies a wonderful story of a daughter finding her birth mother and a disturbing story of what her mother endured as a Jewish girl during the Nazi-reign.
I found this story cleverly constructed with the use a "the professor", who has moved in to the room next to a therapists office after being put on some sort of leave from his school after being found to have a relationship with a student. The professor soon realizes he is next door to the therapist and eavesdrops on session between the therapist and, what he calls, "his patient", who happens to be the 30-ish girl previously mention. He becomes interested in her story when he finds out she is adopted and quietly listens in on each session.
The professor is rather obsessive and uses his credentials to seek out information that leads the patient to find her mother. The patient, nor the therapist, has no idea their sessions are being overheard by the professor, but the professor is cleaver and works out a way to send her the information he unearths, using a false name.
The patient eventually goes to meet her birth mother and learns the atrocities she endured as a Jewish girl in Berlin during the 40's. The patients birth mother was first moved to a Lebensborn, a Nazi-run program where children with Aryan characteristics where "bred", then given away to deserving SS families. After, the patients mother is found out to be Jewish, even though she has Aryan characteristics, she is moved to a Concentration Camp at Bergen Belsen, where she was eventually liberated.
As the story moves along, the POV really shifts from the professor to the patient. At the end of the story, the fact that the professor was even a part of the story did not matter any longer, the focus was completely on the patient. Although, some people may feel a desire to know what happened to the professor, I found myself completely focused in the patient.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Laura
- 03-11-13
by boring
What disappointed you about By Blood?
The story was boring. The plot was poor.
What do you think your next listen will be?
the life of pi
How did the narrator detract from the book?
I just didn't buy into his interest in the main character.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
Not for me.
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