Grand Union
Stories
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Zadie Smith
-
Doc Brown
-
By:
-
Zadie Smith
About this listen
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal!
A dazzling collection of short fiction
Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving 11 completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.
Nothing is off limits, and everything - when captured by Smith’s brilliant gaze - feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.
©2019 Zadie Smith (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
-
-
There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
Feel Free
- Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.
-
-
great material, thoroughly brilliant narration
- By Mary E. Magin on 03-09-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Intimations
- Six Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality - or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
-
-
An eye-opener for me into our inequitable systems
- By Rashida L on 07-29-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
-
-
4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Swing Time
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
-
-
Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
- By Richmond Surrey on 07-27-17
By: Zadie Smith
-
On Beauty
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
-
-
Somewhat Disappointed
- By Cherokee on 11-15-05
By: Zadie Smith
-
Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
-
-
There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
Feel Free
- Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.
-
-
great material, thoroughly brilliant narration
- By Mary E. Magin on 03-09-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Intimations
- Six Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality - or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
-
-
An eye-opener for me into our inequitable systems
- By Rashida L on 07-29-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
-
-
4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Swing Time
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
-
-
Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
- By Richmond Surrey on 07-27-17
By: Zadie Smith
-
On Beauty
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
-
-
Somewhat Disappointed
- By Cherokee on 11-15-05
By: Zadie Smith
-
The Autograph Man
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Ben Barnes
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. A small blip in a huge worldwide network of desire, his business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them - all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the reinstatement of some kind of all-powerful, benevolent God-type figure, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of '40s movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.
-
-
Maybe it's ...me? (But I don't think it's me.)
- By Ashley J. on 05-14-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
Tenth of December
- Stories
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
-
-
Be prepared for something different...but good!
- By Mr. D on 02-21-14
By: George Saunders
-
Detransition, Baby
- A Novel
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Renata Friedman
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
-
-
Emotional Torture
- By Teh Micha on 04-27-21
By: Torrey Peters
-
The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Colson Whitehead
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
-
-
Who spoke for the black boys?
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Colson Whitehead
-
To the Lighthouse
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nicole Kidman
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.
-
-
A book that will challenge you to think.
- By Kelly on 04-23-17
By: Virginia Woolf
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
-
Best Read/Listen on Audible
- By Henry Posner on 09-22-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
- By: Shehan Karunatilaka
- Narrated by: Shivantha Wijesinha
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali.
-
-
Absolutely Splendid...
- By Paul Frandano on 02-07-23
-
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
- A Novel
- By: Lorrie Moore
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lorrie Moore’s first novel since A Gate at the Stairs—a daring, meditative exploration of love and death, passion and grief, and what it means to be haunted by the past, both by history and the human heart. A teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all...
-
-
Very Loorie Moore... and yet very not
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-23
By: Lorrie Moore
-
City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
-
-
A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
-
The Best of Me
- By: David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than 25 years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to listen without laughing.
-
-
Almost No New Material
- By Lizardectomy on 11-05-20
By: David Sedaris
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
Critic reviews
"Zadie Smith, who narrates the first and last of the 19 stories in her collection, vividly explores people's complex lives.... Smith's low pitch and English accent make this work sound calm and literary - as if she is narrating to a familiar audience. Doc Brown's narration of the other 17 stories is an entertaining ebb and flow of energy. He employs different accents and plays with pitch.... Brown's enjoyable narration adds to Smith's well-established reputation as a writer." (AudioFile Magazine)
"Grand Union is an unusual creature, combining all the experimental exuberance of a writer discovering a form with the technical prowess of one at the height of her abilities. The result is exhilarating.... Smith’s voracious intellect is on full display. With vitality and wit, she shuttles between the philosophical universal and the intensely local - a movement formally realized in stories like 'Two Men Arrive in a Village' - between the world and the self.... It is a delight to watch Smith play." (San Francisco Chronicle)
"[Grand Union] contains some of Smith’s most vibrant, original fiction, the kind of writing she’ll surely be known for. Some of these stories provide hints that everything we’ve seen from her so far will one day be considered her 'early work,' that what lies ahead is less charted territory, wilder and less predictable." (Rebecca Makkai, The New York Times Book Review)
"An enchanting collection that examines the complexity of contemporary life. This book of short stories, the author’s first, refuses to define itself as any one thing. Instead, Smith allows each story to take on a tone, genre and life of its own.... This wild ride that Smith takes readers on is a delight to experience. Her characters are vivid and unique, as are her observations about the state of the world." (Associated Press)
Featured Article: It Was the Best of Scribes—The Best British Authors
With its esteemed history and bold contemporary scene, Britain lays claim to some of the most exciting literature in audio. With the hundreds of incredible British writers throughout the centuries, a person could devote their whole literary life solely to British authors and still never run out of amazing things to listen to. Whether you're an avid Anglophile or just want to discover the best English novelists for yourself, here’s a list of the best for you to choose from!
