I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
A Memoir
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 $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Nadja Spiegelman
-
By:
-
Nadja Spiegelman
About this listen
A Travel and Leisure and New York Magazine/The Cut Best Book of Summer
A memoir of mothers and daughters - and mothers as daughters - traced through four generations, from Paris to New York and back again.
For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother's past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father, one of the first plastic surgeons in France. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them.
It had taken an ocean to allow Françoise the distance to become her own person. At about the same age, Nadja made the journey in reverse, moving to Paris, determined to get to know the woman her mother had fled. Her grandmother's memories contradicted her mother's at nearly every turn, but beneath them lay a difficult history of her own. Nadja emerged with a deeper understanding of how each generation reshapes the past in order to forge ahead, their narratives both weapon and defense, eternally in conflict. Every listener will recognize herself and her family in this gorgeous and heartbreaking memoir, which helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.
©2016 Nadja Spiegelman (P)2016 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Everything I Know About Love
- A Memoir
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Dolly Alderton
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wildly funny, occasionally heart-breaking internationally best-selling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride. When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all.
-
-
Loved it
- By Jessica on 04-02-20
By: Dolly Alderton
-
Marry Him
- The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
- By: Lori Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Suddenly finding herself 40 and single, Lori Gottlieb said the unthinkable in her March 2008 article in The Atlantic: Maybe she, and single women everywhere, needed to stop chasing the elusive Prince Charming and instead go for Mr. Good Enough. Looking at her friends' happy marriages to good enough guys who happen to be excellent husbands and fathers, Gottlieb declared it time to reevaluate what we really need in a partner. By looking at everything from culture to biology, in Marry Him, Gottlieb frankly explores the dilemma that so many women today seem to face.
-
-
Don't Read if You're Over 40
- By Kttykt1131 on 12-24-22
By: Lori Gottlieb
-
A Woman Is No Man
- A Novel
- By: Etaf Rum
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem, Susan Nezami
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture in this powerful debut - a heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue, courage, and betrayal that will resonate with women from all backgrounds, giving voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed.
-
-
Powerful and Terrifying
- By Emmst51 on 05-04-19
By: Etaf Rum
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
- Reese's Book Club (A Novel)
- By: Gail Honeyman
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
-
-
Please be warned
- By N. Thompson on 06-20-17
By: Gail Honeyman
-
Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.
-
-
Her voice
- By Amelia Saul on 10-31-24
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Everything I Know About Love
- A Memoir
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Dolly Alderton
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wildly funny, occasionally heart-breaking internationally best-selling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride. When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all.
-
-
Loved it
- By Jessica on 04-02-20
By: Dolly Alderton
-
Marry Him
- The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
- By: Lori Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Suddenly finding herself 40 and single, Lori Gottlieb said the unthinkable in her March 2008 article in The Atlantic: Maybe she, and single women everywhere, needed to stop chasing the elusive Prince Charming and instead go for Mr. Good Enough. Looking at her friends' happy marriages to good enough guys who happen to be excellent husbands and fathers, Gottlieb declared it time to reevaluate what we really need in a partner. By looking at everything from culture to biology, in Marry Him, Gottlieb frankly explores the dilemma that so many women today seem to face.
-
-
Don't Read if You're Over 40
- By Kttykt1131 on 12-24-22
By: Lori Gottlieb
-
A Woman Is No Man
- A Novel
- By: Etaf Rum
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem, Susan Nezami
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture in this powerful debut - a heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue, courage, and betrayal that will resonate with women from all backgrounds, giving voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed.
-
-
Powerful and Terrifying
- By Emmst51 on 05-04-19
By: Etaf Rum
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
- Reese's Book Club (A Novel)
- By: Gail Honeyman
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
-
-
Please be warned
- By N. Thompson on 06-20-17
By: Gail Honeyman
-
Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.
-
-
Her voice
- By Amelia Saul on 10-31-24
By: Vivian Gornick
-
I'll Show Myself Out
- Essays on Midlife and Motherhood
- By: Jessi Klein
- Narrated by: Jessi Klein
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An instant New York Times bestseller, I'll Show Myself Out is the eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed debut You’ll Grow Out of It.
