
Don't Be a Stranger
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Susan Minot
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By:
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Susan Minot
About this listen
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A mesmerizing new novel from the author of Evening: the story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life • A luminous story about erotic obsession, the hunger for intimacy, communication, and oblivion that will appeal to listeners of Miranda July's All Fours
“Minot exquisitely explores desire and denial, intimacy and illusion in a ravishing, haunting, and insightful tale of sexual ecstasy and emotional torment, integrity and creativity, self and motherhood.”—Booklist (starred review)
"Minot’s writing is like a diamond knife on ice.”—Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning author
Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his presence: On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed.
Don't Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.
©2024 Susan Minot (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972. Joan Didion, revealed at last… Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
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Critic reviews
"As she dependably has for some 35 years now, Minot once again uses her sharp fiction as a vehicle to explore female desire, staging a romantic collision between a divorced mother and a much younger musician. Rather than a book you 'can’t put down,' it’s one you might pause from precisely to prolong its mild suspense and poetic pleasures."—The New York Times Book Review
“Minot exquisitely explores desire and denial, intimacy and illusion in aravishing, haunting, and insightful tale of sexual ecstasy and emotional torment, integrity andcreativity, self and motherhood.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Spare and polished. . . . Minot is an elegant writer, her sentences and paragraphs stylishly cropped, her dialogue quotation mark-free, her epigraphs chosen from classic sources: Rilke, Emerson, Lao Tzu, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Rumi. In pellucid prose she captures each of the emotional states Ivy cycles through on the roller coaster of erotic fascination, delusion, bliss, mania, devastation—while also buffeted by the emotions and responsibilities of motherhood and of a career as a writer.”—Kirkus Reviews
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Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
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He Who Fights with Monsters 2
- A LitRPG Adventure (He Who Fights with Monsters, Book 2)
- By: Shirtaloon, Travis Deverell
- Narrated by: Heath Miller
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.
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Contrary to common reviews
- By Karen on 05-21-21
By: Shirtaloon, and others
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Starship Troopers
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.
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The definitive version!
- By Kristopher G. Hesson on 10-03-24
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Story
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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Brain Damage
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
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The House on the Water
- A Novella
- By: Margot Hunt
- Narrated by: Taylor Schilling
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Story
Every year, Caroline Reed takes a trip with her best friend, Esme Lamont. They’re usually accompanied by their spouses - but this year, everything’s changed. Esme has just gone through a bitter divorce, and Caroline's wondering if her own marriage is reaching its breaking point as she and her husband, John, cope with the discovery that their son has been abusing drugs. Still, the inseparable duo books a weeklong stay at a beach-front home in Shoreham, Florida, inviting Esme’s brother, Nick, and his new husband. After a blissful first night in the vacation home, tragedy strikes.
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Wonderful Story
- By David M. Wilcox on 12-04-20
By: Margot Hunt
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The Pearl and the Onion
- By: Brittany K. Allen
- Narrated by: Anna Chlumsky, Jasmine Cephas-Jones
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When our story begins, Julia Child is an eager but inexperienced codebreaker longing to prove herself in the male-dominated world of intelligence, and Josephine Baker is, well, Josephine Baker—a world-famous entertainer who is now leading a double life as a spy for the French Resistance. When a golden opportunity arises to infiltrate a high-stakes Nazi gala in Vichy France, Julia must put aside her by-the-book mentality to assist her unorthodox new partner.
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Excellent
- By Ticked Off on 03-30-25
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Evening
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After three marriages and five children, Ann Lord lies dying in an upstairs bedroom of a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What comes to her, eclipsing a stream of doctor's visits and friends stopping by and grown children overheard whispering from the next room, is a rush of memories from a weekend 40 years ago in Maine, when she fell in love with a passion that even now throws a shadow onto the rest of her life.
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Excellent! Five Stars all the way
- By escoocoo on 09-15-23
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August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia’s play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them.
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Consistently boring
- By lifelong learner on 10-09-24
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A twisty, thought-provoking novel of construction and deconstruction in conversation with the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and told through the lens of the film industry, Sweet Fury is an incisive and bold critique of America’s deep-rooted misogyny.
