-
Lincoln in the Bardo
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, Carrie Brownstein, Don Cheadle, Lena Dunham, Bill Hader, Kirby Heyborne, Keegan-Michael Key, Julianne Moore, Megan Mullally, Susan Sarandon, Ben Stiller, Various
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
***WINNER OF THE 2018 AUDIE AWARD FOR AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR***
The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
The 166-person full cast features award-winning actors and musicians, as well as a number of Saunders’ family, friends, and members of his publishing team, including, in order of their appearance:
Nick Offerman as HANS VOLLMAN
David Sedaris as ROGER BEVINS III
Carrie Brownstein as ISABELLE PERKINS
George Saunders as THE REVEREND EVERLY THOMAS
Miranda July as MRS. ELIZABETH CRAWFORD
Lena Dunham as ELISE TRAYNOR
Ben Stiller as JACK MANDERS
Julianne Moore as JANE ELLIS
Susan Sarandon as MRS. ABIGAIL BLASS
Bradley Whitford as LT. CECIL STONE
Bill Hader as EDDIE BARON
Megan Mullally as BETSY BARON
Rainn Wilson as PERCIVAL “DASH” COLLIER
Jeff Tweedy as CAPTAIN WILLIAM PRINCE
Kat Dennings as MISS TAMARA DOOLITTLE
Jeffrey Tambor as PROFESSOR EDMUND BLOOMER
Mike O’Brien as LAWRENCE T. DECROIX
Keegan-Michael Key as ELSON FARWELL
Don Cheadle as THOMAS HAVENS
and
Patrick Wilson as STANLEY “PERFESSER” LIPPERT
with
Kirby Heyborne as WILLIE LINCOLN,
Mary Karr as MRS. ROSE MILLAND,
and Cassandra Campbell as Your Narrator
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Editorial reviews
Editors Select, February 2017 - Lincoln in the Bardo is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever listened to - and make no mistake, this one is meant to be listened to. One hundred and sixty-six individual narrators (led by Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, and the author George Saunders) came together to voice this wildly surreal audiobook. And while that might sound like a production stunt, the breadth of voices was necessary to create the immersive cacophony effect (almost a Greek chorus of Americana) - because Saunders' first full-length novel, a hugely ambitious work that delivers the most humbling and accurate portrait of grief I've ever encountered, is entirely voiced by ghosts. The listener finds himself in the Georgetown Cemetery, where young Willie Lincoln has been laid to rest and his grieving father (the president) keeps returning in a state of stumbling and stricken shambles, to the shocked confusion of the self-unaware dead. Perhaps most interestingly, the real events of the time (those things happening outside of the graveyard) are depicted entirely through historical snippets and citations so that the listener comes eventually to realize that these are also merely the impressions of the dead, even if not fictional. Emily, Audible Editor
Critic reviews
"A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review
“Grief guts us all, but rarely has it been elucidated with such nuance and brilliance as in Saunders’s Civil War phantasmagoria. Heartrending yet somehow hilarious, Saunders’s zinger of an allegory holds a mirror to our perilous current moment.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“An extended national ghost story . . . As anyone who knows Saunders’s work would expect, his first novel is a strikingly original production.”—The Washington Post
Featured Article: The Audible Essentials Top 100
The spirited (but friendly) debate over these titles could have gone on indefinitely. With years of listening, countless customer reviews, and a catalog of seemingly infinite great listens, 100 suddenly felt like a very small number. What we know for sure—each title that made it to this collection is elevated and made special in some way by audio, whether by a layered performance from a single narrator, a brilliantly cohesive full cast, original music, or immersive sound effects. Discover an audio experience for the ages.
Editor's Pick
The most dynamic audiobook out there
"There are one hundred and sixty-six different narrators, many of them celebrities, for George Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo, making it probably one of the most unique audio experiences you can find. It is a thrilling, hilarious, and tear-jerking production that highlights the power and dynamism of one of the best writers of modern times."
—Michael D., Audible Editor
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Story
From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.
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Great book, greatly narrated
- By Paula on 07-30-06
By: Geraldine Brooks
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Wicked
- The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
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It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
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The Girl in the Castle
- A Novel
- By: Santa Montefiore
- Narrated by: Genevieve Swallow
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born on the ninth day of the ninth month in the year 1900, Kitty Deverill grows up in Castle Deverill, on the sunning green hills of West Cork, Ireland - the same place her ancestors have always dwelt. She isn't fully Irish, as the son of the local veterinarian likes to tease her; but this doesn't stop Kitty and Jack O'Leary from falling in love....
