Family of Origin
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Kristen Sieh
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By:
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CJ Hauser
About this listen
BONUS: Includes the viral essay sensation "The Crane Wife"
"An innovative work of climate fiction, a nuanced and empathic family story, and, for my money, the summer's best novel thus far." (NPR.org)
"The most oddly enticing novel you will read this year.... Keenly satirical yet unashamedly tender." (Wall Street Journal)
"Reminiscent of the family explorations of Rick Moody, Jennifer Egan, and Lauren Groff.... Full of brilliantly realized characters, Hauser's latest is profound, often incredibly funny, and captures the times like few other contemporary novels." (Booklist, starred)
When Nolan Grey receives news that his father, a once-prominent biologist, has drowned off Leap's Island, he calls on Elsa, his estranged, older half-sister, to help pick up the pieces. This, despite the fact that it was he and Elsa who broke the family in the first place. The Greys have been avoiding each other for a dozen years.
Elsa and Nolan travel to their father's field station, a wild and isolated spot off the Gulf Coast. Here, their father's fatalistic colleagues, the Reversalists, obsessively study the undowny bufflehead, a rare sea duck whose loss of waterproof feathers proves, they say, that evolution is running in reverse and humanity's best days are behind us.
On an island that is always looking backward, it's impossible for the siblings to ignore their past. Stuck together in the close quarters of their island stilt-house, and provoked by the absurd antics of the remaining Reversalists, years of family secrecy and blame between Elsa and Nolan threaten to ruin them all over again. As the Greys urgently trek the island to find the so-called Paradise Duck, their father's final obsession, they begin to fear that they were their father's first evidence that the future held no hope.
In the irreverent and exuberant spirit of Kevin Wilson, Alissa Nutting, and Karen Russell, CJ Hauser speaks to a generation's uncertainties: Is it possible to live in our broken world with both scientific pragmatism and hope? What does one generation owe another? How do we know which parts of the past, and ourselves, to jettison and which to keep? Delightfully funny, fiercely original, high-spirited and warm, Family of Origin grapples with questions of nature and nurture, evolution and mating, intimacy and betrayal, progress and forgiveness.
©2019 CJ Hauser (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"CJ Hauser's Family of Origin is strange in that way raw honesty often is. It is sharp in its prose and in how it can so cleanly make you feel pierced through. Hauser lures us to an island and from there we learn of family and loss and the nature of our essential humanity. Funny and unforgettable." (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black)
“A strange and heartbreaking novel…Hauser's ability to render the complexities of family relationships with radical honesty is a feat…A lesser writer would not be able to deliver the disturbing and weird with the grace that Hauser does. A unique, poignant, and slightly taboo novel about family, biology, and evolution.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Hauser impresses with her wistful contemporary tale of family bonds and misplaced pessimism...This shimmering take on grief and family will enthrall fans of character-driven stories with its bevy of dashed dreams and cluttered emotions.” (Publishers Weekly)
"Reminiscent of the family explorations of Rick Moody, Jennifer Egan, and Lauren Groff... Full of brilliantly realized characters, Hauser's latest is profound, often incredibly funny, and captures the times like few other contemporary novels." (Booklist, starred)
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A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
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Trashlands
- By Richard W. Carlson on 01-10-23
By: Alison Stine
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The Heart of a Hero
- By: Susan May Warren
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Jake Silver may not be able to put the memories of his time as a sniper and Navy SEAL behind him, but at least he can put his skills to use as a part of the Jones Inc. rescue team. Saving the life of pediatric heart surgeon Dr. Aria Sinclair on Denali helped, too. Now, he can't get her out of his head, and when he hears she is in the path of a hurricane down in Key West, he can't help but jump on a plane to rescue her.
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You’ve got to be kidding me! Better be a sequel!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-20
By: Susan May Warren
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Point B
- A Teleportation Love Story
- By: Drew Magary
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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When the corporate monolith PortSys brought porting to the masses, CEO Emilia Kirsch and her son, Jason, accomplished what every other start-up company had failed to deliver. They really did change the world. They reversed climate change. They created a multitrillion-dollar industry out of thin air, curing economic woes across the globe. They made it so that anyone could be anywhere simply by touching a screen...including the man who murdered Sarah Huff. Now, Sarah’s 17-year-old sister, Anna, is determined to hunt the bastard down. But there are a few problems.
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Sherry Potter’s only got one spell: portkey
- By aaron gilbert on 11-02-20
By: Drew Magary
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Embassy Wife
- A Novel
- By: Katie Crouch
- Narrated by: Marni Penning
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia, takes her job as a representative of her country seriously and comes up with an intricate set of rules to survive a range of problems: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s general counsel but instead a secret agent in the CIA. She takes the new trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing....
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Have narrator re-record this book
- By Amazon Customer on 09-30-21
By: Katie Crouch
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Sharks in the Time of Saviors
- By: Kawai Strong Washburn
- Narrated by: Jolene Kim, Kaleo Griffith, G. K. Bowes, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities.
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Glad This Was Free
- By Shad Huddleston on 04-01-20
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Mira's Return: The Complete Series: A Mermaid Fantasy Adventure & Prequel to the Elemental Origins Series
- By: A.L. Knorr
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Mira is a mermaid on a mission. It’s time to leave the ocean. Mira Belshaw has been at sea for...well, she doesn’t know how many years. It’s hard to keep track of time when you live in the ocean. But after enough time, the salt water triggers the desire to procreate, and her time is up. Finding a mate is the most important thing to her right now, and to do that, she has to return to the place where she was last human - the coastal city of Saltford.
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Mermaid Mira
- By Shoe Monger on 04-10-20
By: A.L. Knorr
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Under the Wave at Waimea
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Now in his sixties, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime and is losing his “stoke.” The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still idolize the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere. One night, while driving home from a bar after one too many, Joe accidentally kills a stranger near Waimea, a tragedy that sends his life out of control. As the repercussions of the accident spiral ever wider, Joe's devoted girlfriend, Olive, throws herself into uncovering the dead man’s identity and helping Joe find vitality and refuge in the waves again.
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Really enjoyable and surprising novel.
- By kristina on 05-04-21
By: Paul Theroux
What listeners say about Family of Origin
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- rachel cartwright
- 11-27-22
Who is the audience for this book ?
Pretty disappointing read - it’s hard to see who would be interested in the biological background along with all the navel gazing millennial angst. The storyline is novel at first but I gave up and skipped the last third, just too graphic in many places …especially regarding teenage first encounters. Not sure who would find that interesting to read …
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- Jack
- 07-08-24
incest lol
I read a really touching and well written article by this author and wanted to get one of her books. it has some of the same themes but I just wish I had known that incest was going to be such a big topic ... this book was really weird. but if that's your thing have at it.
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- kiwords
- 08-05-19
I hate giving bad reviews
The thing is, this author is a really good writer. I bought this book because I read an essay she wrote that was simply breathtaking.
But this book. Well written, but so depressing. There’s a sexually abusive relationship, and the damage of that is sort of...waved away. I could not like one of the main characters, no matter how I tried. The end was supposed to be hopeful, but by that time I was kind of on the side of humanity dying out.
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7 people found this helpful