
Ironweed
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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By:
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William Kennedy
About this listen
Ironweed is the best-known of William Kennedy's three Albany-based novels. Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally – and fatally – dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.
As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of William Kennedy's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Russell Banks about the life and work of William Kennedy – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.
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Editorial reviews
The living and the dead, the past and the present linger together in William Kennedy's haunting, lyrical masterpiece, Ironweed. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1984 and one of the best books in Kennedy's deservedly-praised "Albany cycle", Ironweed reads like a classic novel James Joyce would have written if he had grown up in upstate New York in the late 19th century. One sentence flows seamlessly into the next, the words lingering in your mind like the lyrics of a melancholy ballad sung by an Irish tenor who's lived a hard, heart-breaking life.
Set on Halloween and the day after in 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, Ironweed tells the story of Francis Phelan, a middle-aged, self-described "bum" who once dazzled fans playing third base for the Washington Senators but who's now simply struggling to get through one day at a time. Phelan's life went off track years earlier when he accidentally dropped his 13-day-old son on the floor, killing the baby.
The baby's death and other tragic events in Phelan's past haunt him. Phelan vainly tries to forget such incidents. But the harder he tries, the more real his demons become. So as the novel unfolds, many of the people Phelan once knew who died years ago now appear more real to him than the living who walk the streets of Albany. And yet Phelan never asks for anyone's pity. Kennedy wisely avoids sentimentalizing Phelan's struggle to come to terms with his past. Instead, Kennedy bestows honor and dignity on Phelan and his fellow dispossessed friends, writing about the down-and-out with a touch as light and graceful as a concert pianist.
And like Jack Nicholson, who famously portrayed Phelan in a film adaptation of Kennedy's grim novel, narrator Jonathan Davis delivers an astounding reading of Ironweed in the Audible Modern Vanguard production of this book. Like Nicholson, Davis gives an understated yet powerful performance, allowing the grandeur of the author's vivid language to speak for itself. And like Kennedy, Davis veers from a gritty, hardscrabble tone of voice one second, to a solemn, elegiac whisper when expressing Phelan's yearning to set things right in his life once and for all. Ironweed will cling to your memory long after you've parted ways with Phelan and his memorable cast of friends. -Ken Ross
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Performance
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This first entry in John Dos Passos's celebrated U.S.A. trilogy paints a grand picture of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century.
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Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
- By Ryan on 06-01-13
By: John Dos Passos
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The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford
- By: Jean Stafford
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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These Pulitzer Prize-winning stories represent the major short works of fiction by one of the most distinctively American stylists of her day. Jean Stafford communicates the small details of loneliness and connection, the search for freedom, and the desire to belong, that not only illuminate whole lives but also convey with an elegant economy of words the sense of the place and time in which her protagonists find themselves. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford includes the acclaimed story "An Influx of Poets".
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dark, sad and tragic, but moving and beautiful
- By Kelly on 07-29-20
By: Jean Stafford
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The Friends of Eddie Coyle
- By: George V. Higgins, Dennis Lehane - Introduction
- Narrated by: Mark Hammer
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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George V. Higgins's seminal crime novel is a down-and-dirty tale of thieves, mobsters, and cops on the mean streets of Boston. When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony, he's looking at three years in the pen—that is, unless he sells out one of his big-fish clients to the DA. But which of the many hoods, gunmen, and executioners whom he calls his friends should he send up the river? Told almost entirely in crackling dialogue by a vivid cast of lowlifes and detectives, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is one of the greatest crime novels ever written.
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Fantastic Narration meets Fantastic Dialogue
- By Roy Reiss on 06-18-12
By: George V. Higgins, and others
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A Summons to Memphis
- By: Peter Taylor
- Narrated by: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1917, Tennessee author Peter Taylor won the Pulitzer Prize for this exceptional work of literature. The well-to-do Carver family moves to Memphis from Nashville, where they become embroiled in a domestic dispute over the widower patriarch's decision to remarry.
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Not at all interesting
- By Nichole on 06-01-09
By: Peter Taylor
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Foreign Affairs
- By: Alison Lurie
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Virginia Miner, a 50-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.
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Fascinating
- By Margaret on 03-16-12
By: Alison Lurie
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Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
- A Novel
- By: Oscar Hijuelos, Ann Patchett - introduction
- Narrated by: Jason Canela, Betsy Foldes, Gustavo Rex
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 1949 and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection.
By: Oscar Hijuelos, and others
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D. Amélia (Portuguese Edition)
- A rainha exilada que deixou o coração em Portugal [The Exiled Queen Who Left Her Heart in Portugal]
- By: Isabel Stilwell
- Narrated by: Ana Stilwell
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Última rainha de Portugal, D. Amélia viveu durante 24 anos num país que amou como seu, apesar de nele ter deixado enterrados uma filha prematura que morreu à nascença, o seu primogénito D. Luís Filipe, herdeiro do trono, e o marido D. Carlos assassinados em pleno Terreiro do Paço a tiro de carabina e pistola.
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Livro muito interessante e muito bem lido!
