
Earthlings
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Nancy Wu
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By:
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Sayaka Murata
About this listen
- Amazon Editor’s Top Pick
- Bustle Pick
- Vulture.com Pick
As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. Each summer, Natsuki counts down the days until her family drives into the mountains of Nagano to visit her grandparents in their wooden house in the forest, a place that couldn’t be more different from her grey commuter town. One summer, her cousin Yuu confides to Natsuki that he is an extraterrestrial and that every night he searches the sky for the spaceship that might take him back to his home planet. Natsuki wonders if she might be an alien too.
Back in her city home, Natsuki is scolded or ignored and even preyed upon by a young teacher at her cram school. As she grows up in a hostile, violent world, she consoles herself with memories of her time with Yuu and discovers a surprisingly potent inner power. Natsuki seems forced to fit into a society she deems a “baby factory,” but even as a married woman she wonders if there is more to this world than the mundane reality everyone else seems to accept. The answers are out there, and Natsuki has the power to find them.
Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world and cements Sayaka Murata’s status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.
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Performance
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Story
When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that as the only woman at her new workplace—a manufacturer of cardboard tubes—she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can’t clear away her coworkers’ dirty cups—because she’s pregnant and the smell nauseates her. Except Ms. Shibata is not pregnant. But she has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Before long, it becomes all-absorbing, and with every stage of her “pregnancy,” the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.
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whiny lost woman
- By Pam Haynes on 12-01-23
By: Emi Yagi, and others
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Audition
- By: Ryu Murakami, Ralph McCarthy - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don't intend to produce. As the resumes pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama's attention - Yamasaki Asami - a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. But she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be.
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Adequate?
- By Evan Runyon on 01-04-22
By: Ryu Murakami, and others
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Lapvona
- A Novel
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, believes his mother died giving birth to him. One of Marek’s few consolations is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby. For some people, Ina’s ability to receive transmissions of sacred knowledge from the natural world is a godsend. For others, Ina’s home in the woods is a godless place.
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uncomfortable
- By Stetson on 07-04-22
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Strange Weather in Tokyo
- A Novel
- By: Hiromi Kawakami, Allison Markin Powell - translator
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Tsukiko, 38, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei", in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is 30 years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy, which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
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Cozy Love Story and Leisure Time in Japan
- By mz on 01-02-19
By: Hiromi Kawakami, and others
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Pizza Girl
- A Novel
- By: Jean Kyoung Frazier
- Narrated by: Jeena Yi
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial. She's grieving the death of her father, avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.
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Writing
- By Tobyizme on 07-11-20
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The Cement Garden
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of the world's most acclaimed novelists, New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan has earned the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. After their parents die, four children are left alone in the family house. They are free to live however they choose, but they must preserve their terrible secret.
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One of his best
- By Yennta on 04-03-10
By: Ian McEwan
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Bad Fruit
- A Novel
- By: Ella King
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there's only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it's just right. As her mother becomes increasingly unhinged, Lily starts to have flashbacks that she knows aren't her own.
By: Ella King
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This Thing Between Us
- A Novel
- By: Gus Moreno
- Narrated by: Robb Moreira
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It was Vera’s idea to buy the Itza. The “world’s most advanced smart speaker!” didn’t interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house - who ordered industrial lye? Then, there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.
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Unsure what I feel but it’s a lot
- By Liv Templeton on 12-01-21
By: Gus Moreno
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One’s Company
- A Novel
- By: Ashley Hutson
- Narrated by: Rachel Jacobs
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the voice that reminds her of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three's Company. When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision—to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity—takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three's Company and slip into the lives of its main characters.
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Maybe i just don’t get it
- By Jen on 03-23-24
By: Ashley Hutson
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Come Closer
- By: Sara Gran
- Narrated by: Julie McKay
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda - a successful architect in a happy marriage - finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.
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Don’t listen or read this book, use caution.
- By amyk0506 on 03-02-21
By: Sara Gran
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Brutes
- A Novel
- By: Dizz Tate
- Narrated by: Eleanor McCormick
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Falls Landing, Florida—a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers—something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they see will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
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No idea what was happening at any time
- By Amazon Customer on 04-02-24
By: Dizz Tate
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The Memory Police
- A Novel
- By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
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A Calm, Quiet Dystopian
- By Booky Nooky on 12-13-19
By: Yoko Ogawa, and others
Two flaws: I'm gonna give a HUGE content warning because this contains some pretty graphic and harrowing depictions of CSA that kind of come out of nowhere. Luckily I have no related trauma so it "merely" unnerved me but if that's a subject you're uncomfortable with I'd either give this a pass or just be prepared that it's in here. The other flaw is probably a personal thing, but the narrator, while doing an excellent job conveying the childlike mindsets of the main characters, unfortunate chose a voice for the Yu character that sounds *exactly* like Milhouse from The Simpsons. It's honestly pretty hilarious but it did make the tone really bizarre and uncomfortable before I adjusted.
UHHHH
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NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.
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Experimental Writing
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This is crazy, disturbing, weird, and extreme!
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Bizarre, Thoughtful, and Troubling
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So messed up
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Excellent and gripping
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if they would have applied those powerful messages to the main characters to where they were able to learn and heal from the trauma would have been a better story line (that could have also incorporated murder)
Things got weird Quick
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just an amazingly weird tale
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A great (but upsetting) listen!
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