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October Light
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
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Publisher's summary
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. New Directions is excited to reissue the Gardner classics, beginning with October Light, a complex relationship rendered in a down-to-earth narrative.
October Light is one of John Gardner's masterworks. The penniless widow of a once-wealthy dentist, Sally Abbot now lives in the Vermont farmhouse of her older brother, 72-year-old James Page. Polar opposites in nearly every way, their clash of values turns a bitter corner when the exacting and resolute James takes a shotgun to his sister's color television set. After he locks Sally up in her room with the trashy "blockbuster" novel that has consumed her (and only apples to eat), the novel-within-the-novel becomes an echo chamber providing glimpses into the history of the family that spawned these bizarre, sad, and stubborn people. Gardner uses the turbulent siblings as a stepping-off point from which he expands upon the lives of their extended families, and the rural community that surrounds them. He also engages larger issues of how liberals and conservatives define themselves, and considers those moments when life transcends all their arguments.
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"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.
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Punch in the gut
- By Rebecca on 05-08-17
By: James Baldwin
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
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Hark! The Herald Angels Scream
- By: Christopher Golden - editor, Joe R. Lansdale, Scott Smith, and others
- Narrated by: Charles Constant, Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.
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Some good, some clunkers. Some fun, none scary.
- By Max Trivial on 12-24-18
By: Christopher Golden - editor, and others
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Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
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Everything That Rises Must Converge
- By: Flannery O’Connor
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot, Karen White, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment.
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Pride goeth before the fall
- By Ryan on 08-14-13
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Darling Jim
- A Novel
- By: Christian Moerk
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye, Justine Eyre
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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When two sisters and their aunt are found dead in their suburban Dublin home, it seems that the secret behind their untimely demise will never be known. But then Niall, a young mailman, finds a mysterious diary in the post office's dead-letter bin. From beyond the grave, Fiona Walsh shares the most tragic love story he's ever heard---and her tale has only just begun.
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Great Story
- By Book Worm on 05-28-09
By: Christian Moerk
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The Hollow Ground
- By: Natalie S. Harnett
- Narrated by: Luci Christian
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
What listeners say about October Light
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joshua
- 12-15-14
Very Literary
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Often times, characters or the narration would go on digressions about various topics, probably for thematic reasons. I personally think they were overused.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
I did like learning about James and Sally and their family history. And there were some moments I found funny, such as the end of the insert story or James' "We'll see about that!"
Least interesting was the above-mentioned digressions.
Which character – as performed by Steve Coulter – was your favorite?
They were all well acted. If I had to choose one, it would be cranky old James Page.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
Yes. Don't misunderstand me, I think this book would make a horrible movie. I'd go to the theater just for the end of "Smugglers of Lost Souls' Rock."
Any additional comments?
This is a story without much movement. If you like your books fast-paced, I can't recommend this one.
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- Tad Davis
- 07-05-16
Two for the price of one
A lovely but sometimes baffling book from John Gardner (the John Gardner who wrote "Grendel" and "The Sunlight Dialogues" - not the mystery writer). Gardner is nothing if not audacious: and here, audaciously, he gives us two books for the price of one.
The first book is an Iowa Writers' Conference-type novel: it's about a farmer in rural Vermont whose sister is living with him; both are widowed, both are cranky, both are sitting on a mare's nest of unconfronted, undigested family tragedies. Details of place and exposition of character are dense and sharply observed. The brilliance here - and there's always brilliance in a John Gardner book - is watching how a conflict that starts out as slightly comic turns increasingly serious and even dangerous.
For a good bit of the novel, the sister is holed up in her room in protest. She finds a trashy novel and begins reading it to pass the time. And Gardner being Gardner, he gives us most of that novel as well - minus the pages that have fallen out of the cheap paperback binding.
Nothing could be more different from the first novel. The trashy novel is a phantasmagoria of marijuana smuggling, piracy, kidnapping, attempted suicide, sex, immigration, and guns. And flying saucers. Did I mention the flying saucers? And a character who, in the midst of a kangaroo trial, launches into a rambling diatribe about philosophical systems that sounds a bit like one of the Sunlight Dialogues.
Both were entertaining, and they intercut and inform each other in surprising ways. The "outer" story is slow at times, but the action becomes increasingly unhinged: there are plenty of explosions, and the ending is deeply satisfying. (The ending of the trashy novel is somewhat less so; but it IS a trashy novel with missing pages, after all.)
Steve Coulter is a wonderful narrator who nails every single character regardless of which story they appear in. I'll definitely be looking for more books narrated by him in the future.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Suzanne Coralynne Hunter
- 12-10-17
Sad
Would you try another book from John Gardner and/or Steve Coulter?
No
Has October Light turned you off from other books in this genre?
No, I want to read more of the Mohawk Valley writers but I think Gardner is over rated.
Would you be willing to try another one of Steve Coulter’s performances?
Sure
What character would you cut from October Light?
I’d cut the hoaky subplot that his has going with one of the characters reading a book.
Any additional comments?
Gardner’s style is similar to Russo’s (whom I love) and the characters in this book were well developed but they were depressive. It was too sad without redemption.
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1 person found this helpful