Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition)
A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)
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Narrated by:
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Thérèse Plummer
About this listen
"[Narrator Therese] Plummer's talented performance is both illuminating and poignant." (AudioFile Magazine)
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award
Fortieth Anniversary Edition
This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.
The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere".
Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
©1980 Marilynne Robinson (P)2020 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped and renamed "Aniday" by changelings, ageless beings who inhabit the woods near his home. The changelings also leave behind one of their own, who flawlessly impersonates Henry except for one noteworthy detail: the new Henry is a prodigiously talented pianist.
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Not Anything Close to the Hype
- By Jon on 06-20-06
By: Keith Donohue
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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
- By: Leslye Walton
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender.
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Beautiful and Haunting Fairytale
- By FanB14 on 07-24-15
By: Leslye Walton
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Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
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Other Voices, Other Rooms
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Cody Roberts
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
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Capote’s coming of age story
- By Daniel Diffin on 11-08-23
By: Truman Capote
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The Promise
- By: Ann Weisgarber
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him, but when Catherine travels to Oscar's farm on Galveston Island, Texas—a thousand miles from home—she finds she is little prepared for the life that awaits her.
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Beautifully written and read
- By RueRue on 04-21-14
By: Ann Weisgarber
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Egg & Spoon
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. Her brothers have been conscripted into the Tsar's army and taken as servants in the house of the local wealthy landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in St. Petersburg - a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena's age.
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Best Book Ever!!!
- By Kindle Customer2 on 10-15-14
By: Gregory Maguire
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The Essex Serpent
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha.
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Unbearable Narrator
- By ACB on 06-08-17
By: Sarah Perry
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The Optimist's Daughter
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Eudora Welty
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
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This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations.
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Beautiful writing
- By Teresa on 07-15-13
By: Eudora Welty
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The Ballad of the Sad Café
- By: Carson McCullers
- Narrated by: David Ledoux, Joe Barrett, Therese Plummer, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers' best stories, including her beloved novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose cafe serves as the town's gathering place. Among other fine works, the collection also includes "Wunderkind", McCullers' first published story, written when she was only 17, about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist.
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Literate short stories
- By RueRue on 02-23-16
By: Carson McCullers
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Owls Do Cry
- By: Janet Frame
- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Owls Do Cry is Janet Frame's first novel. She describes her idea behind it in the second volume of her autobiography: 'Pictures of great treasure in the midst of sadness and waste haunted me and I began to think, in fiction, of a childhood, home life, hospital life, using people known to me as a base for main characters, and inventing minor characters.'
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well told but a wee bit depressing.
- By Muzza on 11-03-19
By: Janet Frame
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Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
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Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring.
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In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....
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Narrator - Authentic as it can get!
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What listeners say about Housekeeping (40th Anniversary Edition)
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- MishiB
- 06-26-24
I appreciated it, but I didn’t like it
The writing is gorgeous, the imagery is amazing, and the symbolism is what elevates it to literary fiction. I’m not sorry I read it, but the meandering plot was frustrating, and the resolution was not what I was hoping for.
The narrator’s voice is perfect, but she had a few very annoying mispronunciations, including “CAT-sup” instead of ketchup. Who in the world says “catsup,” even if that spelling is used.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Colorado Watch
- 01-26-23
Elegant, haunting
To my delight, the audio version is a wonderful accompaniment to the novel. Glorious distilled prose tells the story of Ruthie, Lucille and their aunt, Silvie. While set in the last century in an austere and rugged setting, the threads of loss and heritage and resilience are vibrant today. Beautiful.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dailynn Rutherford
- 05-29-22
Overall not bad
I listened to this during a long drive it kept me awake and interested. There are some points during the book that seem a little redundant where it almost goes into too much detail and the story becomes stagnant but it picks back up and the ending was good.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Delane Garrett
- 04-05-24
Everything
I'm glad I listened to this wonderful book. My two sisters and I were left by our mother at an age too early for two little girls and a baby to be left by their mother.As a result of this I learned no other woman would be a mother to us.We never knew where or who we would be with next.I love Housekeeping because Marilynn Robinson hit the nail on the head...
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1 person found this helpful
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- martin hall
- 03-06-21
A small and perfect novel
Certainly a book for people who don’t quite fit into the conventional world. But nature is also main character here and I’m ready to drive to Idaho tomorrow to experience it.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Spencer Gordon
- 04-17-24
Beautiful writing
A wonderful book about the balance between order and chaos. It motivated me to start making my bed!
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- Sue
- 12-09-20
Beautiful language
The text is rich and remarkable in its descriptors and attention to detail.
The beginning is slow, but as the story unfolds, the narrator’s inner dialogue explores so many of life’s imponderables. I was drawn into her world in fascination. Wonderful to listen to!
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5 people found this helpful
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- Janet L. Hamilton
- 12-04-21
Interesting characters
this story was a bit slow and seemed plotless for a while. but the metaphoric language could be beautiful.
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Story
- mom10
- 03-14-24
The magnificent language , the metaphors
Pitch perfect reader of pitch perfect prose. So glad I finally got to this book. And the interview with MR at the end is a wonderful treat!
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Kevin Hallock
- 06-07-23
Literary fiction
Wonderful words and descriptions that tells a story that goes almost nowhere. Beautiful words, but not memorable.
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2 people found this helpful