-
-
Complete sanctimommy navel gaze
- By NJVJ on 05-05-22
By: Jessi Klein
-
This Story Will Change
- After the Happily Ever After
- By: Elizabeth Crane
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Crane
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One minute Elizabeth Crane and her husband of fifteen years are fixing up their old house in Upstate New York, finally setting down roots after stints in Chicago, Texas, and Brooklyn, when his unexpected admission—I'm not happy—changes everything. Suddenly she finds herself separated and in couples therapy, living in an apartment in the city with an old friend and his kid. It's understood that the apartment and bonus family are temporary, but the situation brings unexpected comfort and much-needed healing for wounds even older than her marriage.
-
-
Can’t listen just once
- By Sejal Shah on 11-14-23
By: Elizabeth Crane
-
Body Work
- The Radical Power of Personal Narrative
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it.
-
-
A must!!!
- By Karen S on 02-13-23
By: Melissa Febos
-
Also a Poet
- A Memoir
- By: Ada Calhoun
- Narrated by: Ada Calhoun, Lili Taylor, Josephine Brill
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O’Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started 40 years earlier. As a lifelong O’Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s and her own.
-
-
Pretty Interesting
- By Michele A. Cacano-Green on 08-02-22
By: Ada Calhoun
-
Never Simple
- A Memoir
- By: Liz Scheier
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things.
-
-
Fine
- By Rae Rae’s Travels on 03-21-22
By: Liz Scheier
-
Ancestor Trouble
- A Reckoning and a Reconciliation
- By: Maud Newton
- Narrated by: Catherine Taber
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ancestor Trouble is one writer’s attempt to use genealogy - a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry - to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.
-
-
Crazy Evil Parents = Crazy Author
- By MiMi on 12-28-23
By: Maud Newton
-
My Phantoms
- By: Gwendoline Riley
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Helen Grant is a mystery to her daughter. An extrovert with few friends who has sought intimacy in the wrong places, a twice-divorced mother of two now living alone surrounded by her memories, Helen (known to her acquaintances as “Hen”) has always haunted Bridget. Now, Bridget is an academic in her forties. She sees Helen once a year, and considers the problem to be contained. As she looks back on their tumultuous relationship—the performances and small deceptions—she tries to reckon with the cruelties inflicted on both sides.
-
-
Brilliant Fiction
- By CB on 08-22-23
By: Gwendoline Riley
-
Unorthodox
- The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
- By: Deborah Feldman
- Narrated by: Rachel Botchan, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
-
-
Narrator Problem
- By Phyllis on 04-24-20
By: Deborah Feldman
-
The Summer Place
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Weiner
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house in Cape Cod. Sarah might be worried, but Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting the big house on the market. But the road to a wedding day usually comes with a few bumps
-
-
Jennifer Weiner???
- By kimberly on 05-19-22
By: Jennifer Weiner
-
The Last Romantics
- A Novel
- By: Tara Conklin
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1981, the young Skinner siblings - fierce Renee, dreamy Caroline, golden boy Joe, and watchful Fiona - lose their father to a heart attack and their mother to a paralyzing depression, events that thrust them into a period they will later call “the Pause”. Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the siblings navigate the dangers and resentments of the Pause to emerge fiercely loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, the Skinners find themselves again confronted with a family crisis....
-
-
Maybe the best book I ever read
- By Plundered treasure on 02-16-19
By: Tara Conklin
-
Unaccustomed Earth
- Stories
- By: Jhumpa Lahiri
- Narrated by: Sarita Choudhury, Ajay Naidu
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself.
-
-
Simply Beautiful
- By Eileen on 11-21-08
By: Jhumpa Lahiri
-
The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
-
-
If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
Critic reviews
“A richly detailed memoir about the contradictory life narratives that connect and divide four generations of women.” (New York Times Book Review)
“Piercingly honest and uncommonly generous, allowing space for the vagaries of memory and different generational spins.” (Vogue)
“Arresting.... [Spiegelman] investigates the complicated, contested mythologies of her maternal family...[she] is insightful about the malleability and power of memory...eloquent...[and] sharp.” (NPR)
Related to this topic
-
One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
-
-
An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
-
Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
-
-
Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
-
The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
-
-
If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
The Finishing School
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One spring night in 1998, the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school.
