Look Homeward, Angel Audiobook By Thomas Wolfe cover art

Look Homeward, Angel

A Story of the Buried Life

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Look Homeward, Angel

By: Thomas Wolfe
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”

Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, is at once a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story and a dark novel depicting a cynical post-war world view. The book follows the life of Eugene Gant, a young man driven by passion, intellect, and a search for something greater than himself. His earliest years in rural North Carolina include a wonderful education in poetry and literature against the backdrop of a loving, but tumultuous family life. Eugene grows up to be a writer, and as he navigates the realities of school, love, health, and what it means to discover your place in the world, he must reconcile the choice between family and self-actualization.

Wolfe once described Look Homeward, Angel as “a book made out of my life,” and the care and insight he uses to tell Eugene’s story are apparent from the very first words of the story. Wolfe’s novel has become influential to so many young people yearning for more, and to writers yearning for literary truth and beauty.

Featuring an introduction written and read by Stefan Rudnicki.

Public Domain (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing Biographical Fiction Classics Genre Fiction World Literature

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This is a review of a long-time favourite. A book I re-visit periodically to immerse myself in the luxuriant, exotic prose written for the author’s own satisfaction above any thought of future readers. However, above all, it is a review of a new audio edition narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Since 2000 I have listened to over 2000 audio books, mainly on Audible. Without doubt Stefan has become my favourite narrator for a variety of reasons: he reads the prose in his rich deep voice, moving the novel forward in an easy progression, but with the characters, he is a veritable marvel, capturing the subtleties and nuances of ALL the characters, male, female, young, old or child,
In ANGEL he excels himself. I can close my eyes and listen to the dialogue, the exchanges between Eugene Gant, his parents, Oliver and Eliza, and his siblings, Stevie, Luke, Ben and Helen, then other characters from the various levels of the Altamont society. You are there in this richly diverse community at the beginning of the 20th century, viewing the vicissitudes of the lives of the citizens and being shown a carefully hand crafted tapestry that reveals the souls in torment and joy, or just the mundane.
LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL was Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, written in the 1920s when he was only in his 20s and first published in 1929. It follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the Gant family as they navigate their way through conflicts, alcoholism, disease and dysfunction. Initially we meet them as W O (Oliver) arrives in Altamont, meets and marries Eliza and has a family. The remainder of the book is depicted largely through the eyes of Eugene, their youngest child, as he comes of age with the century, and he strives to cope with the dysfunction of his family.
One of the things that greatly impressed me when I first read it over 50 years ago was the depiction of the lives and interactions of the citizens of Altamont. We are there with them through the seasons, their business failures and successes and their challenges. It is a microcosm of the greater world shown in wondrous prose.
Probably if you asked a hundred good readers the three best “coming of age” novels of the 20th century the majority would nominate two as LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL (Eugene Gant) and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (Holden Caulfield).
If you are an audio book listener I hope my extolling of the virtues of both Thomas Wolfe and Stefan Rudnicki encourage you to turn on the “Play” button for hours of pure literary joy.

A wonderful new reading of a literary Classic

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