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Awesome…but
- By Beth on 02-27-25
By: Sash Bischoff
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The Rich People Have Gone Away
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Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
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descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
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Shred Sisters
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- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
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Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
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Scaffolding
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
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Wonderful
- By Laura M on 11-14-24
By: Lauren Elkin
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Evening
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After three marriages and five children, Ann Lord lies dying in an upstairs bedroom of a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What comes to her, eclipsing a stream of doctor's visits and friends stopping by and grown children overheard whispering from the next room, is a rush of memories from a weekend 40 years ago in Maine, when she fell in love with a passion that even now throws a shadow onto the rest of her life.
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Excellent! Five Stars all the way
- By escoocoo on 09-15-23
By: Susan Minot
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The Hypocrite
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August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia’s play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them.
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Consistently boring
- By lifelong learner on 10-09-24
By: Jo Hamya
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Sweet Fury
- By: Sash Bischoff
- Narrated by: Sash Bischoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
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Overall
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A twisty, thought-provoking novel of construction and deconstruction in conversation with the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and told through the lens of the film industry, Sweet Fury is an incisive and bold critique of America’s deep-rooted misogyny.
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Awesome…but
- By Beth on 02-27-25
By: Sash Bischoff
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The Rich People Have Gone Away
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- By: Regina Porter
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt, Shayna Small
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
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Overall
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Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect.
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descriptions of food
- By Lilly Daniel on 08-16-24
By: Regina Porter
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Shred Sisters
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- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
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Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
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Scaffolding
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- By: Lauren Elkin
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Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
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Wonderful
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Lust and Other Stories
- By: Susan Minot
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The author of Monkeys and Evening focuses her observant eye and lyrical voice on the delicate emotional negotiations of young New Yorkers. As in a series of deceptively simple watercolors, these stories uncover small moments that yield larger truths—about the ways in which women and men come together and come apart again, about the disappointments and hopes of lovers who know what they want but don’t always know how to keep.
By: Susan Minot
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Thirty Girls
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Story
Esther is a Ugandan teenager abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities. She is struggling to survive, to escape, and to find a way to live with what she has seen and done. Jane is an American journalist who has traveled to Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther and to find her center after aseries of failed relationships. In unflinching prose, Minot interweaves their stories, giving us razor-sharp portraits of two extraordinary young women.
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Don’t buy this book, it makes no sense
- By Anonymous User on 08-19-19
By: Susan Minot
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Entitlement
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?
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so disappointing
- By K. Wagner on 09-22-24
By: Rumaan Alam
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Someone Like Us
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- By: Dinaw Mengestu
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth.
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I did not enjoy this
- By MarcB on 09-17-24
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Women's Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Daniel M. Lavery
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
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a great story!
- By cathryn vitek on 11-10-24
By: Daniel M. Lavery
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Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
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- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
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The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
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Between Two Trailers
- A Memoir
- By: J. Dana Trent, Barbara Brown Taylor - foreword
- Narrated by: J. Dana Trent
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy.
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what a story! But not a "story", which is often synonymous with "lie", in southern speak. This one is true.
- By Alice J. on 02-02-25
By: J. Dana Trent, and others
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Bright I Burn
- A Novel
- By: Molly Aitken
- Narrated by: Avena Mansergh-Wallace
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up watching her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities—and she vows that she will never suffer the same fate. In time, she discovers she has a flair for making money, and takes her father's flourishing business to new heights. But as her riches and stature grow, so too do rumors about her private life. By the time she marries her fourth husband—the three earlier are dead—a storm of local gossip and resentment culminates in a life-threatening accusation.
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Amazing
- By cynthia s. on 02-27-25
By: Molly Aitken
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A Gorgeous Excitement
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Overall
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Performance
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A dazzling novel about one young woman’s summer of infinite possibility . . .
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Felt it needed more editing and maturity
- By Pony2018 on 02-18-25
By: Cynthia Weiner
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Burn
- A Novel
- By: Peter Heller
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital. But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find.
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Not what the summary says at all
- By jonathan on 08-17-24
By: Peter Heller
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Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
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The writing, the pace.
- By Susan on 11-22-24
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Didion and Babitz
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Lili Anolik, Emma Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972. Joan Didion, revealed at last… Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
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I’m still Team Joan
- By Dorothy L. Lipman on 11-16-24
By: Lili Anolik
What listeners say about Don't Be a Stranger
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Suzanna
- 11-11-24
Excellent
Beautiful, lyrical writing. The main character, Ivy, is a lost soul whose unrequited love for a self-centered man-child impacts her life. Ms. Minot doesn't explain everything -- there are a lot of unexplained motivations and history allowing the reader to fill in the blanks or not. While not fast moving, it's the perfect pace for Ivy's endless waiting. Admittedly, I couldn't understand why Ivy let herself be so physically and emotionally available/vulnerable to a self-actualized man ho, especially given her age. That, however, is the point of this story.
I don't think this book is for everyone. It's not a fast-paced, action packed, sex-filled romp with a muscle-bound love machine. Sadly, the cad doesn't get what he deserves (or if he does, we aren't told). It's a book about life, transitions in life, personal growth, and finding peace being with yourself.
The narration is ok. Ms Minot reads the book---she doesn't use different voices or try to modulate her voice the way a professional reader/actor might. I actually prefer this, but I'm probably in the minority in the Audible world.
I am looking forward to her next work. The writing is just stunning and I was loathe for this one to end.
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- NWDC
- 01-25-25
Gut punch
Beautiful clear original writing. It took me back to dating and the way we get angry at ourselves for not being indifferent, detached, as if needing someone and craving them and wanting them to love us ot at least like us is such a shameful thing. Some of us cannot compartmentalize love and passion. We are in it. The worst times are when you are with someone and have to pretend you are not in it
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- Amanda Hallowell
- 11-13-24
Intimate portrait of motherhood and female sexuality, beautifully read by the author
Minot’s narration presented this hugely resonant story of modern womanhood and maternal conflicts with patience and pathos. Her concise prose coupled with her deep understanding of the female subconscious struck chord after chord. I loved every quiet moment, every touching reveal as Ivy’s story unfolded. Walk — don’t run — as you listen to (or read) this book, so that you can fully revel in Minot’s mastery of her form.
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- David P
- 11-30-24
Thoughtful and Intriguing
Minot has always be a graceful and intelligent writer. Her sentences are carefully modulated and her metaphors and imagery are often gorgeous. This book has all of those stellar qualities. It is a thoughtful meditation on single motherhood (the associated guilt and fear of inadequacy) and an exploration of a mid-life sexual awakening.
The main character, Ivy, is 52 when she meets Ansel (37) and develops an erotic obsession she mistakes for love. Ansel tells her at the outset that he is not available for a relationship and is only interested in pursuing this arrangement on his own terms. He offers a few frail mixed signals that Ivy blows out of proportion--as one does in situations like this--but mostly it's a matter of brief, intense physical encounters. He's getting off with her (and, apparently, many other women) while her brain chemistry is being rearranged.
Minot handles this with exceptional tact and taste. She captures the claustrophobia of being in thrall of another person. The novel does feels overly long, and many readers, especially those who haven't had an experience like this, could become frustrated with Ivy and the repetitive cycles of the relationship. "He's just not that into you," seems one reasonable response. (As if life is that simple!) The novel picks up steam toward the end when Ivy's son faces a health crisis.
Minot's reading of the novel is subtle and steady. She has a deeply pleasing voice and precise, careful articulation. All in all, I found this a haunting book. Frustrating at points, but I am certain it will stay with me for a very long time.
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- Whitney
- 11-16-24
Difficult narration with little variation in intonation.
Difficult narration and the main character’s weaknesses can be hard to endure. I found myself wishing she would exhibit more confidence and less neediness with her love interest.
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- Meesh
- 10-28-24
Horrible
This book was so lame I couldn’t get through the first chapter. Poorly written, cheesy story line and the narrator was annoying. So I couldn’t get into it at all. Not my kind of novel.
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- C. Pandapas
- 11-05-24
First time ever giving up on an audio book
Susan Minot may be a good writer, but she is a horrible narrator. Maybe I would have finished it if the narration had been at all engaging, but not sure because the story just meanders and I was never able to get into it. This was the first time I ever gave up on an audio book.
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- Athena C. Galie
- 10-31-24
Perplexed
I’ve only leave stars as a review. I actually finished this one and I would like to analyze why I finished. The narrator was so monotone. I felt like I was listening to a diary entry. I’m not even sure why I’m bothering with leaving this review. Good luck.
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