Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom
A Story
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Narrated by:
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Orlagh Cassidy
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By:
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Sylvia Plath
About this listen
This newly discovered story by literary legend Sylvia Plath stands on its own and is remarkable for its symbolic, allegorical approach to a young woman’s rebellion against convention and forceful taking of control of her own life.
Written while Sylvia Plath was a student at Smith College in 1952, Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom tells the story of a young woman’s fateful train journey.
Lips the color of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like “guilt, and guilt, and guilt”: These are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom.
“But what is the ninth kingdom?” she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. “It is the kingdom of the frozen will”, comes the reply. “There is no going back.”
Sylvia Plath’s strange, dark tale of female agency and independence, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.
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At the American Academy of Classical Art, popular opinion has it that the school's handsome and mysterious founder, Raphael Sinclair, is a vampire. It is a rumor Rafe does nothing to dispel. Scholarship student Tessa Moss has long dreamed of the chance to study at Rafe's Academy. But she is floundering amidst the ups and downs of a relationship with egotistical art star Lucian Swain. Then, one of Tessa's sketches catches Rafe's attention: a drawing of a young woman in 1930s clothing who is covering the eyes of a child.
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UGH... Will the Heroine Ever Grow Up?
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We the Living
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We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three people who demand the right to live their own lives. At its center is a girl whose passionate love is her fortress against the cruelty and oppression of a totalitarian state. Rand said of this book: "It is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write."
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Emotionally intense, historically authentic
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In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
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Too bad zero was not a choice...
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The classic urban tale of a young Black woman's struggle to raise her son alone amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of 1940s Harlem.
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The ending
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Laughter in the Dark
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Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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Death is often the point of life's joke
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Sanctuary
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A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hard-boiled detective fiction, Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake. She introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.
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disappointment
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Koko
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KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They are Vietnam vets — a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a single shattering secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York.
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7 hours in and I am done
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Always a Witch
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Since the gripping conclusion of Once a Witch, Tamsin Greene has been haunted by her grandmother's prophecy that she will soon be forced to make a crucial decision...one so terrible that it could harm her family forever.
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...Always a Witch
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The Jewel
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Violet, born and raised in the Marsh, has been trained as a surrogate for the royalty - because in the Jewel the only thing more important than opulence is offspring. Purchased at the surrogacy auction by the Duchess of the Lake and greeted with a slap to the face, Violet (now known only as #197) quickly learns of the brutal truths that lie beneath the Jewel's glittering facade.
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Left Me Feeling Annoyed
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What listeners say about Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kdiz
- 04-03-20
Why not!
A very short, approachable listen. I appreciate what Sylvia Plath is getting at with this. Not world-altering, but worth it!
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- Mark M.
- 01-23-19
Unusual, early gem from Sylvia Plath
“Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom”, while not perfect, is a fascinating, intriguing read (or listen), worthy of going though a second time, to study the language and explore the allegory at work.
Written when Sylvia Plath was only 20, it’s not as concise or confident in its wording as in her later prose and poetry, as she hadn’t yet fully found her voice as a writer. Even so, it’s a rather unique and fascinating little tale.
For readers interested in Plath the person and what made her tick, this story definitely adds detail, giving a further glimpse into what was going through her head at the time, as far as conformity and the expectations of others. It also shows an unusual imagination that isn’t afraid to go a little dark to get its ideas across. The fact that Mademoiselle magazine rejected the story is no surprise. A bittersweet tale of a debutante’s ball it isn’t.
As literature it may not be to everyone’s liking, and it isn’t even particularly typical of Plath. So be careful with your expectations going into it. If you approach it in the right context, you may find it fascinating.
And as for the audiobook, the narrator is perfect.
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9 people found this helpful