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Explicitness
- By Billie on 04-28-17
By: Santa Montefiore
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Christmas Stories
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Charles Dickens was a major contributor to the romantic revival of Christmas traditions that occurred in the Victorian era. With their heart, humor and good morals, Dickens' Christmas stories have made the author's name synonymous with the season. Here we present four charming novellas to complete his series that began with "A Christmas Carol", with echoes of sleigh bells throughout. The stories include "The Chimes", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "The Battle of Life", and "The Haunted Man" - the perfect companion for the yearly celebrations.
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Delightful
- By Tad Davis on 08-22-16
By: Charles Dickens
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The Pale Blue Eye
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When the body of a suicide victim disappears at West Point Military Academy in 1831, only to be discovered hours later missing its heart, the Academy calls on retired detective Gus Landor to investigate. Landor is something of a legend among his peers, noted for an uncanny, Holmesian ability to read people. When Edgar Allan Poe, a new cadet, comes forth with his own cryptic conclusion—that the man Landor is looking for is a poet—Landor is intrigued and enlists Poe as his assistant.
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Could not get through it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-15
By: Louis Bayard
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Annie Dunne
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
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Splendid
- By Shady on 06-21-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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Florence Grace
- By: Tracy Rees
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Florrie Buckley is an orphan living on the wind-blasted moors of Cornwall. It's a hard existence, but Florrie is content; she runs wild in the mysterious landscape. She thinks her destiny is set in stone. But when Florrie is 14, she inherits a never-imagined secret. She is related to a wealthy and notorious London family: the Graces.
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Utterly brilliant!!!
- By Maria on 07-04-16
By: Tracy Rees
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Raintree County
- By: Ross Lockridge Jr.
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 43 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life - from the battles of the Civil War to the politics of the Gilded Age, from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father.
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A great American novel, seriously!
- By Kirk McElhearn on 02-04-09
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Push Not the River
- By: James Conroyd Martin
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 19 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Push Not the River is the rich story of Poland in the late 1700's - a time of heartache and turmoil as the country's once peaceful people are torn apart by neighboring countries and divided loyalties. It is then, at the young and vulnerable age of seventeen, that Lady Anna Maria Berezowska loses both of her parents and must leave the only home she has ever known.
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Save your time; buy something else.
- By AMS on 10-22-15
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The Jewel of Seven Stars
- By: Bram Stoker
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The warning was inscribed on the entrance of the hidden tomb, forgotten for millennia in the sands of mystic Egypt. Then the archaeologists and grave robbers came in search of the fabled Jewel of Seven Stars, which they found clutched in the hand of the mummy. Few heeded the ancient warning, until all who came in contact with the Jewel began to die in a mysterious and violent way, with the marks of a strangler around their neck.
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Mother of all Mummy-Stories
- By Dorothea on 03-15-08
By: Bram Stoker
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Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 49 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....
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not to miss audible experience
- By dallas on 12-08-09
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The Taker
- By: Alma Katsu
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her...despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort.
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Too dark for my taste
- By Margaret on 05-04-14
By: Alma Katsu
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The Best Ghost Stories Ever Told
- Best Stories Ever Told
- By: Stephen Brennan - editor
- Narrated by: J. M. Badger, Imelda Pot
- Length: 24 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A big, brilliant, spooky collection of classic and contemporary ghost stories that will make you hesitate before turning off that light.
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A very mixed review
- By Michael Mayer on 08-05-15
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Dracula, My Love
- The Secret Journals of Mina Harker
- By: Syrie James
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Mina Harker is torn between two men. Struggling to hang on to the deep, pure love she's found within her marriage to her husband, Jonathan, she is inexorably drawn into a secret, passionate affair with a charismatic but dangerous lover. This haunted and haunting creature has awakened feelings and desires within her that she has never before known, remaking her as a woman. Although everyone she knows fears him and is pledged to destroy him, Mina sees a side to him that the others cannot.
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Far Better Than I Thought or Hoped For!
- By Troy on 03-27-13
By: Syrie James
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Doctor Zhivago
- By: Boris Pasternak, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator, Richard Pevear - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara.
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Russian Philosophical Feast
- By Syd Young on 02-16-13
By: Boris Pasternak, and others
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The Satanic Verses
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
- By David Edelberg on 11-24-12
By: Salman Rushdie
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- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
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Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
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Be prepared for something different...but good!
- By Mr. D on 02-21-14
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The Sellout
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- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
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A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.
