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Groundskeeping
- A novel
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK • An indelible love story about two very different people navigating the entanglements of class and identity and coming of age in an America coming apart at the seams—this is "an extraordinary debut about the ties that bind families together and tear them apart across generations" (Ann Patchett, best-selling author of The Dutch House).
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer, moves back to Kentucky to live with his Trump-supporting uncle and grandfather. Eager to clean up his act after wasting time and potential in his early twenties, he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college, in exchange for which he is permitted to take a writing course.
Here he meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence who seems to have everything that Owen lacks—a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma—who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants—struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with family and home.
Exquisitely written; expertly crafted; dazzling in its precision, restraint, and depth of feeling, Groundskeeping is a novel of haunting power and grace from a prodigiously gifted young writer.
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Critic reviews
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK
“Groundskeeping is very fine work indeed from an exciting new voice . . . Given a novel so satisfyingly rich in themes and details, a review can only touch briefly on some of its many virtues . . . Groundskeeping is not only the story of a young man finding his vocation as a writer but also a wrenching examination of class differences, that third-rail topic in American literature, and of our current political polarization, which the narrator addresses with an unusual amount of empathy for the side he opposes. These elements supplement Cole’s nuanced depiction of a love affair between two people with more in common than they initially realize . . . Owen is entirely believable as a developing writer, jotting down his recollections and observations as the building blocks of his project to become an artist and a better human being. Alma is depicted with equal subtlety and generosity; their relationship drives the plot and brings the novel to a fitting conclusion.”—Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
“A sterling novel that presages a major career, Groundskeeping puts a fresh spin on the divided self adrift in a divided nation . . . Cole paints in airy watercolors rather than bright acrylics; his touch is light, restrained, but always authoritative and precise. As with Helen Frankenthaler’s canvases, Groundskeeping achieves poise and uplift. But beneath the languid tale of young campus love, he’s playing a shell game: The novel’s not only a forensic examination of our toxic politics, it’s also a sly sendup of literary culture, a conveyor belt of M.F.A. programs and prizes and teaching gigs . . . It’s a thrill—a relief—to read a writer who approaches his male characters with generosity and intuition, steering blessedly free of caricature . . . [An] exacting, beautifully textured debut novel.”—Hamilton Cain, The New York Times Book Review
“Scrupulously perceptive . . . Groundskeeping is filled with close observation, detailed shading. It is an absorbing love story, but it is also an examination of class in America, and it captures with sharp insight a moment in recent history.” —Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn
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Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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Pay Dirt Road
- By: Samantha Jayne Allen
- Narrated by: Sandy Rustin
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas. Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan's misgivings.
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Great Narration
- By Cindy Buell NZ on 05-04-22
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Double Feature
- A Novel
- By: Owen King
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Unraveling the tumultuous, decades-spanning story of the Dolan family’s friends, lovers, and adversaries, Double Feature is about letting go of everything - regret, resentment, ambition, dignity, moving pictures, the dead - and taking it again from the top. Combining propulsive storytelling and mordant wit against the backdrop of indie filmmaking, Double Feature brims with a deep understanding of the trials of ambition and art, of relationships and life, and of our attempts to survive it all.
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Worst book ever! Well maybe.
- By Randall on 08-11-17
By: Owen King
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The Miseducation of Cameron Post
- By: Emily M. Danforth
- Narrated by: Beth Laufer
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cameron Post feels a mix of guilt and relief when her parents die in a car accident. Their deaths mean they will never learn the truth she eventually comes to - that she's gay. Orphaned, Cameron comes to live with her old-fashioned grandmother and ultraconservative aunt Ruth. When she’s eventually outed, her aunt sends her to God’s Promise, a religious conversion camp that is supposed to “cure” her homosexuality. At the camp, Cameron comes face to face with the cost of denying her true identity.
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A very worthwhile Read!
- By TENA on 11-02-14
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My True Love Gave to Me
- Twelve Holiday Stories
- By: Stephanie Perkins - editor
- Narrated by: Various
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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You're going to fall in love with My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories by twelve bestselling young adult writers, edited by the international bestselling Stephanie Perkins. Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa, there's something here for everyone. So curl up by the fireplace and get cozy. You have twelve reasons this season to stay indoors and fall in love.
