Keep the Aspidistra Flying
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Narrated by:
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Richard Brown
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By:
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George Orwell
About this listen
Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works by day in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. Gordon has published a slim volume of verse and is determined to keep free of the “money world” of safe, lucrative jobs, marriage, and family responsibilities. This world, to Gordon, spells the end of art and aspidistra, the homely, indestructible house plant that stands in every middle-class British window.
Gordon’s sweetheart, Rosemary, understands him: she is patient with his pride and lack of funds. But then, as it happens with all lovers, events overtake them.
Orwell’s picture of the “money world”, as Gordon sees it, is in his best satirical vein.
©1956 The Estate of Sonia B. Orwell (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 3: End of the Chapter
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 30 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The third volume of this gripping family saga, End of the Chapter, shifts to the Cherrells - cousins of the Forsytes by marriage. Young Dinny Cherrell in particular cherishes their ancestral home, Condaford Grange, which represents stability in a rapidly changing world. Through his depiction of the lives and loves of this family, Galsworthy throws a brilliant spotlight on the social and political upheavals of the 1930s.
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Very enjoyable
- By Jonathan Kalkstein on 11-28-22
By: John Galsworthy
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A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
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I Capture the Castle
- By: Dodie Smith
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In this coming of age story, Dodie Smith introduces the visionary and eccentric character of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. The youngest daughter in a family of impoverished artists, it is her imagination and writing that takes us away from the ramshackle old English castle where they live, and towards an intriguing tale of husband-hunting and light-hearted sibling rivalry.
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Well, that was a surprise
- By Matthew on 12-16-13
By: Dodie Smith
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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Hunger
- A Novel
- By: Knut Hamsun
- Narrated by: Kevin Foley
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Knut Hamsun's Hunger, first published in 1890 and hailed as the literary beginning of the 20th century, is a masterpiece of psychologically driven fiction. The story of a struggling artist living on the edge of starvation, the novel portrays the unnamed first-person narrator's descent into paranoia, despair, and madness as hunger overtakes him. As the protagonist loses his grip on reality, Hamsun brilliantly portrays the disturbing and irrational recesses of the human mind through increasingly disjointed and urgent prose.
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Book quite good; wrong narrator
- By Erez on 05-05-11
By: Knut Hamsun
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Three Comrades
- By: Erich Maria Remarque, Arthur Wesley Wheen - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city, three young men are earning a thin and precarious living. Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around them. Then the youngest of them falls in love and brings into the group a young woman who will become a comrade as well, as they are all tested in ways they can have never imagined.
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Love and friendship in a dying world.
- By Tarquin on 03-18-19
By: Erich Maria Remarque, and others
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes “ I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.”
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A dry run at big, complex themes
- By Darwin8u on 12-08-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
What listeners say about Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ray Hayes
- 09-18-17
very enjoyable
I really did enjoy the story. good character development. I also really enjoyed this narrator.
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- Darwin8u
- 08-15-12
Vicisti, O aspidistra!
Oh, what an ode to the money-gods and aspidistras. An amazing, emotional journey of one man's fight against aspidistras and the inevitable pull of the money-gods. This is a novel that is warm, hard, depressing, funny, absurd and at the end virtuous and redeeming. Orwell is able to simultaneously thread the needles of commerce, class, art and protest. Orwell weaves his story with satire and pathos, but doesn't make caricatures of ANY of his characters. Love Richard Brown's laid back narration.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Andorboth
- 07-16-23
this dry satire will have you in tears laughing
I needed to write this review because Richard Brown's reading of this novel truly made me fall in love with audiobooks way back in the 1990s. I finally found it here again.
Yes, the audio is a bit out of date, but please hear me out: his voice captures the tone of this novel perfectly. I listened to this once with my family and we could not stop laughing, or simply marveling at the witty observations of interwar Britain.
This is also a novel about life in a bookshop. The satire about literary life (and I speak from experience, as someone who also worked in a new generation of bookshops: Barnes & Noble) is just too funny, even as we love literature. So I strongly recommend this novel. You'll encounter another side of Orwell. And just remember its basic lesson: money, money - always money.
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- Anonymous
- 10-27-16
Monotonous
What didn’t you like about Richard Brown’s performance?
Brown's voice is shrill and monotonous. I would return it if I could and certainly I won't buy another book he has narrated.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Francoise
- 10-23-18
More Audible Tech problems
The audible version is not whispersynched to the Kindle book. An irritating defect. Not at all happy.
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