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Appreciated it, but didn't like it
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A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
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An innovative and fresh listening experience
- By Scott Garrioch on 01-14-21
By: George Saunders
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
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It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
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A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
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Austerlitz
- By: W. G. Sebald
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.
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To each their own
- By Sebastian Romero on 04-23-20
By: W. G. Sebald
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Pastoralia
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
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Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders gives us, in his inventive and beloved voice, this best-selling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.
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Greatest living short story author reads own work.
- By Spam on 08-25-19
By: George Saunders
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Tenth of December
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- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
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Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
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Be prepared for something different...but good!
- By Mr. D on 02-21-14
By: George Saunders
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The Sellout
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
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A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.
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Appreciated it, but didn't like it
- By Eugenia on 04-14-16
By: Paul Beatty
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A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, and others
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For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
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An innovative and fresh listening experience
- By Scott Garrioch on 01-14-21
By: George Saunders
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- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
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It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
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A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
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Austerlitz
- By: W. G. Sebald
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.
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To each their own
- By Sebastian Romero on 04-23-20
By: W. G. Sebald
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Pastoralia
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
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Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders gives us, in his inventive and beloved voice, this best-selling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.
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Greatest living short story author reads own work.
- By Spam on 08-25-19
By: George Saunders
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Wolf Hall
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Ben Miles
- Length: 25 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
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Superb narration, but keep a character index at hand
- By Oculus on 12-27-20
By: Hilary Mantel
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Liberation Day
- Stories
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Tina Fey, Michael McKean, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The “best short story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose—wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned—Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.
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Extraordinary
- By REBECCA on 10-18-22
By: George Saunders
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2666
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, and others
- Length: 39 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- By William on 01-05-10
By: Roberto Bolaño
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Random Family
- Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
- By: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her extraordinary best seller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses listeners in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George; and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies.
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Speechless
- By Amazon Customer on 09-02-19
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The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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"Grandly Entertaining"? Really?
- By Georgia Burns on 10-08-13
By: Jonathan Franzen
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The Known World
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
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A meandering audiobook...
- By Daniel on 09-03-04
By: Edward P. Jones
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The Savage Detectives
- A Novel
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: Eddie Lopez, Armando Durán
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation. The Savage Detectives is a hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It is the first of Bolaño's two giant works, with 2666, to be translated into English and is already being hailed as a masterpiece.
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Bolaño Poetic Gyre
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: Roberto Bolaño
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Cloud Atlas
- A Novel
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter....
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thoroughly enjoyed
- By Elizabeth on 01-05-08
By: David Mitchell
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Underground Railroad
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Aïssa Maïga
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cora, seize ans, est esclave sur une plantation de coton dans la Géorgie d'avant la guerre de Sécession. Abandonnée par sa mère lorsqu'elle était enfant, elle survit tant bien que mal à la violence de sa condition. Lorsque Caesar, un esclave récemment arrivé de Virginie, lui propose de s'enfuir, elle accepte et tente, au péril de sa vie, de gagner avec lui les États libres du Nord. De la Caroline du Sud à l'Indiana en passant par le Tennessee, Cora va vivre une incroyable odyssée.
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Wrong language
- By David Osler on 07-25-22
By: Colson Whitehead
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Never Let Me Go
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.
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Be patient; it will pay off
- By Kc on 05-23-05
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
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Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
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Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
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An amazing book about complex human perception
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-04
By: Ian McEwan
What listeners say about Lincoln in the Bardo
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- Em
- 02-14-17
Otherworldly Brilliance
Lincoln in the Bardo is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever listened to - and make no mistake - this one is meant to be listened to. 166 individual narrators (led by Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, author George Saunders, and the incomparably sweet Kirby Heyborne as Willie) came together to voice this wildly surreal audiobook. And while that might sound like a production stunt, the breadth of voices is necessary to create the immersive cacophony effect (almost a Greek chorus of Americana) - because Saunders' first full-length novel, a hugely ambitious work that delivers a devastatingly accurate portrait of grief, is entirely voiced by ghosts.
