Ordinary Life
Stories
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Narrated by:
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Elizabeth Berg
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By:
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Elizabeth Berg
About this listen
In this superb collection of short stories, Elizabeth Berg takes us into pivotal moments in the lives of women, when memories and events come together to create a sense of coherence, understanding, and change. In “Ordinary Life,” Mavis McPherson locks herself in the bathroom for a week, shutting out her husband and the realities of their life together — and, no, she isn’t contemplating a divorce. She just needs some time to think, to take stock of her life, and to arrive, finally, at a surprising conclusion.
In “White Dwarf” and “Martin’s Letter to Nan,” the secrets of a marriage are revealed with sensitivity and “brilliant insights about the human condition” (Detroit Free Press) that have become a trademark of Berg’s writing. The Charlotte Observer has said, “Berg captures the way women think as well as any writer.” Those qualities of wisdom and perception are everywhere present in Ordinary Life.
©2002 Elizabeth Berg (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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What if the one person you can't bear to be with is also the one person you can't bear to be without? Jamie McClintock is a free-spirited artist and single mother who has at last found peace and freedom sharing a farmhouse with an elderly man and his young grandson. But when the old man dies suddenly her idyllic country life comes to a halt as the old man's estranged son, Nate, returns to claim the house and his child.
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Great Writer, Great Narrator ! Loved it!
- By Ms. Critic on 05-30-09
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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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
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Little Earthquakes
- By: Jennifer Weiner
- Narrated by: Johanna Parker
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Rebecca Rothstein Rabinowitz is a plump, sexy chef who has a wonderful husband, a restaurant that's received citywide acclaim, a beautiful baby girl and the mother-in-law from hell. Kelly Day's life looks picture-perfect. But behind the doors, she's struggling to balance work, motherhood, and marriage, while dealing with an unemployed husband who seems content to channel-surf for eight hours a day....
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More than your average "chick lit"
- By Tricia on 11-13-11
By: Jennifer Weiner
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The Time Traveler's Wife
- By: Audrey Niffenegger
- Narrated by: Fred Berman, Phoebe Strole
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.
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One of my favorite books
- By Joey on 01-13-08
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How to Be an American Housewife
- A Novel
- By: Margaret Dilloway
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington, Emily Durante
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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How to Be an American Housewife is a novel about mothers and daughters and the pull of tradition. It tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected. When illness prevents Shoko from traveling to Japan, she asks Sue to go in her place. The trip reveals family secrets that change their lives in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
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big disappointment
- By Kirsten on 04-12-12
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Plantation
- A Lowcountry Tale
- By: Dorothea Benton Frank
- Narrated by: Susie Breck
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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When Caroline Wimbley Levine learns that her mother, Miss Lavinia, has supposedly gone mad, she leaves the big city bustle of Manhattan and returns to Tall Pines Plantation. Caroline originally left Tall Pines to escape her feisty, eccentric mother and her drunken brother, Trip. When Miss Lavinia dies, Caroline is forced to come to terms with her family's troubled history as well as her failing relationship with her husband.
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Abridged!!
- By Teresa on 04-18-16
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Liberating Paris
- A Novel
- By: Linda Bloodworth Thomason
- Narrated by: Cynthia Darlow
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Woodrow McIlmore, the town's golden boy and local gynecologist, is married to his beautiful high school sweetheart, Milan, and seems by all appearances to be leading the perfect life with his two children and extended family and friends. But when Wood's daughter announces that she is smitten with a college classmate and intends to marry him, her parents are stunned.
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Deeply moving, a great listen
- By Cynthia on 11-27-05
What listeners say about Ordinary Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Erica R McKelvey
- 01-11-21
She always comes through
when I don't know just what I'm in the mood for or am feeling out of sorts I have a few writers and musicians I know I can turn to for solace or a moment of connection. Elizabeth Berg is one of those for me. This probably won't help anyone decide whether this book is what they're looking for at this moment but this is a well written and perfectly performed collection of short stories that speak to all manner of life's vagaries. Give it a whirl and exchange it if it fails to grab you 😉
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- Denise Melbie
- 08-09-20
lovely life stories
it is so great to listen to this author read life stories, with happy endings!
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- Goofygirl
- 10-17-24
Heartwarming, funny, and charming
I love the stories for their simplicity, loveliness, heartbreak, and beauty. Elizabeth Berg rights so eloquently about the trials and tribulations of being human.
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- Cindy
- 09-18-20
Depressing
I bought this well before the pandemic began. I might very well have enjoyed it then. Now, I just find it depressing, and I can't listen to it.
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