Related to this topic
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
-
-
Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
-
Fault Lines
- A Novel
- By: Emily Itami
- Narrated by: Lydia Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children, and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry.
-
-
Confused by the choice of narrator
- By Bri T. on 02-13-22
By: Emily Itami
-
City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
-
-
A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
-
Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
-
-
Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
-
The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
-
-
Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
A Nail Through The Heart
- A Poke Rafferty Thriller
- By: Timothy Hallinan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.
-
-
Ever been to Bangkok?
- By Richard Delman on 12-11-11
By: Timothy Hallinan
-
Fault Lines
- A Novel
- By: Emily Itami
- Narrated by: Lydia Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children, and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry.
-
-
Confused by the choice of narrator
- By Bri T. on 02-13-22
By: Emily Itami
-
City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
-
-
A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
-
Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
-
-
Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
-
The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
-
-
Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
-
The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
-
-
Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
-
Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
-
-
A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
-
What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
-
-
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
-
Call Down the Hawk (The Dreamer Trilogy, Book 1)
- By: Maggie Stiefvater
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality. Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it. Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer...and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed....
-
-
Unlistenable
- By Nathan Parker on 11-24-19
-
Autumn
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.
-
-
Incredible use of language
- By Mary on 03-06-17
By: Ali Smith
-
Sweet Sorrow
- The Long-Awaited New Novel from the Best-Selling Author of One Day
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: Rory Kinnear
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of One Day comes a bittersweet and brilliantly funny coming-of-age tale about the heart-stopping thrill of first love - and how just one summer can forever change a life.
-
-
A delight in every way!
- By Jennifer on 04-24-22
By: David Nicholls
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Feel Free
- Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.
-
-
great material, thoroughly brilliant narration
- By Mary E. Magin on 03-09-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Swing Time
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
-
-
Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
- By Richmond Surrey on 07-27-17
By: Zadie Smith
-
Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
-
-
There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
NW
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Karen Bryson, Don Gilet
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up there, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes - whatever that means....
-
-
I believe this book is best listened to than read
- By BowedBookshelf on 09-28-12
By: Zadie Smith
-
Intimations
- Six Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality - or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
-
-
An eye-opener for me into our inequitable systems
- By Rashida L on 07-29-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
The Karma of Success
- Spiritual Strategies to Free Your Inner Genius
- By: Liz Tran
- Narrated by: Liz Tran
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of the traditional advice about getting ahead focuses on managing other people’s impressions of you. It’s all about how to network with impressive people and accommodate yourself to people with status and power. Executive coach Liz Tran asks you to forget about those people, and instead, train yourself to listen to and be guided by your innermost voice. From tech to spiritual leadership and executive coaching, Tran has charted her own path by learning how to tune into her intuition and be true to her Inner Genius.
-
-
The most un-pretentious self help book
- By Absolutely insane price on 07-26-24
By: Liz Tran
-
Feel Free
- Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.
-
-
great material, thoroughly brilliant narration
- By Mary E. Magin on 03-09-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Swing Time
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
-
-
Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
- By Richmond Surrey on 07-27-17
By: Zadie Smith
-
Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
-
-
There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
NW
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Karen Bryson, Don Gilet
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up there, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes - whatever that means....
-
-
I believe this book is best listened to than read
- By BowedBookshelf on 09-28-12
By: Zadie Smith
-
Intimations
- Six Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality - or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
-
-
An eye-opener for me into our inequitable systems
- By Rashida L on 07-29-20
By: Zadie Smith
-
The Karma of Success
- Spiritual Strategies to Free Your Inner Genius
- By: Liz Tran
- Narrated by: Liz Tran
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of the traditional advice about getting ahead focuses on managing other people’s impressions of you. It’s all about how to network with impressive people and accommodate yourself to people with status and power. Executive coach Liz Tran asks you to forget about those people, and instead, train yourself to listen to and be guided by your innermost voice. From tech to spiritual leadership and executive coaching, Tran has charted her own path by learning how to tune into her intuition and be true to her Inner Genius.
-
-
The most un-pretentious self help book
- By Absolutely insane price on 07-26-24
By: Liz Tran
-
The Fraud
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
-
-
Very disappointing
- By Happy purchaser on 09-10-23
By: Zadie Smith
-
On Beauty
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
-
-
Somewhat Disappointed
- By Cherokee on 11-15-05
By: Zadie Smith
-
White Teeth
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them.