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Nice Holiday Read
- By Doha on 11-23-16
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Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
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A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
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A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Outside Looking In
- A Novel
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology PhD student, and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a freewheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living.
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STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
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A Doubter's Almanac
- A Novel
- By: Ethan Canin
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 19 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of Northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at UC Berkeley, he realizes the extent - and the risks - of his singular gifts. California in the '70s is a seduction, opening Milo's eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there - and the rival he meets alongside her - will haunt him for the rest of his life.
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The curse of genius?
- By Bonny on 03-03-16
By: Ethan Canin
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Man Alive
- A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man
- By: Thomas Page McBee
- Narrated by: Thomas Page McBee
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.
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Worth a listen
- By Kade on 05-30-18
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Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Benjamin Benjamin has lost virtually everything - his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood. With few options, Ben enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving taught in the basement of a local church. There Ben is instructed in the art of inserting catheters and avoiding liability and how to keep physical and emotional distance between client and provider. But when Ben is assigned to 19-year-old Trev, he discovers that the endless mnemonics and service plan checklists have done little to prepare him.
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Unlike!
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-02-13
By: Jonathan Evison
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Tell the Wolves I’m Home
- A Novel
- By: Carol Rifka Brunt
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life - someone who will help her to heal....
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worst protagonist ever
- By Danica on 12-19-14
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Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living. As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.
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Better to physically read (IMO)
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thought provoking story
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Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than 20 years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring - the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five.
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Better to physically read (IMO)
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Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.
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Awful narrator
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Sam
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Sam is seven years old and living in Beverly, Massachusetts. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much. Her mother struggles to make ends meet, and never fails to remind Sam that if she studies hard and acts responsibly, adulthood will be easier—more secure and comfortable. But comfort and security are of little interest to Sam. She doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. She doesn’t care about jeans or rules. All she wants to climb.
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Young girl coming of age.
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Send for Me
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An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction, Send for Me moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family.
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The narration was awful.
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On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest—the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn—has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.
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Worse Book Of New Year
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The Dearly Beloved
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God Is Real
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It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation from Berkeley when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living.
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Four Stars for Content, One More for...
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Black Cake
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In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
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Wonderful Listen
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When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling.
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I guess no one is honest now that’s cool
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Good Material
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
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not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
By: Dolly Alderton
What listeners say about Groundskeeping
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- mary dominick
- 05-28-22
Unusual setting & story
Written with sensitivity and good character development. A bit too drawn out but leaves the reader wondering at the conclusion.
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- Brent Holcomb
- 03-15-22
Brilliant, bittersweet Southern campus novel
Michael Crouch narrates this audiobook masterfully. I feel like I've made a new friend. Finishing a new favorite book is such sweet sorrow!
"Groundskeeping" is about a writer named Owen and the year he spends at Ashby College in Kentucky. Owen's hardscrabble early twenties were spent struggling with drug abuse and homelessness. The story begins when Owen returns to Kentucky, moving into his Grandpa's basement in hopes of getting his life back together. He finds a job as a groundskeeper at the local college and signs up for a creative writing class.
"Groundskeeping" pivots between Owen's experiences at college, his work life as an arborist, and the family drama with his Grandpa and Trump-supporting uncle that ensues upon his arrival. It's also a love story. At his first college party, Owen meets Alma, a writer in residence working on a soon-to-be-published project. Owen and Alma spark up a romantic friendship and the two young writers eventually become characters in Owen's own "fictional" writing project.
The members of Owen's Southern family are so vividly drawn, I feel like I know them. His kind-hearted grandpa, "Pops," welcomes Owen back home without judgment. They watch old VHS tapes of John Wayne movies and share KFC together for dinner. On a road trip to visit his parents, Owen takes Alma to a Cracker Barrel. It's a stunningly perfect scene. I could smell the maple syrup on the table. And then there's Rando, Owen's coffee-swigging co-worker. He's a good old-fashioned Southern hoot! The entire cast is memorable.
Lee Cole effortlessly captures the peaks and valleys of Owen's year in Kentucky. It's a beautifully bittersweet campus novel for the ages! "Groundskeeping" is deeply moving, must-read fiction.
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- Becky Thomas
- 11-01-24
Loved it!
I loved the brutal honesty in the story and I loved the narrator. Such a nice voice.
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- Shellie turner
- 03-22-22
A book about a place that never was!
Lee Cole’s first 2 sentences of the book, drew me in right away. “When I’m home, in Kentucky, all I want to do is leave. When I’m away, I’m homesick for a place that never was.
That is how I have felt since leaving Paducah, KY in 2012. I never knew how to describe it, but Lee describes perfectly.
It is a bittersweet love story of two very different young people finding their way. Owen’s struggles with his conservative, small town upbringing has him searching for himself.
During his search he works as a groundskeeper, lives with his grandfather, and meets a girl, Alma that becomes a very important relationship.
I enjoyed the book and Lee’s writing style. Being from the same area he is describing and having been to some of the places he named by name, I had to remind myself this was fiction.
The ending left you not knowing, yet in your heart you know what Owen is going to do.
A very good read!!!❤️
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- Liz Dannenbaum
- 06-07-22
Beautifully written
Great characters; compelling story. Lee Cole is a fabulous new author with a unique perspective on the South.
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- OC Shopper
- 06-22-22
Story was blah!
Struggled to finish the story. The story was boring and somewhat depressing. would not recommend it.
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- Barbara S
- 03-15-22
interesting coming-of-age story
I listened to Lee Cole’s “Groundskeeping” narrated by Michael Crouch. Crouch did a fine job voicing the pensive protagonist, Owen Callahan.
The story takes place in rural Kentucky, right before the 2016 presidential election. Owen is in his early 20’s and aspires to be a writer. We learn early that this is one of those “coming-of-age” stories in which the protagonist is trying to become a productive adult; Owen has sowed his oats and wants to stop horsing around. His parents are evangelical Christians, which is fodder for observations. For example, Owen notes that his stepmother, of “Evangelical Hair” and father have little in common with Owen. I’ve never seen that description before, but I had a clear vision.
Owen attains a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college. He will stay with his Trump supporting grandfather in his basement. His “pop” is sweet; his uncle Cort, though, also a Trump supporter, has some issues and still lives with his father at the age of 52. Cort is not a fan of Owen’s.
Owen can take courses free as a groundskeeper at Ashby College. He enrolls in a creative writing workshop. He meets the writer-in-residence, Alma Hadzic, who is a Bosniak Muslim and has immigrated from Serbia. She is Princeton educated, has published a novel, lived in an affluent suburb, and is younger than Owen. Owen explaining Kentucky and politics to Alma is interesting. Owen’s own ruminations are both funny and thought-provoking.
Alma and Owen enter into a relationship that is fraught with complexities given their differing backgrounds. This is a snapshot of our culture leading up to the 2016 election. It’s a story of young love and launching lives. I’ve read comparisons to Sally Rooney’s type of literature, and I agree. It’s funnier than Rooney, but angsty nonetheless! Growing up is hard to do!
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- Michael
- 05-19-22
Boring
'I added this to my list based on CNN Jake Tapper's book list. This is not a bad book, but it did not work for me at all. The writing is OK, but when writing teachers say write what you know, they don't intend you to write about writing. This is a debut novel and seems both tentative and uneven. There were a few wonderful lines, but far from enough to carry the book. This is basically a coming of age story, but the protagonist is 28 and not particularly likable. Nothing much happens and I can't recall having any aha moments or any emotional reaction at all. When the book came to the uneventful end I wondered why it had been written.
The narration was excellent and enhanced the story.
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- Barbara R
- 03-20-22
Great audible book.
I listened to the last ten hours of the book in one day! Very descriptive of a portion of one’s life. ❤️
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- Jim Walsh
- 04-24-22
Sad sack Owen
It’s well written, with a sharp eye for detail, but the main character is whiny, self-absorbed, judgmental, self-pitying, and indecisive. I guess it takes both courage and skill to write a first person novel where the reader wants to kick the protagonist in the ass the whole time. That ending. Sheesh. I would have preferred a book, rather than Owen’s so-called life.
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2 people found this helpful