The listener finds himself in a Georgetown Cemetary where young Willie Lincoln has just been laid to rest. The Civil War has only just begun, and Willie's grieving father (the president) returns to the graveyard in a state of stumbling and stricken shambles to look at and hold the body of his boy. This unorthodox behavior from a visitor triggers shocked confusion among the self-unaware dead who wonder what it means for their own fates. In rounding out his tale, Saunders depicts the real events of the time (those things happening outside of the graveyard) entirely through historical snippets and citations, and you eventually come to realize that these are also the impressions of the dead. The effect is such that the listener feels like he's spying in on a world completely outside of time, and defined only by the shifting perceptions of ethereal spirits. It's quite literally otherworldly, but the concerns of the voices feel recognizable, real, and at times contemporary, as every stratum of society is represented among the cast. Without a doubt this is one of the strangest books in our store - but please do not be discouraged by its oddity. There's some serious genius here.
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153 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-07-17
Amazing!!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
This is my first audio book and I chose it because of the 166 narrators!! And, because I have long enjoyed George Saunders writing. It was helpful that I read the first chapters on amazon, so I knew that the citations that were spoken were part of the actual text. Saunders has written a unique, compelling, surprising and touching story about a father's love for his son, the afterlife and so much more.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Lincoln in the Bardo?
The moment when Lincoln returns to the cemetery and the characters in the "bardo" are watching and marveling at the moment that he cradles his dead son. These souls are shocked and enthralled at the sight of "one of them" being held, touched, honored. It instills hope that the same could happen for them.
Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?
I just LOVED the ensemble of narrators. It was also really interesting to recognize specific narrators (Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Susan Sarandon, Julianne Moore, Lena Dunham) and consider why each person was chosen for the specific voice. This contemplation of the afterlife, and the voices of those who are caught in between worlds was fascinating.
Any additional comments?
This is such a unique story. I listened to it TWICE, as there were so many nuances and the story was so compelling I wanted to hear it again.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Mo
- 02-27-17
Distracting comments
Any additional comments?
The content of the book was wonderful, however I could not make it past chapter 3 due to all of the interruptions mid-sentence quoting a source. Could they not have put them at the end of a chapter or at the end of the book? Terribly distracting interruptions interferred with the story.
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5 people found this helpful
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- documentarylady
- 06-23-18
Profoundly intense. A+
This book knows no literary comparison. 10/10 stars on every level. The Audible reading is a theatre, with eyes closed.. a soulful, gorgeous, haunting dip into all things spiritual. Read along, or listen only but don't miss a word. Rated R for language and situational descriptions.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Alex C.
- 08-06-18
Hard to get through, but worth it
I listened to the book on tape. Honestly, this book was meant to be read out loud, and it would be pretty irritating to read it on paper. Except for intuitive guesses, you wouldn’t know who was saying what until you get to the end of each passage of speech.
This story would have been better told if it was narrated in a more conventional way. But there is nothing conventional about this book.
I thought the interspersed excerpts from primary source documents was an interesting but unnecessary decision. Maybe one or two to set off each chapter, but whole chapters of these things?
They interrupt the narrative flow and were pretty irritating at first. Because I was listening to the book, I thought there were a whole family of people named “Offset” who had all apparently kept diaries etc and worked in the Lincoln household. I knew this couldn’t be the case so I looked at an actual copy of the book and discovered it was “Opp Cit.” I was hearing, a citation device.
Each star I give to this book is for creativity and experimentation. I really liked the story as a whole, but it wasn’t easy to get through. This would have been a five star book if Saunders had made a couple concessions to his audience.
In the book on tape specifically, Nick Offerman and David Sedaris do a great job of performing the parts of the two main ghosts.
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- Lisa Nicarry
- 02-25-17
hard to follow . did not like it
very hard to follow. had to back track a lot and still didn't make sense. too much jumping around with too many characters
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- Staci S.
- 03-15-17
Insanely Imaginative
Emphasis on 'insane.' Incredibly creative, vivid, graphic, hilarious, and haunting. I will be chewing on it for weeks to come. Still not sure if I liked it but know that I loved it. The performances were exceptional. I am tempted to read it in book format to see what else I can glean from it.
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- Diane
- 11-06-17
Tour de Force
Every now and then a work of art, be it a piece of music, visual art, a poem or literature, will take my breath away because of its originality, insight, beauty and sheer genius. Lincoln in the Bardo is just such a work. Often, it seems, when a book is labeled original or creative, it is code for incomprehensible. Happily, that is not the case here—Saunders’ original approach only makes his characters more accessible, conveying their thoughts and feelings in a way that is deeply affecting.
Interweaving history, spirituality, fiction and biography, the book revovles around the illness and death of Lincoln’s son, Willie, as told from both sides of the grave. I confess that this episode from history especially touches me as I can recall reading a biography of Lincoln as a 10-year-old and bursting into shocked tears when Willie died. The book captures Lincoln’s profound grief at the death of his favorite son and yet also contains many moments of humor and insight into the human condition.
