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Do Not Say We Have Nothing
- Narrated by: Angela Lin
- Length: 20 hrs and 11 mins
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Publisher's summary
Madeleine Thien's new novel is breathtaking in scope and ambition, even as it is hauntingly intimate. With the ease and skill of a master storyteller, Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations - those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-20th century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century. With exquisite writing sharpened by a surprising vein of wit and sly humor, Thien has crafted unforgettable characters who are by turns flinty and headstrong, dreamy and tender, foolish and wise.
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- By: Melanie Benjamin, Amanda Hodgkinson, Pam Jenoff, and others
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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Grand Central: Memories
- By ZacharyKindle Customer on 05-03-17
By: Melanie Benjamin, and others
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The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
- A Novel
- By: Jan-Philipp Sendker
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be - until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the listener’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.
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Basic Story Interesting, But...
- By Monica on 06-04-13
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The Distant Hours
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
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Right Mood At The Right Time
- By Simone on 11-13-12
By: Kate Morton
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The Lost Wife
- A Novel
- By: Alyson Richman
- Narrated by: George Guidall, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In pre-war Prague, the dreams of two young lovers are shattered when they are separated by the Nazi invasion. Then, decades later, thousands of miles away in New York, there's an inescapable glance of recognition between two strangers. Providence is giving Lenka and Josef one more chance. From the glamorous ease of life in Prague before the Occupation, to the horrors of Nazi Europe, The Lost Wife explores the power of first love, the resilience of the human spirit, and the strength of memory.
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Love, Strength & Survival
- By Sara on 01-27-14
By: Alyson Richman
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
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Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
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The Gods of Tango
- A Novel
- By: Carolina De Robertis
- Narrated by: Carolina De Robertis
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, carrying only a small trunk and her father's cherished violin, leaves her Italian village for a new home, and a new husband, in Argentina. Arriving in Buenos Aires, she discovers that he has been killed, but she remains: living in a tenement, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. Still, she is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets.
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A rousing tale
- By Jean on 07-24-15
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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Diamond Head
- A Novel
- By: Cecily Wong
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Samantha Chen, Angela Lin, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
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Story
Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
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.
- By Gina on 09-06-15
By: Cecily Wong
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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Women of the Silk
- A Novel
- By: Gail Tsukiyama
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In Women of the Silk, Gail Tsukiyama takes listeners back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women forge a sisterhood amid the reeling machines that reverberate and clamor in a vast silk factory from dawn to dusk. Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams, and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own.
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Another beautiful historical fiction!
- By T. Hoyt on 09-28-24
By: Gail Tsukiyama
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Great historical account of Jimi!
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The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
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the oldies are still great
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OK but...
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An 'adjectival' masterpiece of 'effing' prose.
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Henri Skinner is a hardened ex-war reporter on the run from his past. On his way to see his son, Sam, for the first time in years, Henri steps into the road without looking and collides with oncoming traffic. He is rushed to a nearby hospital, where he floats, comatose, between dreams, reliving the fairy tales of his childhood and the secrets that made him run away in the first place. After the accident, Sam - a 13-year-old synesthete with an IQ of 144 and an appetite for science fiction - waits by his father’s bedside every day.
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Fascinating and mind-blowing!
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Guidebook to Murder
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In the gentle coastal town of South Cove, California, all Jill Gardner wants is to keep her store - Coffee, Books, and More - open and running. So why is she caught up in the business of murder? When Jill's elderly friend Miss Emily calls in a fit of pique, she already knows that the city council is trying to force Emily to sell her dilapidated old house. But Emily's gumption goes for naught when she dies unexpectedly and leaves the house to Jill, along with all of her problems...and her enemies.
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Very Whiny and Slow
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What listeners say about Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-13-17
Devastating and complex
Would you consider the audio edition of Do Not Say We Have Nothing to be better than the print version?
I had a conversation with a friend who read the book. I had no idea how one could read it, given all the subtleties of the Chinese language that were brilliantly narrated. My friend had no idea how one could listen to it, because it was such a complicated story.
Would you be willing to try another book from Madeleine Thien? Why or why not?
I would possibly try a future book by this author, but not soon.
Which scene was your favorite?
There was a beautiful scene of a noodle-selling woman who offered hungry student protesters something to eat for free. It was all she had to offer. The tenderness of the exchange and conversation was uplifting in the midst of a confrontation that lacked humanity and decency.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I was struck by the random violence and targeted violence of mobs and political movements that care nothing and know nothing about the lives they destroy. Deep meaningful life is sacrificed for political ideologies and slogans that get repeated but no one really knows what they mean. The fear of being a thinking creative person in times of revolution was palpable. Thien's writing pulls the listener into the dread and danger of daily living without falling into graphic descriptions of violence.
Any additional comments?
I do have to admit, a lot of the long expositions and explanations of music, math and literature were lost on me. It was not an easy book to follow, but its subject matter and characters will stay with me.
