
Hestia Strikes a Match
A Novel
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 $20.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jeremy Carlisle Parker
-
Sheree Wichard
-
Tom Force
-
By:
-
Christine Grillo
About this listen
Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2023
This program features multicast narration.
Christine Grillo's Hestia Strikes a Match is the slyly funny story of a woman looking for love and friendship in the midst of a new American civil war.
The year is 2023, and things are bad—bad, but still not as bad as they could be. Hestia Harris is forty-two, abandoned by her husband (he left to fight for the Union cause), and estranged from her parents (they’re leaving for the Confederacy). Yes, the United States has collapsed into a second civil war and again it’s Unionists against Confederates, children against parents, friends against friends.
Hestia has left journalism (too much war reporting) for a job at a Baltimore retirement village on the Inner Harbor (lots of security). She’s single and adrift, save for her coworkers and Mildred, an eighty-four-year-old, thrice-happily-married resident who gleefully supports Hestia’s half-hearted but hopeful attempts to find love again in a time of chaos and disunion. She reckons with the big questions (How do we live in the midst of political collapse? How do we love people who believe terrible things?) and the little ones (How do I decorate a nonworking fireplace? Can I hook up with a mime?), all while wrestling with that simmering, roiling, occasionally boiling feeling that things are decidedly not okay, but we have to keep going, one foot in front of the other, because maybe, just maybe, we can still find the kinds of relationships that sustain a person through anything.
Christine Grillo’s Hestia Strikes a Match is an irreverent, incisive, laugh-out-loud interrogation of modern love of all kinds, in all its messy beauty. Equal parts wise and hilarious, it fills the heart, fortifies the spirit, and will surely help to fend off despair. In the face of the everyday wildness of our times, it asks and answers that newly constant question: How do we make a full, wonderfully ordinary life when the whole mad world is clattering down around us?
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
©2023 Christine Grillo (P)2023 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece
- A Novel
- By: Tom Hanks
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks, Peter Gerety, Natalie Morales, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the legendary actor and best-selling author: a novel about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film...and the humble comic books that inspired it. Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, while also capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II.
-
-
I could never stay married to an actor,
- By PattyQB on 05-11-23
By: Tom Hanks
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Bright Young Women
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Knoll
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster, Imani Jade Powers, Corey Brill, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Masterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaptation starring Mila Kunis—delivers an “unflinching and evocative” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including a sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed.
-
-
Perfectly executed historical fiction
- By Louie Z on 12-03-23
By: Jessica Knoll
-
No Two Persons
- A Novel
- By: Erica Bauermeister
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik, Braden Wright, Carol Jacobanis, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.
-
-
Wow! Just wow!
- By Debbie on 05-11-23
-
Mrs. Nash's Ashes
- By: Sarah Adler
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Millicent Watts-Cohen is on a mission. When she promised her elderly best friend that she’d reunite her with the woman she fell in love with nearly eighty years ago, she never imagined that would mean traveling from D.C. to Key West with three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash’s remains in her backpack. But Millie’s determined to give her friend a symbolic happily-ever-after, before it’s (really) too late—and hopefully reassure herself of love’s lasting power in the process.
-
-
This one grew on me
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 03-22-25
By: Sarah Adler
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece
- A Novel
- By: Tom Hanks
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks, Peter Gerety, Natalie Morales, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the legendary actor and best-selling author: a novel about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film...and the humble comic books that inspired it. Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, while also capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II.
-
-
I could never stay married to an actor,
- By PattyQB on 05-11-23
By: Tom Hanks
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Bright Young Women
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Knoll
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster, Imani Jade Powers, Corey Brill, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Masterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaptation starring Mila Kunis—delivers an “unflinching and evocative” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including a sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed.
-
-
Perfectly executed historical fiction
- By Louie Z on 12-03-23
By: Jessica Knoll
-
No Two Persons
- A Novel
- By: Erica Bauermeister
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik, Braden Wright, Carol Jacobanis, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.
-
-
Wow! Just wow!
- By Debbie on 05-11-23
-
Mrs. Nash's Ashes
- By: Sarah Adler
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Millicent Watts-Cohen is on a mission. When she promised her elderly best friend that she’d reunite her with the woman she fell in love with nearly eighty years ago, she never imagined that would mean traveling from D.C. to Key West with three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash’s remains in her backpack. But Millie’s determined to give her friend a symbolic happily-ever-after, before it’s (really) too late—and hopefully reassure herself of love’s lasting power in the process.
-
-
This one grew on me
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 03-22-25
By: Sarah Adler
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
The Celebrants
- A Novel
- By: Steven Rowley
- Narrated by: Steven Rowley
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Just okay
- By kristine Barnes on 06-27-23
By: Steven Rowley
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Yellowface
- A Novel
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Helen Laser
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.
-
-
I've never hated a character harder
- By ashelyn downs on 07-26-23
By: R. F. Kuang
-
The Unmaking of June Farrow
- A Novel
- By: Adrienne Young
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.
-
-
Original storyline
- By Emmaline on 10-30-23
By: Adrienne Young
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
Romantic Comedy (Reese's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Curtis Sittenfeld
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sally Milz is a sketch writer for The Night Owls, a late-night live comedy show that airs every Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life. But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actress who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show.
-
-
Not really for me
- By Emma on 04-19-23
-
The True Love Experiment
- By: Christina Lauren
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cole, Cindy Kay
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Felicity “Fizzy” Chen is lost. Sure, she’s got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when she’s asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasn’t been practicing what she’s preached. Fizzy hasn’t ever really been in love. Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work but when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution.
-
-
I hate Cindy Kay’s voice so much I have to listen at 3x speed
- By Shelby Sundwall on 05-17-23
By: Christina Lauren
-
Family Lore
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo, Sixta Morel, Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.
-
-
Underwhelming.
- By Karina on 09-18-23
-
Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.
-
-
Moving, literary nonfiction
- By Homer on 07-25-19
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
There's No Coming Back from This
- A Novel
- By: Ann Garvin
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It seems lately that Poppy Lively is invisible to everyone but the IRS. After her accountant absconded with her life savings, newly bankrupt Poppy is on the verge of losing her home when an old flame, now a hotshot producer, gives her a surprising way out: a job in costumes on a Hollywood film set. It’s a bold move to pack her bags, keep secrets from her daughter, and head to Los Angeles, but Poppy's a capable person—how hard can a job in wardrobe be?
-
-
Inaccurate & poorly researched
- By Amazon Customer on 08-12-23
By: Ann Garvin
-
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
- By: Abbi Waxman
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all - or mostly all - excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster!
-
-
Engaging story but not well written
- By Rachel A. on 08-16-19
By: Abbi Waxman
Critic reviews
“[Christine Grillo’s] sharp, sparkling debut is a timely reminder of what connects people even in a country tearing itself apart: the desire to love.”—Allison Cho, Booklist
“[A] clever satire of life in a divided country . . . Bridget Jones’s Diary for the post-MAGA era.”—Publishers Weekly
“Extremely wise and deeply funny, this debut gives us a riotously irreverent, effortlessly firecracking pair of Socratic dialogues: one between generations debating how to find love or whether to seek it at all, and the other between citizens trying to figure out how to save their country.”—Carlene Bauer, author of Girls They Write Songs About
Not what we expected
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Intolerable narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I could relate to both the dating anecdotes as well as trying to make relationships with family members work across the ideological divide.
Dryly funny and insightful.
Timely
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Resonates with our current reality
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.