The full-cast narration wonderfully enhances the book’s content and even the inclusion of footnotes, while a little distracting at first, is done very well—a real challenge in an audiobook. It is very rare that I give a book 5 stars all the way around, but this one is fully deserving of the highest ranking. Highly recommended!
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- Jefferson
- 09-02-21
“You were a joy” and “All gifts are temporary”
Early in George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son Willie horribly dies of typhoid on February 20, 1862, after a big party at the White House, and the boy's ghost joins some adult ghosts who tell parts of their stories and welcome Willie into their Oak Hill Cemetery state of denial. Mr. Vollman was brained by a beam before he could consummate his marriage with his much younger wife, Mr. Bevins slashed his wrists in despair over losing his male beloved, and the Preacher’s face is frozen in a perpetual look of terror. All three, like their ghostly compatriots, have resolved to stay in the cemetery instead of moving on to wherever they're supposed to go, because 1) they can’t accept that they’re dead, referring to their corpses as “sick forms,” their coffins as “sick boxes,” and their tombs as “sick houses,” and 2) they have unfinished business with the “earlier place” (the world of the living), an unfulfilled desire, a need for revenge, and so on. The many imagined stories of the lives and deaths of the many ghosts—including people who lived throughout US history and from white and black races and high and low classes etc.—are varied and interesting, ranging from the profane and comical to the sublime and poignant. Kids' ghosts usually don't linger, but Willie has a strong will and is confused about what has happened to him. He wants to hang around his sick house in hopes that his father will visit so he can talk with him and find out what happened, etc.
Among the sections of that kind of fantasy (that recall Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book), Saunders interpolates many brief (sometimes lasting only a phrase) excerpts from myriad historical sources on Lincoln and his son and wife and the Civil War: eye-witness accounts, newspaper articles, letters, history books, and the like. The many sources give a composite view of Willie, Lincoln, and the Civil War and ground the fantasy elements. In time the quotations and the source titles cited after them started accumulating into a mass of historicity that convey a hint of the myriad published words and thoughts devoted to Lincoln. Interestingly, sometimes the sources obviously contradict each other, as when different ones say that on the night of the White House reception the moon was full, crescent, or obscured by clouds, or as when different sources say Lincoln was the ugliest man they’d ever met or the handsomest, and so on.
For the audiobook, each different ghost and historical source has a different reader--there are 166 of them--so it's a little chaotic, but it works when you get used to it. The 166 readers of the audiobook are mostly fine, especially Nick Offerman as Vollman and David Sedaris as Bevins, and the several readers who are not so skilled or appealing are only a minor distraction.
After finishing the book, I looked up bardo, finding that it derives from Tibetan Buddhism and refers to the phase between death and rebirth, which lasts longer or shorter depending on one’s life etc. Saunders implies no rebirth, and I think he’s using bardo as a kind of hellish limbo which lasts while spirits of the dead cannot let go of their former lives or accept their deaths.
I really liked the odd book! The fantasy parts are funny, awful, or poignant, the historical parts informative, appalling, or moving. I went through four Kleenexes through the first twenty-seven chapters (the 108 chapters in the novel are short, some lasting only a paragraph or two). I came to appreciate Lincoln more, given Willie’s early death and the intense hatred many Americans felt towards the President back then. The book demonstrates that the mid-war Lincoln was hardly the revered greatest president in the history of the USA that he’s perceived to be today, but rather an isolated, unsure, unpopular, and reluctant war leader. Saunders connects Lincoln’s loss of Willie to the terrible casualties of the Civil War and to the president’s growing sympathy for (or eroding aversion to) African Americans.
Some readers may be bored by the book because “nothing happens.” Indeed, the main plot lasts for only a few nights of narrative time and concerns the development of Willie’s ghost and the processing of his death by Lincoln, but the ways in which Willie affects the other ghosts and Saunders’ imagining of the nocturnal “life” of the cemetery and the personalities and biographies and 19th century voices of Vollman, Bevins, and the Preacher (and other ghosts) are absorbing and pleasurable.
It might be an unbearably painful book for people who have lost children, though it also might help them experience a kind of catharsis. I enjoyed, learned from, and was moved by the audiobook.
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- Chrisco
- 02-24-17
Unique
Abraham Lincoln: An American giant, perhaps that nation's greatest president. Here he is, brought so low and so humanized that one cannot help but to love the man for his pain and the depth of his love.
A must read!
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