
Great Expectations
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Aaron Goodson
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD/JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK
“One of the smartest and most involving political novels I’ve read in ages.”—The Wall Street Journal
ONE OF SLATE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Lit, Current, WBEZ
I’d seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.
When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States’ first Black president.
Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions—questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood—that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.
Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.
©2024 Vinson Cunningham (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Rarer is a debut that announces a talent like Cunningham’s.”—The New York Times
“Vinson Cunningham’s sparkling debut novel, set during the Obama campaign, earns its comparisons to Henry James.”—Slate
“Expertly captures a distinct moment in American history.”—Town & Country
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Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the United Kingdom, is a desperate young soccer agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin”—an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Lionel Messi.
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Not Netherland.
- By Amazon Customer on 10-31-24
By: Joseph O'Neill
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Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
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Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
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Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
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Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
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The Extinction of Irena Rey
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Lanessa Tremblett
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece.
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Unique plot
- By Kinga on 03-30-24
By: Jennifer Croft
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The Coin
- A Novel
- By: Yasmin Zaher
- Narrated by: Sarah Agha
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
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Interview of author on podcast piqued interest
- By amybarnard on 08-03-24
By: Yasmin Zaher
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Acts of Forgiveness
- A Novel
- By: Maura Cheeks
- Narrated by: Jade Wheeler
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Almost a decade ago, Willie Revel gave up her burgeoning journalism career in New York to help run her father’s struggling construction company in Philadelphia. An ambitious single mother, Willie has reluctantly put family first without being able to forget who she might have become. Now, as the president of the United States prepares to pass the Forgiveness Act, a bill that would allow Black families to claim reparations if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves, Willie delves deeper into her family’s history, while also trying to keep the family from going into bankruptcy.
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Amazing storytelling!
- By Nancy Chamberlain on 07-25-24
By: Maura Cheeks
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Great Expectations (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Raised in squalor in the marsh country of Kent, the orphan Pip is taken under the wing of the eccentric and reclusive Miss Havisham - only to blindly give his heart to the dowager’s beautiful but ice-cold adopted daughter, Estella. Even as a mysterious benefactor helps to shape Pip’s life into one of fortune, success, and self-discovery, the unspeakable secrets of his unrequited love continue to haunt him - and promise to change his life once again.
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Must read
- By veronica on 09-23-21
By: Charles Dickens
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This Great Hemisphere
- A Novel
- By: Mateo Askaripour
- Narrated by: Emana Rachelle
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Northwestern Hemisphere, 2529. An equally exciting and terrifying world born from the ashes of our own, where almost half of people are born invisible, and thus relegated to second-class citizenship. Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life, from excelling in school to landing a highly sought-after apprenticeship with a mysterious, powerful inventor.
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Thin Metaphor and Poor Use of Central Conceit (Invisibility)
- By Christine K. on 08-27-24
By: Mateo Askaripour
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Crossroads
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 24 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.
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How do narrators still do clownish stuff like this in 2021?
- By Hotrodimus on 10-30-21
By: Jonathan Franzen
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Dead in Long Beach, California
- A Novel
- By: Venita Blackburn
- Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles—and triples—down on posing as her brother.
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Great Literary Work
- By Dr Ag on 02-25-24
By: Venita Blackburn
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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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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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By the Fire We Carry
- The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
- By: Rebecca Nagle
- Narrated by: Rebecca Nagle
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.
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So great to see the full story after This Land pod
- By S. Armor on 04-12-25
By: Rebecca Nagle
What listeners say about Great Expectations
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Books
- 05-29-24
Portrait of an Artist as a Black Man
Aaron Goodson does a magnificent job bringing David Hammond's story to life while narrating Vinson Cunningham's polished & poised debut, Great Expectations.
I'll go out on a limb and assume that no familiarity with Charles Dickens classic novel of the same name is needed based on my not feeling left out reading the text & I'll also go out on a limb and suggest that after one novel its safe to say that Vinson Cunningham is one of our best Prose stylists.
Cunnigham's prose, & I hope he would appreciate this since it's evident he is a basketball fan based on the time David spent waxing poetic about the merits of Paul Pierce (!) (I must say, I was elated while listening to thoughts on Paul Pierce in a novel. There is a mythological leap - it could just be me here - that people, places & things take when they are centered, if even for the briefest of moments in a novel, & the fact that Paul Pierce was given a decent amount of runway is something I am grateful for as an enormous basketball fan & something that inspires me & ways that I hope to display in the future. Anyway), is so very poised. His Prose is like Dame Lillard in the meme where his teammates are mobbing him and he just calmly stares into the camera, as if he didn't just seal the deal in the Blazers first round series against OKC with one of the most memorable buzzer beaters we've seen. That poise & polish is enough to carry just about any story that Cunningham wanted to tell.
Whether it's brief thoughts on basketball or more lengthy ruminations on religion, belief, influence, power, money, status, art, race, fatherhood. There's something here for all of us & that something, whatever it is, is written in one of the best prose styles available to us.
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- SD nyc
- 04-07-24
Beautifully written, deeply engaging memoir / fiction
Beautifully written, personal account of a young man's experience as an insider in an icon's presidential campaign. Part coming of age memoir, part moral, spiritual and political exploration. This is a good read; I sped through it. High marks for the narrator.
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- Jackson Collins
- 04-05-24
Invisible Man vibes
The author’s rich use of language and his vibrant narrative style gave me the feeling I was reading Ellison’s Invincible set in our time. Wonderful work.
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1 person found this helpful
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- JMH
- 07-18-24
nicely done
novelization of a staffer in obama campaign. audiobook a good match of narrator to material
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- snd220
- 11-13-24
Enjoyable, Insightful, & Smart
I enjoyed this coming of age story that shares an interesting purview of working on a political campaign while navigating early adulthood. I delighted in the insightful dialogue and reflective observations. The narration aptly included witty word play and rhythmic appreciation of poetry, literature, music, and art.
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- Rev. Dr. Priscilla B. Durkin
- 04-01-24
References to real people
Never felt really drawn to the primary character. Irritated that you require 15 words. I didn’t enjoy the book for 15 minutes.
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- Wilfred Lucas
- 03-18-25
This was one of the worst books I ever read. I struggled through it. What a waste of time.
The stream of consciousness had no meaning even though I too lived in Chicago at the time of the campaign.
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- Aeroduncan
- 12-19-24
Not the political story I expected
I really thought this was going to be an account of the Obama campaign (albeit fictionalized) from an insider's perspective, interestingly that of a relatively low-level staffer. What I got instead was at best a coming of age story about how the protagonist matured through the process (not much). There was actually very little about the campaign itself, nothing about high-minded policy discussions, and lots of side stories about religion, slums, sex (not at all explicit, however), drugs, etc., totally unrelated. There was some good explanation about how fund raising works and organizing of events for donors, as well as some of the less savory financial shenanigans near the end. So all in all, I was very disappointed by the story itself.
I also did not like the narration at all. Far too many unnecessary pauses or hesitations within sentences that should have just flowed smoothly.
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2 people found this helpful