-
-
this book was just ok
- By Josh Fields on 02-26-20
By: Joanna Goodman
-
Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
-
-
The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
-
Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
-
-
Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
-
One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
-
-
An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
-
Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
-
-
Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
-
The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
-
-
If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
The Finishing School
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One spring night in 1998, the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school.
-
-
this book was just ok
- By Josh Fields on 02-26-20
By: Joanna Goodman
-
Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
-
-
The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
-
Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
-
-
Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
-
The Other Mother
- By: Rachel Harper
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, William DeMeritt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami, who arrives at Brown University on a scholarship—but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was Jenry’s mother’s lover?
-
-
Very good.
- By Roland Harper on 05-22-22
By: Rachel Harper
-
Gold Dust
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
-
-
It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
- By Maria on 12-04-17
-
The UnAmericans
- Stories
- By: Molly Antopol
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Again and again, Molly Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
-
-
Sensational stories! Brilliant new author.
- By MidwestGeek on 05-04-14
By: Molly Antopol
-
Nearly Normal
- Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself
- By: Cea Sunrise Person
- Narrated by: Cea Sunrise Person
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her best-selling memoir North of Normal, Cea wrote with grace about her unconventional childhood - her early years living in a tipi in Alberta with her pot-smoking, free-loving counterculture family. But her struggles do not end when she leaves her family at the age of 13 to become a model. Honest and daring, Nearly Normal reveals the many ways that Cea's unconventional childhood continues to reverberate through the years.
-
-
This one is just not for me
- By Pamela Plimpton on 03-15-19
-
Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
-
-
This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
-
After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
-
-
Narrator
- By Barbara on 11-10-24
By: Lori Ostlund
-
Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
-
-
Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
-
The Wife
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
-
-
A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
-
Family Secrets
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though Diane Randall’s jewelry business is a great success, her marriage is not, and she finds herself growing lonely as her children near adulthood. Meanwhile, her eighteen-year-old daughter Julia is falling dangerously in love, and Diane’s mother, Jean, is relishing her newfound freedom as a single woman in Europe. Distracted by their individual concerns, the three women are ill-prepared for the crisis that suddenly appears on Diane’s doorstep in the form of a handsome FBI agent asking about an explosive secret that’s laid buried for decades.
-
-
Nancy! Is there a sequel? What?
- By PattieLynn on 12-02-22
By: Nancy Thayer
-
Diamond Head
- A Novel
- By: Cecily Wong
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Samantha Chen, Angela Lin, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
-
-
.
- By Gina on 09-06-15
By: Cecily Wong
-
The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
-
-
My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
-
When It Happens to You
- A Novel in Stories
- By: Molly Ringwald
- Narrated by: Molly Ringwald
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it happens to you, you will be surprised. That thing they say about how you knew all the time, but just weren't facing it? That might be the case, but nevertheless, there you will be. Molly Ringwald mines the complexities of modern relationships in this gripping and nuanced collection of interlinked stories. Writing with a deep compassion for human imperfection, Ringwald follows a Los Angeles family and their friends and neighbors while they negotiate the hazardous terrain of everyday life - revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all.
-
-
Narrated by Molly!
- By JillHen on 03-01-13
By: Molly Ringwald
What listeners say about I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Customer
- 03-24-24
Crying
What an honor to be a witness to this layered, heart filling, heartbreaking, all encompassing story of mothers, daughters, and grandmothers.
You didn’t have to open your world to outsiders but I for one am so grateful you did. As a daughter with a layered relationship with my mother, and being a mother of a daughter myself- I am grateful. I am still beyond words, these stories and how they weave in and out of each other will stay with me. I look forward to weaving my own, and from this book I am more inspired than ever to do it as genuinely as I can.
Thank you for the insight on grace, acceptance, acknowledgment. The writing was exquisite and heartfelt.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeanne Walker Bourland
- 07-07-21
Beautifully told story
At the top of my all time favorite memoirs. Often struck by her perfect use of descriptive language. Each person came fully to life.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Haley Abreu
- 07-05-17
Aweful
The story line was decent but the narrative missed the Mark completely. Felt the narrator droned on and on over details that made no sense, I recommend this to no one
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful