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Holiday Country
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Ayse Babahan
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By:
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İnci Atrek
About this listen
A seductive and lyrical debut following a young woman’s dangerous summer romance during an idyllic vacation on the Aegean coast
"A gorgeous exploration."—Raven Leilani, author of Luster
"A book full of pleasures."—Kirkus
Ada always looks forward to her summers at the family villa with her mother and grandmother in a Turkish seaside town. It’s easy to leave life in California behind when the days are filled with boat rides, games at the beach, and long swims with friends. But no matter how much Ada feels she belongs in the country where her mother grew up, deep down, her connection to the culture seems as fleeting as the seasons. It’s certainly no help that her mother has lost her own sense of self, rootless and disoriented after so many years abroad.
When an old family friend mysteriously shows up in their town, Ada can’t help imagining a different future for her mother―one that promises a return to home, to love, to happiness. But while playing matchmaker, Ada has to come to terms with her own intensifying attraction to the newcomer. Does the future she’s fighting for belong to her mother—or to her alone?
Lush and evocative, İnci Atrek’s Holiday Country is a rapturous meditation about what it means to be of two worlds, the limitations and freedom of a life in translation, and the alluring promise of love’s anchor for the unmoored.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
©2024 İnci Atrek (P)2024 Macmillan AudioCritic reviews
"Atrek gloriously portrays the seaside setting, and she expertly explores the crackling tension between mother and daughter. This finely rendered debut heralds the arrival of a smart, bold voice."—Publishers Weekly
“İnci Atrek's mesmerizing Holiday Country is sizzling with the heat and hurt of young adulthood, brimming over with all of the associated desires: to explore, to feel seen, to belong, and, of course, the impossible wish to turn back the hands of time. With beautiful prose that transports you to the seaside town along the Aegean Sea where young Ada spends her summers, Atrek fully entangles you into the generation-long drama overdue to unravel. This book is full of wisdom and insights about mothers, daughters, and the men who surround them and it smolders as we watch Ada do the unavoidable: become her own person.”—Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming
"A piercing and wise novel, Holiday Country asks vital questions on identity, autonomy, fantasy, and how we may radically reimagine daughterhood and the places we come from. İnci Atrek masterfully threads a needle right through the eye of desire and duty with this spectacular book; you will be equal parts unmoored and moved long after you finish reading."—Mina Seçkin, author of The Four Humors
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Acclaimed novelist Quan Barry delivers a tour de female force in this delightful novel. Set in the coastal town of Danvers, Massachusetts, where the accusations began that led to the 1692 witch trials, We Ride Upon Sticks follows the 1989 Danvers High School Falcons field hockey team, who will do anything to make it to the state finals—even if it means tapping into some devilishly dark powers. In chapters dense with 1980s iconography—from Heathers to "big hair"—Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective progress of this enchanted team.
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Field hockey+witchcraft = surprisingly enthralling
- By Bailey Winslow on 03-13-20
By: Quan Barry
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The Sea Elephants
- A Novel
- By: Shastri Akella
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Shagun knows he will never be the kind of son his father demands. After the sudden deaths of his beloved twin sisters, Shagun flees his own guilt, his mother’s grief, and his father’s violent disapproval by enrolling at an all-boys boarding school. But he doesn’t find true belonging until he encounters a traveling theater troupe performing the Hindu myths of his childhood. Welcomed by the other storytellers, Shagun thrives, easily embodying mortals and gods, men and women, and living on the road, where his father can’t catch him.
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An amazing case study on gender and religion
- By Btbush2006 on 03-09-24
By: Shastri Akella
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Supermarket
- By: Bobby Hall
- Narrated by: Bobby Hall
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Flynn is stuck - depressed, recently dumped, and living at his mom’s house. The supermarket was supposed to change all that. An ordinary job and a steady check. Work isn’t work when it’s saving you from yourself. But things aren’t quite as they seem in these aisles. Arriving to work one day to a crime scene, Flynn’s world collapses as the secrets of his tortured mind are revealed. And Flynn doesn’t want to go looking for answers at the supermarket. Because something there seems to be looking for him.
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Too safe for someone like Bobby; disappointing
- By Jonathan on 03-28-19
By: Bobby Hall
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Juniper’s Christmas
- By: Eoin Colfer
- Narrated by: Eoin Colfer, Olivia Forrest
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Eleven-year-old Juniper Lane is thrown into a Christmas adventure like no other when she seeks the help of a mysterious woodsman living in her local park, who she suspects is Santa himself, and accidentally gets exposed to North Pole magic. Join a boisterous cast of characters—including a neighbor who always believed in Santa, a young reindeer in training, and a cutthroat crime boss out to steal Santa’s magic—on an unpredictable journey bursting with Eoin Colfer’s signature exuberance and merriment.