- By CARLOS M S MARTINS on 01-21-24
By: Isabel Stilwell
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Tinkers
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: newspaper clippings, old photographs, wool jackets, rusty tools, and the mangled brass works of antique clocks. Soon, the clouds from the sky above plummet down on top of him, followed by the stars, till the black night covers him like a shroud. He is hallucinating.
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Annoying and pretentious
- By William on 01-12-09
By: Paul Harding
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Livre para recomeçar [Free to Start Over]
- By: Paola Aleksandra
- Narrated by: Lari Fernandes
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Anastácia carrega na pele as marcas deixadas por um casamento odioso. Em sua última noite como uma mulher livre, ela perdeu o controle do seu futuro e acabou presa no famoso hospício para alienados do Rio de Janeiro. Mas agora, três anos após sua internação, Anastácia precisará enfrentar o passado e descobrir como recomeçar. Quem ela escolherá ser longe do peso do título de Condessa De Vienne?
By: Paola Aleksandra
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The Black Envelope
- By: Norman Manea, Patrick Camiller - translator
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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A splendid, violent spring suddenly grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, an eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high school teacher on "moral grounds", is investigating his father's death 40 years after the fact and is drawn into a web of suspicion and black humor.
By: Norman Manea, and others
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A Thousand Acres
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.
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good book bad reader
- By C. Carlson on 08-07-08
By: Jane Smiley
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A Confederacy of Dunces
- By: John Kennedy Toole
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pultizer Prize–winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese, self-absorbed, hapless Don Quixote of the French Quarter, whose half-hearted attempts at employment lead to a series of wacky adventures among the lower denizens of New Orleans.
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Well Done
- By Jon on 09-18-05
That is the feeling tone of ???Ironweed.??? It is a dark, dirty, sordid and sad story. Francis Phelan was on a long journey away from the circumstances of his existence, but eventually found himself trying to go home. I learned so much from this book on so many levels. We worry about so many stupid things, but Fran and his compatriots only worried about two: 1) Where will I sleep tonight? And 2) Where and when will I find something to eat? Those are pretty basic levels on Maslow???s hierarchy of needs. Still, Fran shows some hope for a more normal life in the face of acceptance and love from the family he abandoned 22 years earlier. I do not recommend this book to just anyone. It is beautifully written, but deals with a dark and somber story among the seedier members of society. Not much about it is light hearted or happy. It is a long ride through much pain and sorrow before even a glimmer of hope is found. Nevertheless, the book ends with us having reason to hope that Francis at last finds a modicum of peace and love within the shelter of his family???s love. This story is bound to be on my mind for a long time.
The narrator is very good, but has an annoying way of saying '"Francis said . . ." or whoever. I guess I eventually got used to it, but would hesitate to get another book narrated by him for that reason. Otherwise, he was very good.
What a sad, sorrowful story
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Great Story, Excellent Narration
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Beautiful!
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I personally love the narrator, one of the reasons I chose to get this book. The other reason was that this book was on critics' lists, and for good reason. You're safe spending your credit on this one.
Splendid grim tale
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Quite the surprise
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The narrator is perfect, he pushes the story with transparent delivery, never shading the prose, but letting the words fill the performance.
I highly recommend this book.
Great a wonder of story telling in the 1930's
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I liked how the ghosts/characters of his past kept appearing and watching him. I liked Francis, felt sorry for him, and cheered for him.
The author, William Kennedy's writing style is excellent. The narrator, Jonathan Davis, was perfect.
A Depressing Heartwarming Story
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The narration was excellent subtly expressing the conflicting emotions of the character very well, adding pleasure to the listening.
The was my first William Kennedy novel and I will add the others in the Albany Series to my queue.
Darkly Lovely
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I waited 36 years to read this one
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#ironweed, the film adaptation of.the novel by #williamkennedy starting Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, was one of those movies that I thought I had watched one late night on 90's HBO but honestly could remember nothing about. Landing at #92 on the #modernlibrarytop100novelsany novels in the bottom quarter of the list have received mixed reviews by me. This is a pleasant exception. Being the third of eight Kennedy novels that make up #The Albany Cycle", so dubbed as the author madly loved the upstate New York City, this novel is based on 1938 and focuses on former Big League Baseball player #francisphelan who has spent the last twenty-odd years on the bum and deep in the bottle following the accidental death of his infant son. Having wandered the highway and byways for the last nine years with fellow alcoholic Helen, she, like so many within his intimate circle of rummies and bums suffer from untreated illnesses and the ravages of living in the open with no money, little to eat and every dime more likely invested in the next bottle.
Written in 1982, Ironweed won the #1984 #pulitzerprizeforfiction , and it is well deserved. As a fan of Steinbeck, Faulker and Hemingway, their influence in his style is obvious, beautiful and compelling. I will be diving more into The Albany Cycle in the future. And maybe I will try watching the film again.
#pulitzerprizereadingchallenge #readtheworldchallenge #globalreadingchallenge #americanliterature
Hauntings and musings at the bottom of a bottle
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