Hope: A Tragedy
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Shalom Auslander
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By:
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Shalom Auslander
About this listen
The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: No one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there. To begin again. To start anew.
But it isn't quite working out that way. His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won't stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one he bought. And when, one night, Kugel discovers history - a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history - hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse.
The critically acclaimed writer Shalom Auslander's debut novel is a hilarious and disquieting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.
©2012 Shalom Auslander (P)2012 PenguinListeners also enjoyed...
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There are rules to every game. You must never play the Dark Game after sunset - it becomes real then. It takes you over... The Hour Before Dark is a riveting gothic suspense novel of supernatural horror from best-selling and award-winning novelist Douglas Clegg - author of The Children's Hour and Halloween Man. When his father is murdered in one of the most vicious killings of recent years, Nemo Raglan must return to the New England island he thought he'd escaped for good...and the shadowy home called Hawthorn.
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Great story, original!
- By justin on 07-30-18
By: Douglas Clegg
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Unwind
- Unwind Dystology, Book 1
- By: Neal Shusterman
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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After America’s Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement. According to their Bill of Life, human life may not be terminated from the moment of conception until the age of thirteen. But between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, the child may be gotten rid of by their parent through a process called “unwinding.”
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Chilling, Scary, Difficult to Read
- By Joe on 11-11-20
By: Neal Shusterman
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
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Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
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Hark! The Herald Angels Scream
- By: Christopher Golden - editor, Joe R. Lansdale, Scott Smith, and others
- Narrated by: Charles Constant, Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.
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Some good, some clunkers. Some fun, none scary.
- By Max Trivial on 12-24-18
By: Christopher Golden - editor, and others
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Ashes to Ashes
- By: Tami Hoag
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.
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Damsel In Distress Romance Torture Novel. Ho-Hum
- By Ted on 04-03-15
By: Tami Hoag
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte
- By: Kyra Davis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccionos can be. So Sophie knows it's not paranoia, or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave.
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Disappointing
- By Autumn on 01-01-06
By: Kyra Davis
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The Hollow Ground
- By: Natalie S. Harnett
- Narrated by: Luci Christian
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
What listeners say about Hope: A Tragedy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Susanrachel Condon
- 09-07-16
Classic Auslander
If you aren't familiar with Auslander's work, approach with caution. This book is exactly what I expected: dark, edgy and brilliant. It is incredibly well crafted, deeply irreverent and laden with what I consider excessive use of "profane" language. Tho
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2 people found this helpful
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- iheartgardens
- 08-24-21
Got to ch 6 and quit
I thought it would be funnier based on others' reviews but I didn't grab me.
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- Tan A. Summers
- 03-12-12
Darkly humorous and a little disturbing
I grew up horrified by the Holocaust. I read Anne Frank when I was in junior high. In high school I read a three-volume documentary of antisemitism throughout history. I have to admit that I didn't know what to think about a book whose theme is, "never forgetting the Holocaust is not the same as talking about it all the time." I'm not sure even now that it's OK for a non-Jew to think this book is funny. OK, I admit it. I think it's funny. But I'm a little uncomfortable with thinking that.
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4 people found this helpful
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- K. weber
- 06-12-12
Classic Shalom Auslander!!
Creative, funny in a dry, and at times, even sardonic style that is so like Auslander. I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as Foreskin's Lament.
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- Kelley
- 02-02-12
Hilarious! Like being buried alive!
I don't think this book is funny. I don't mean that in a humorless - "you shouldn't joke about the holocaust" - kind of way. What I mean is this: however appealing Auslander's prose, there isn't enough wit in the world to lighten this deeply disturbing, painfully stagnant story of the holocaust.
I heard Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan compare the novel (favorably) to someone dressing his daughter as Jon Bonet Ramsey for Halloween. Weird analogy. I honestly don't see how there can be a 'taste' issue for a book that could not be more horrifically depressing. Only the undead and buried are suffrering here.
I love Shalom Auslander's TAL-ish voice and his sharp, insightful prose. I've given the overall recording three stars because I think the run-in-place, extended-short-story-esque plot would be better as a read then as a listen. As a listen, it's fairly relentlessly grim.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Harriet
- 02-11-13
An excellent farce, if a little long
Would you consider the audio edition of Hope: A Tragedy to be better than the print version?
Yes I would because the author/reader made it humorous with inflections, etc. I read it for a book club and would not have read it otherwise, so the audio version allowed me to do so more easily/quickly.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Hope: A Tragedy?
The ending. The interactions between Kugel and his mother as well as the scene at the Realtor's office stuck with me. Also his mother's comments about the Armenian genocide as "contrasted" to the holocaust.
Which character – as performed by Shalom Auslander – was your favorite?
Kugel & his mother.
Any additional comments?
Others have said it all on audible & amazon reviews much better than I can. I will say in wanting to discuss the book right afterword, I read many of those reviews to help me process the book. There are some great ones out there. I wouldn't have read this book without it being assigned in my book club. But I am very glad I did. It is one that will stick with me. I do think Mr. Auslander could have accomplished the same poignant result with a shorter version of the book. However, in looking back, it's interesting to think about how the protagonist's neuroses grew & took hold.
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- Placeholder
- 03-12-12
WOW!
Where does Hope: A Tragedy rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Very high. I've bought a bunch of audiobooks, so I don't have number rank.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Hope: A Tragedy?
when main character is musing over whom among his neighbors would let his family stay in their attic if
What does Shalom Auslander bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
A deadpan delivery that totally works.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
The feel good story of the year.....
Any additional comments?
Kudos to Shalom! Irreverent doesn't even come close. I am a better person for buying this audiobook.
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2 people found this helpful
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- JudithLeenovBooks
- 01-24-13
Quirky
This unusual novel is DEFINITELY not for everyone. It is a story, written in first person, of the son of wannabe holocaust survivor who (the son, not his mother) discovers Anne Frank (now an old lady) living in his attic. It is written as a bit of a "shticky" monologue that is hilarious at times, but often over the top as in: was it over the top? Why did I say it was over the top? I don't really know. Sometimes I think I liked it but other times I was't so sure. And how could I be expected to know..... and so on.
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- Elisabetta
- 03-16-12
excellent writer, boring teller
Funny and absolutely desperate, great tale about the huge human tragedy, here wittily mocked and the small things in every one life that could became unmanageable problems
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- Mary
- 08-06-12
Hilarious and irreverent!
Where does Hope: A Tragedy rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of my favorites because I laughed so hard! I can't believe what the author got away with saying! I am sure there was lessons in life here as well, but I might have missed them because I was so entertained. I should listen again maybe! And try to be more serious.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Hope: A Tragedy?
Finding Ann Frank! Of course.
Which character – as performed by Shalom Auslander – was your favorite?
Love them all.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Laughter, much laughter.
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