
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
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...




















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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Gut punch
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Intimate portrait of motherhood and female sexuality, beautifully read by the author
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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.
Thoughtful and Intriguing
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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.
Excellent
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Difficult narration with little variation in intonation.
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Horrible
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Blah blah blah
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First time ever giving up on an audio book
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Perplexed
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