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Unique Christmas story
- By January on 02-19-25
By: Eoin Colfer
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Pineapple Street
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Jenny Jackson
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.
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I lost brain cells.
- By Angela on 03-17-23
By: Jenny Jackson
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The Marriage of Opposites
- By: Alice Hoffman
- Narrated by: Gloria Reuben, Tina Benko, Santino Fontana, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel's salvation is their maid Adelle's belief in her strengths and her deep, lifelong friendship with Jestine, Adelle's daughter. But Rachel's life is not her own.
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Intoxicating and Complex Journey
- By Mel on 09-02-15
By: Alice Hoffman
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Idlewild
- A Novel
- By: James Frankie Thomas
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers. For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext.
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Loved every single part of it
- By Casey on 03-13-24
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My Government Means to Kill Me
- A Novel
- By: Rasheed Newson
- Narrated by: Jelani Alladin
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, Earl “Trey” Singleton III leaves his overbearing parents and their expectations behind by running away to New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.
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Engrossing, fascinating and sexy listen
- By JMM1997 on 10-07-22
By: Rasheed Newson
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The Edinburgh Mystery
- And Other Tales of Scottish Crime
- By: Martin Edwards, Various
- Narrated by: Sarah Barron, David Monteath, Mark Meadows, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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From the dramatic Highlands to bustling cities, the unique landscapes and locales of Scotland have enthralled and shaped generations of mystery writers. This new collection presents 17 classic stories, spanning a period from the 1880s to the 1970s, by a host of Scottish authors alongside writers from south of the border inspired by the history and majesty of the storied country.
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Great mystery shorts
- By Susan Hutchins on 12-01-23
By: Martin Edwards, and others
What listeners say about Holiday Country
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Barbara S
- 01-24-24
meditative coming-of-age tale
“Holiday Country” by Inci Arek is a meditative story set in Ayvalik Turkey, on the Aegean seacoast.
Every summer since the age of 4, Ada, our narrator, is commanded to visit her grandmother with her mother to this tiny town. It’s one of those towns that not much happens, and all the villagers know everything about you, and your generational line, who your people are. Ada holds fond memories of learning to swim and becoming a competitive swimmer as a result.
Ada’s maternal grandmother, Mukadder, dictates Ada and her mother, Meltem, to visit her when Ada is not in school where they live, in San Francisco. Mukadder is displeased that Meltem married an American man and moved to the USA, abandoning her. This year is different for Ada in that she found out her father has been unfaithful to her mother, leaving her mother unmoored. Additionally, Ada is now 19, at an age when she’s contemplating her own life choices.
Ada unexpectantly meets a man who Meltem had a romantic past, Ada dreams of a life her mother could have had. Ada wants her mother happy, yet her grandmother makes that difficult. Ada gets herself in a mess, trying to orchestrate a romance for her mother.
The reason to read this book is the quiet prose. Some of my favorites:
Exploration destroys a woman! There is no reason to discover!
It is important in life to allow. Your life should move slow like water. You shouldn’t fight against fate.
Wherever you are, and you will be in many places, you must learn to move fluidly.
Rebellion is a different form of obedience.
To really understand one’s secrets you have to watch them tell it.
I don’t like nice. Nice can destroy you. My father was nice.
Ada contemplates her Turkish heritage, how she’ll keep her roots once she is no longer controlled by her grandmother. It’s a young adult coming of age. Ada sees her mother, grandmother, and herself differently after the summer.
I enjoyed this because I have not read much fiction by female Turkish authors and I enjoyed the observations, especially with Ada contemplating ways of maintaining her roots, while allowing growth in the USA.
I listened to the audio, narrated expertly by Ayse Babahan.
Audio length: 9 hrs. 17 minutes
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- Phoenixonfire
- 02-09-24
Meh
Narrator mispronounced basic word and had such a deadpan read for the main character that it detracts from the story. Also unlikable protagonist
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- ZAA
- 02-12-24
Great book.
This book is calm, vivid and informative. It helps the reader experience nuances that belong to a different culture. It is amazing to experience the dynamics between generations of family members as well as neighbors and friends. Atrek gives just enough detail to visualize the beautiful environment without drowning the reader in dragging commentary. I enjoyed the narrator a lot as well, Ayse Babahan is clearly bilingual and flawlessly can switch between accents as well as languages. If you enjoy the writings of Elif Batuman, you will definitely enjoy Inci Atrek's Holiday Country. Looking forward to Atrek's upcoming work. I am definitely a fan.
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- Sanda
- 02-01-24
beautiful narration
The book is beautiful. Very nostalgic and relatable if you also are a Turkish immigrant in the US and spend your summers in Tukey.
The narration was amazing. I loved that the narrator is turkish and speaks english with no accent but when it comes to act the turkish characters she starts this subtle accent.
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