MacArthur Park
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Eva Kaminsky
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By:
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Judith Freeman
About this listen
A captivating, emotionally taut novel about the complexities of a friendship between two women - and how it shapes, and reshapes, both of their lives.
"Filled with gorgeous prose and deep emotion.... Explores what it means to be an artist, delves into the vicissitudes of life and death, and takes us on journey through the splendor (and sometimes ugliness) of the American West - with dollops of Flaubert, Faulkner, Chekhov, Collette, and Chandler along the way." (Lisa See, author of The Island of Sea Women)
Jolene and Verna share complicated ties that have crystallized over time. Beginning when they were girls discovering their needs and desires, their ongoing stories have been inextricably linked. But when Verna marries Vincent, Jolene’s ex-husband, their paths may have finally, permanently diverged.
A successful and provocative feminist artist, Jolene travels the world, attracting attention wherever she goes. Verna, a writer, works from her home near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where she and Vincent plan to spend the rest of their lives in a contemplative, intimate routine. Then Jolene asks one more favor of Verna - to take a road trip with her to their small hometown in Utah. It’s a journey that will force them to confront both the truths and falsehoods of their memories of each other and of the very beginnings of their friendship, and to reckon with the meaning of love, of time itself, of the bonds that matter most to us, and with what we owe one another.
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Critic reviews
“Intelligent, challenging fiction [with] bravura descriptions of diverse American landscapes.... Freeman asks us to understand that committed relationships necessarily involve conflict and compromise.” (Kirkus Reviews)
"Judith Freeman has long been one of our wisest and wiliest radicals. She's never written a book more daring than MacArthur Park, an audacious novel that is several books in one: a revealing piece of auto-fiction, a story about an alter-egoing female friendship, a portrait of a tricky marriage, a vivid road trip along little known Western highways, a debate between different visions of art (and womanhood!), and a rumination on the importance of finding somewhere to call home. As scrupulous and beautifully observed as all her work, this is one of those books that gets better and better as you go along." (John Powers, critic at large, Fresh Air with Terry Gross)
“A wonderful and revealing book about the bond between two strong American women involved in a lifelong triangle and the different, sometimes conflicting, paths they take across time - and across the country - toward intimacy and real self-knowledge. Eccentric, readable, and beautifully crafted, this novel shows us what it means to be an artist and what it means to love other people, and a stream of bracing fun and wit burbles behind the book’s powerful, contemporary American story. Freeman, as always, captures nuance and character in swift, evocative strokes, and never flinches from taking a hard look at what the dark future holds and how we are to face it.” (Amy Wilentz, author of The Rainy Season)
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In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
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🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
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Lady Oracle
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From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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A Feminist Romp
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City of Girls
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Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
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A strong story
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Something She's Not Telling Us
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Overall
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Story
Charlotte has everything in life that she ever could have hoped for: a doting, artistic husband, a small-but-thriving flower shop, and her sweet, smart five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Her relationship with her mother might be strained, but the distance between them helps. And her younger brother Rocco may have horrible taste in women, but when he introduces his new girlfriend to Charlotte and her family, they are cautiously optimistic that she could be The One. Daisy seems to love Ruth, and she can’t be any worse than the klepto Rocco brought home the last time.
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Should be "Something Almost Happened"
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The Story of Arthur Truluv
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Three people find their way back from loss and loneliness to a different kind of belonging in this deeply moving novel. Arthur, an old widower struggling to overcome his grief, meets Maddy, a troubled teenage girl who avoids school by hiding out where Arthur goes every day for lunch. The two strike up a friendship that draws them out of isolation.
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Sickly Sweet
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Clara Callan
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Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.
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charming intimate refreshing
- By L on 09-10-04
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The Promise
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Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
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Excellent novel
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Young Hearts Crying
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Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
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- Bax
- 12-11-21
An Outstanding Performance by Writer and Narrator
Here's the modern West, at least from Salt lake to L.A. from the introspective of two childhood friends, now long estranged and one now married to the other's former husband. Freeman's novel, written masterfully in her always personal style, and narrated with delightful passion by the talented, multi-voice Kaminsky, accompanied me recently as I drove through Red Rock country of Utah and Nevada for 17 hours, or more. How lovely to have these two female characters as "passengers" on one of the most beautiful drives of my life. Highly entertaining, I stayed eager not only to be on my journey, but to have these three (including their mutual spouse, Vincent) with me for every mile. I wish the journey had been longer....
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