Little Failure
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Todd Ross
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By:
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Gary Shteyngart
About this listen
After three acclaimed novels - The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far.
Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own. Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart' s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.
©2014 Gary Shteyngart (P)2014 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Apocalypse Child
- A Life in End Times - a Memoir
- By: Flor Edwards
- Narrated by: Flor Edwards
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first 13 years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be 13 years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her.
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A truly unique background and story
- By Asaph on 04-13-18
By: Flor Edwards
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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
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"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.
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If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
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Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
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The Girl Who Smiled Beads
- A Story of War and What Comes After
- By: Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
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Narrator detracts from story
- By Laura on 01-16-19
By: Clemantine Wamariya, and others
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Until I Say Good-Bye
- My Year of Living with Joy
- By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, Bret Witter
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Susan Spencer-Wendel's Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). After Spencer-Wendel, a celebrated journalist at the Palm Beach Post, learns of her diagnosis of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she embarks on several adventures, traveling to several countries and sharing special experiences with loved ones.
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Until I Say Good-Bye is a paradox for me.
- By Bonny on 03-19-13
By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, and others
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The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
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Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
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The Great Spring
- Writing, Zen, and This ZigZag Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.
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An enjoyable insight
- By Leigh A on 05-22-23
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Waiting for Snow in Havana
- Confessions of a Cuban Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences. The neighbor's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. Then, in January 1959, the world changed....
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Poorly chosen narrator
- By LS on 02-10-16
By: Carlos Eire
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Disgruntled
- By: Asali Solomon
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she calls her father - a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the Martyrs" and discuss "the community".
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Loved It!!!
- By ayodele higgs on 05-20-15
By: Asali Solomon
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Tiger, Tiger
- A Memoir
- By: Margaux Fragoso
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is 51. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child’s paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.
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a weirdly loving diatribe against pervs.
- By Dane Flakeman on 05-21-11
By: Margaux Fragoso
What listeners say about Little Failure
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sven
- 06-18-16
Witty and funny
You have to be from eastern Europe to fully enjoy this and empathize with his experience.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Litlepapoose
- 02-12-14
Great story, wonderful narration!
The narration complements the text wonderfully. I am not sure the author could have done better himself. The narrator has different voices for the author as adult, as child, for his father etc. It is a wonderful performance and you will not want to stop listening. Absolutely worth it. I can see myself listening to this at another time, and perhaps even reading Shteyngart's books.
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1 person found this helpful
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- jdh7
- 01-14-14
I loved it!
What made the experience of listening to Little Failure the most enjoyable?
The narrator has a calm, clear voice. He is able to shift from an English accent to Russian accent to Russian to Hebrew in a smooth and natural way. He really captured the emotion in the words he read.
What did you like best about this story?
The author's ability to laugh at himself and his keen satire on a number of topics.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
yes
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bolie
- 01-20-15
Good memoir... Good story...
Great performance.. Could do without the effort for fake Russian accents. Would have been better straight up English, without the poor attempts at foreign accents. They all sound like bad variations of Dracula.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Emeritus
- 05-24-14
got more disappointing
I am a big Shteyngart fan and was fun in the early going but got much less so as he got into adolescence - most adolescents aren't that interesting and neither is he. Too bad. Go back to novels.
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1 person found this helpful
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- HRH Karen
- 05-27-18
Still laughing and weeping
Really, a great immigrant story. G. Shteyngart can coax a laugh and a sigh from the same sentence. He can place you right in the room with him, self deprecating and darling, and his perplexed, quasi lost but not helpless parents who just love him so much and, simultaneously, damage him terribly, and get you to see the moment he is describing from all sides. Particularly in scenes with G and his parents, you simultaneously feel for both of them.
Everyone in this story of life in the new world is trying his/her best, and making mistakes that scar deeply. When GS spoke the book's last lines I wanted more. I wanted to know what came next.
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- melanie
- 04-18-15
well written narrative of the immigrant experience
What did you love best about Little Failure?
lots of self depracating humor ala woody allen
What did you like best about this story?
everyone was very real--felt like you knew the characters
Which character – as performed by Jonathan Todd Ross – was your favorite?
why Gary, of course!
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
His description of trying to fit in to his new high school, recognizing diversity in backgrounds but less diversity in intellectual abilities
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1 person found this helpful
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- DebHumm
- 01-17-15
Modern Soviet Immigrant Story
This author is smartly witty. The narrator is genius. His Russian accent gets fainter as the story goes along and the protagonist assimilates into the American culture.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gar
- 07-15-20
very good listen
I really enjoyed this audiobook. The author is very funny and his life story is very interesting. Russian immigrant, challenging, quirky parents(ultimately loving), dealing with American kids as both a Jewish person and from a country which most Americans despised at the time of the author's arrival. The narrator was excellent, very good with Russian accents, a very good fit with the author's words. Well done!
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- Scott
- 04-21-15
Funny in doses
Any additional comments?
This amusing, frequently hilarious memoir chronicles Shteyngart journey from Soviet era childhood in Leningrad, to his family’s emigration in the late 70”s to New York, to his college years and first time book deal. Shteyngart indisputably has a gift for storytelling and turn of phrase and the narrative breezes along. His experiences are heavily dosed with self-deprecating humor and one liners that sometimes border on shtick. Though the book is often funny, I found that if I listened too long, it tended to lose its charm and grate a bit. I found I liked it much better when I listened to it in small, measured doses. The narration is spot on, capturing Shteyngart’s angst ridden persona. The mimicry of his parent’s Russian accents humorously (and without insult) enlivens what they are saying. If you haven’t read any of Shteyngart’s fiction (I hadn’t), don’t let that deter you from Little Failure. In the end, this is a lighthearted, breezy read that won’t change your life but will distract you from it.
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1 person found this helpful