-
-
4.68 stars....a modern classic
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 06-06-18
By: Zadie Smith
-
Banyan Moon
- A Novel
- By: Thao Thai
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Catherine Ho, Elyse Dinh
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.
-
-
Mean Girls / Soap Opera, But Sans Fun
- By Ignatius on 08-26-23
By: Thao Thai
-
Such a Fun Age
- By: Kiley Reid
- Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young Black woman out late with a White child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.
-
-
This is embarrassing!
- By Anonymous User on 01-31-20
By: Kiley Reid
-
The Autograph Man
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Ben Barnes
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. A small blip in a huge worldwide network of desire, his business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them - all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the reinstatement of some kind of all-powerful, benevolent God-type figure, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of '40s movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.
-
-
Maybe it's ...me? (But I don't think it's me.)
- By Ashley J. on 05-14-18
By: Zadie Smith
What listeners say about Grand Union
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Fran Bull Fitzgerald
- 07-13-22
brilliant short stories
I loved the vignettes, loved the readers. Brilliant writing, of course.
Smith's such a mind.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Andre
- 11-11-19
In Defense of Zadie Smith
The best decision I made in relation to the audiobook of Zadie Smith's "Grand Union: Stories" was to not listen to the naysayers who gave it negative reviews. My first introduction to Smith's writings came not from her novels, but from her 2019 essay "In Defense of Fiction" published in a popular literary magazine. I not only read her spirited defense of fiction, but I was spared developing a prejudice of only knowing of her writing through her novels. Furthermore, I saw her put her defense of fiction into practice in this collection of exquisite stories. There are many delights in this collection, among which are her superb sense of character and voice. She features a wide range of characters in transition between Asia, Africa, America, England, and the West Indies. Instead of the old adage of "write what you know," she wrote what she imagined, but there is enough truth in her stories to grip my imagination. "Big Week" features an Indian architect from Uganda in Boston. Listening in on the architect's conversation with a Boston cabbie was one of the many high points of this collection. Hearing all of these cultures clash and meld thrilled me. Smith is unpredictable. I do not know where she is going with her stories. I do not care. I enjoy spending time with her characters and listening to them, like in the flash fiction sequence "Mood" which features snapshots of New Yorkers and includes a hilarious conversation between Roberta and her parrot Preston. One of the keys to "Grand Union" is that you have to listen to the stories over and over again to get them, for them to deepen in you so you could appreciate their craft and nuance. In this hustle and bustle world, people often will not invest the time in sinking into a story. We want things fast, easy, comprehensible. "Grand Union" rebukes this trend in our culture. I've listened to some of the stories in her collection two or three times and I am still learning something new from them, being delighted and moved in unexpected ways, such as the poignant "For the King" or the contentious "Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets." "Grand Union" is not only an outstanding collection of short stories, but a popular name for train stations. Reading her collection, I get a sense of passengers from various backgrounds meeting each other in surprising combinations, which often happens at train stations. People are moving together for a few moments only to part and never see each other again. I enjoyed listening to the conversations of people in transition. The whole point is not the destination, but how we are connected to one another.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- DJ
- 01-03-20
It Could Be a 3.5...
I gave this an overall three stars, though arguably, if such a rating were available, I'd have called it 3.5, with slight extra points for the stories, and a bit of a minus for the presentation. This was, I have to say, the least favorite of the books I have read by Zadie Smith. Let me add a caveat that most of the stories I liked most I had read previously, in the New Yorker and elsewhere, but most of the new material I wasn't especially fond of. I find Smith to be at her best when she is in her wry realist mode. I found the semi-sci-fi tenor of some of the stories to be frankly distracting. Further, the narration, by Doc Brown, was fine for the stories set in England, but really fell down on the stories set in the US, with frequent mispronunciations o flocations and colloquialisms that were jarring to the American ear.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- D. K. Coe
- 10-14-19
Not for me
Heard good things on NPR, but the audio book just didn’t hold my attention. I struggled to follow the story and the jumps between characters. Doc Brown’s performance was good and there were times I was pulled in to the story. I may enjoy this more if I read it with my eyes instead of my ears.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- True Review
- 10-12-19
Sour and depressing
I see the author's ability to portray life through metaphor and visual imagery but the topics are sour and depressing. I barely made it through the first chapter. If I want to know about reality of animal cruelty I just have to walk out my door to witness the
wild life being decimated in my area. I purchased this after the NY times highly recommened but it's just not my reading style.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful