
Four Squares
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Narrated by:
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David Pittu
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By:
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Bobby Finger
About this listen
From the beloved author of The Old Place comes a tender, funny, and fresh novel about a gay writer in New York City whose life is irrevocably altered, and then again thirty years later.
In 1992, on his thirtieth birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his days at a tedious advertising job, finding relief in the corner of New York City he can call his own, even as the queer community is still being ravaged by HIV. But when his birthday celebration brings Artie and his friends to his favorite bar, a chance encounter with Abe, an uptight lawyer and Artie’s opposite in almost every way, pushes Artie to want, and to ask for, more for himself.
Thirty years later, Artie is stunned when Halle and Vanessa, Abe’s daughter and ex-wife, announce they are moving across the country. Artie has built a lovely, if small, life, but their departure makes Artie realize that he might be lonelier than he previously thought. When a surprising injury pushes Artie into the hands of GALS, the local center for queer seniors, a rambunctious group of elders insist on taking him under their wing.
Alternating between both timelines, Four Squares is an intimate look at what it means to find community at any age. With humor and compassion, it honors the enduring power of queer friendship, its history, and how essential it is to keep those stories alive.
©2024 Bobby Finger (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
One of Barnes and Noble’s Most Anticipated Books of June 2024
“Four Squares had my heart in its hands from the first page. Finger's decades-spanning novel is not only a love letter to an ever-changing New York, but also an ode to friendships—those that are old, those that are new, and those that are entirely unexpected. It's a celebration of the power of community to uplift and heal us, and a testament to the necessity of keeping queer stories alive. It's also uproariously, side-splittingly funny.”—Grant Ginder, author of Let's Not Do That Again
“Five stars for Four Squares! A beautiful and immersive story of often achingly relatable moments of being gay and longing for love during trying times. This journey of a writer seeking to perfectly capture imperfect joys of friendships and family—trying to put words to life’s sometimes indescribable experiences—is hopeful, insightful, and absolutely delightful.”—Byron Lane, author of Big Gay Wedding
"Finger’s depictions of the changes in the West Village, the depredations of aging, and the possibilities of romantic connection between older single people are acute, yet infused with a sweet shrug of resignation...A big-hearted and relatable read, especially if you’re old enough to remember the 1990s."—Kirkus Reviews
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-
Story
Mark Lausson has everything he thought he wanted: a coveted job at elite Sawyer College in Ohio. But at the start of his second year, stuck in a small town with deadlines piling up and paychecks falling short, Mark can already feel the fantasy crumbling. And then, a few weeks in, sophomore Tyler Cunningham shows up in class. In Tyler—confident, mysterious, and popular—Mark glimpses another way of being in the world. He finds Tyler’s self-possession both compelling and unsettling. Caught in the rush of sex and secrets, Mark ignores the increasing evidence that Tyler can’t be trusted.
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Time I can never get back
- By A. Gaglione on 07-09-24
By: Craig Willse
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All Down Darkness Wide
- A Memoir
- By: Seán Hewitt
- Narrated by: Seán Hewitt
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis. All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.
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The very deepest end of the pool
- By Gary Francis Burnham on 05-27-23
By: Seán Hewitt
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Some Came Running
- A Novel
- By: James Jones
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 56 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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After the blockbuster international success of From Here to Eternity, James Jones retreated from public life, making his home at the Handy Writers’ Colony in Illinois. His goal was to write something larger than a war novel, and the result, six years in the making, was Some Came Running, a stirring portrait of small-town life in the American Midwest at a time when our country and its people were striving to find their place in the new postwar world. Five decades later, it has been revised and reedited under the direction of the Jones estate.
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Hometown author!
- By Thomas B. on 10-11-21
By: James Jones
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On Folly Beach
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Lyssa Browne
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Folly Beach, South Carolina, has survived despite hurricanes and war. But it's the personal battles of Folly Beach's residents that have left the most scars, and they are why a young widow has been beckoned there to heal her own. To most people, Folly Beach is simply the last barrier island before reaching the great Atlantic. To some, it's a sanctuary for lost souls, which is why Emmy Hamilton's mother encourages her to buy a local bookstore, Folly's Finds, hoping it will distract Emmy from the loss of her husband.
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You won't want to get out of your car
- By L. Persyn on 08-08-10
By: Karen White
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Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
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A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
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The Sea
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.
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OVERWHELMINGLY FINE
- By Karen on 07-20-07
By: John Banville
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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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Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
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I Might Be in Trouble
- By: Daniel Aleman
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book—a total flop—all the more devastating. Now, David is single, lonely, and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript, one that will redeem him in the eyes of readers, reviewers, the entire publishing world…and maybe even his ex-boyfriend.
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What a dumpster fire! (Grab some marshmallows, y’all…we’re makin’ S’Mores!)
- By Hans Christian Branderson on 12-12-24
By: Daniel Aleman
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Bury Your Gays
- By: Chuck Tingle
- Narrated by: André Santana, Charlie Jane Anders, CJ Leede, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell. But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale.
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The hype is real.
- By Dan Bugbee on 10-03-24
By: Chuck Tingle
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Separate Rooms
- By: Pier Vittorio Tondelli
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. His older boyfriend, a renowned Italian writer named Leo, finds it impossible to watch the slow and inevitable demise of his lover. So, he condemns himself to wandering the earth instead, moving cities every few weeks in the hope of finding the dividing line between the living and the dead.
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I Leave It Up to You
- A Novel
- By: Jinwoo Chong
- Narrated by: Daniel K. Isaac
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.
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Great listen
- By Bri on 03-29-25
By: Jinwoo Chong
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Summers at the Saint
- A Novel
- By: Mary Kay Andrews
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone refers to the St. Cecelia as “the Saint.” If you grew up coming here, you were “a Saint.” If you came from the wrong side of the river, you were “an Ain’t.” Traci Eddings was one of those outsiders whose family wasn’t rich enough or connected enough to vacation here. But she could work here. One fateful summer she did, and married the boss’s son. Now, she’s the widowed owner of the hotel, determined to see it return to its glory days, even as staff shortages and financial troubles threaten to ruin it. Plus, her greedy and unscrupulous brother-in-law wants to make sure she fails.
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Narration almost made me stop listening
- By PJS on 06-27-24
By: Mary Kay Andrews
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Open, Heaven
- A Novel
- By: Seán Hewitt
- Narrated by: Sebastian Croft
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives. James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries.
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Absolutely beautiful prose
- By Paul J. on 06-17-25
By: Seán Hewitt
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Just as You Are
- A Novel
- By: Camille Kellogg
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Liz Baker and her three roommates work at the Nether Fields, a queer magazine in New York that’s on the verge of shutting down—until it’s bought at the last minute by two wealthy lesbians. Liz knows she’s lucky to still have a paycheck but it’s hard to feel grateful with minority investor Daria Fitzgerald slashing budgets, cancelling bagel Fridays, and password protecting the color printer to prevent “frivolous use.” When Liz overhears Daria scoffing at her listicles, she knows that it’s only a matter of time before her impulsive mouth gets herself fired.
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Funny and Moving
- By William Davison on 05-02-23
By: Camille Kellogg
Wonderful book
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It's a good summer fun read
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As comedic as the tone of that show is, and as larger-than-life as its “characters” are, I’m not surprised by Bobby’s ability to write with such poignancy, depth, and humanity as he does in his novels (The Old Place is wonderful - my favorite so far). I’m grateful that his novels complement his podcasting in such a way that I get to immerse myself in two different sides of his extraordinary abilities, and I already look forward to the next one!
This story was not quite as captivating to me as that of The Old Place, but I also don’t think I was the intended audience. That said, Bobby Finger is an exceptional writer, and although the world of Four Squares is very far from my own reality, I was moved, educated, and challenged by the story and its themes.
Recommend!
Subtle, heart wrenching, excellent writing
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