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13 people found this helpful
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- mrsyor
- 12-01-17
Beautiful
Beautifully written. The language is so descriptive. Loved listening to this. It is like listening to a symphony.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Linda Muller
- 05-30-19
This should have won the 2016 Man Booker
It is one thing to read nonfiction and journalism about a tragic event. And it is quite another to read fiction based on it. The former, well, informs with the help of hindsight. But fiction, on the other hand, transports you into the world of story as it happens--and in so doing you empathize with the characters who lived and died thirty years ago when a government turned its own tanks upon their own people. If the Mandate of Heaven is a thing, then, surely, June, 4, 1989 heralds the day of its revocation.
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- Someone special
- 01-07-22
Incredible story, beautifully read
This is my new, all-time favorite book! So clever, so informative, so intricate, so sad. Beautifully read in a way I could never have if I had read it myself.
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- Anonymous User
- 06-14-19
Beautiful, enrapturing story
This books is incredible. The story beautifully interweaves many characters, places, time periods, and themes. It’s long, but so worth the listen. A truly moving story, and wonderful audio performance. All the stars.
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- Blythe
- 06-12-17
A sweeping story of China across generations
Any additional comments?
A sweeping epic that tells the story of two families from 1950s China to present day Canada. The perspective jumps around between many different members of the families, though two of the main characters are Marie and Ai-Ming, whose fathers' friendship connect the two families. Through the experiences of the families and through a fictional story that becomes closely woven into the family's self-identity, the reader gains an understanding of what life was like in China under Chairman Mao and the communist party, culminating in a first-person view of the student massacre in Tiananmen Square in the 90s.
The historical details appear to be accurate and well researched, and the characters are generally interesting although I didn't find any of them truly grabbed me on a personal level. I found this slow reading at times, and the frequent jumps of perspective and timeline got confusing and a bit annoying in places; really didn't feel as if it was necessary to jump around quite so much. I also found myself getting a little impatient with all the back-and-forth of the story, since you can tell from fairly early in that the book is going to culminate in Tiananmen Square, and keeps hinting at it, but takes ages and many detours to get there.
I'm sure this is a book that reveals more and more, and is more deeply appreciated, on subsequent rereadings. It deserves 4 stars on that merit. However, based on my personal enjoyment of it as pure entertainment value, 3 stars.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Deborah Connerty
- 02-26-17
Beautifully slow
The book takes sometime to draw you in and then you are deeply involved and emotionally connected to the characters. I cried often as I listened.
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1 person found this helpful
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- MOL
- 05-04-22
Window into life under Mao
The author gives us a peak into the world of everyday people as they navigate through political and cultural upheavals from Mao’s vision of his China. This ancient civilization has been grabbed and turned on its head many times over. Chinese society had not only been split, more shredded! It’s a study on how to remake and recreate.
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- Rich
- 06-13-18
20th Century China in a Russian Lit Motif
"One thing I have learned, dear Sparrow, is that light is never still and solid and so it is with love. Light can be split into many directions. Its nature is to break apart." --Comrade Glass Eye
'Where to begin with this review?' is an apt question for my writing of these notes for Thien's 2016 historical fiction novel, for continuous life cycles (in all their varieties) are one of 'Do Not Say's' main themes.
So many themes: music/silence, writing/composition/self-expression, Chinese history/government, freedom, identity, remorse, and the like. Thien weaves her characters into the major milestones of actual Chinese history (The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen 1989) a la Tolstoy, diving in and out of macro and micro details across a music conservatory and three generations of families.
I found 'Do Not Say' profoundly moving. I really had no idea about some of the horrors of 20th century China until now, which Thien brings to full color. While I haven't fully grasped how this book changed me yet (an increased appreciation of freedoms in the US for starters) I know it certainly changed--and will continue to change--me for the better. Angela Lin's narration was great; the print book has lots to enjoy as well (Chinese characters, jianpu musical notation, and the like). Pocket notes (tl;dr) below.
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- Jiang Kai: did what he needed to survive.
- Zhuli: stuck to her beliefs.
- Sparrow: caught in the middle.
- The drawer of glass eyes: it is better to see, or be seen?
- "The only life that matters is in your mind. The only truth is the one that lives invisibly, that waits even after you close the book. Silence, too, is a kind of music. Silence will last." --Zhuli
- "[Sparrow had] been thinking about the quality of sunshine, that is, how daylight wipes away the stars and the planets, making them invisible to human eyes. If one needed the darkness in order to see the heavens, might daylight be a form of blindness? Could it be that sound was also a form of deafness? If so, what was silence?"
- Jiang Kai's reaction to Ai-ming abandoning the phone call.
- Ai-ming's inability to process 1989.
- He Luting on the television: "Shame on you!"
- Zhuli's thoughts at the conservatory: "The present, Sparrow seemed to say, is all we have, yet it is the one thing we will never learn to hold in our hands."
- "I wondered: what happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?" --Jiang Kai
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- Carlin Meyer
- 11-25-20
another top of the list
Takes place largely during the cultural revolution in China. Perceptive, beautifully written, compelling, enlightening, another must read.
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