Our Country Friends
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
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By:
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Gary Shteyngart
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Town & Country, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews
Finalist for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction • Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize • “A perfect novel for these times and all times, the single textual artifact from the pandemic era I would place in a time capsule as a representation of all that is good and true and beautiful about literature.”—Molly Young, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
Eight friends, one country house, and six months in isolation—a novel about love, friendship, family, and betrayal hailed as a “virtuoso performance” (USA Today) and “an homage to Chekhov with four romances and a finale that will break your heart” (The Washington Post)
In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.
Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller Super Sad True Love Story.
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Critic reviews
“The novel’s strengths abound. It upends clichés, pieties and commonplaces while also noticing salient details of the lockdown.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Our Country Friends has all [Shteyngart’s] usual humor and absurdity, but it’s deepened by a new empathy.”—Los Angeles Times
“Shteyngart knows how to make you belly laugh, and he’s in his element here, poking fun at the claustrophobia of privilege. He perfectly captures the nature of adult friendships and the petty jealousies, disappointments, and dependencies that can define them.”—Vulture
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By: David Nicholls
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The Fourth Child
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Winter
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.
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Just OK - Considered Bailing
- By Madeleine Homan on 04-18-21
By: Jessica Winter
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Swear on This Life
- A Novel
- By: Renée Carlino
- Narrated by: Traci Odom
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A struggling writer must come to terms with her past, present, and future after she discovers that she's the inspiration for a pseudonymously published best-selling novel.
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Outstanding Story!
- By Jen Seagraves on 07-28-20
By: Renée Carlino
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Under the Water
- By: Paul Pen, Simon Bruni - translator
- Narrated by: James Daniels
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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From the outside, Frank and Grace seem to have the perfect family. He’s a loving husband, she’s a devoted wife, and together they have two happy children. But appearances can be deceiving. A strange series of misfortunes has left them reeling: an unexplained break-in, a catastrophic handgun accident, and a bizarre poisoning that’s left Grace feeling especially unnerved. Packing up their RV for a move across the country, they’re ready for a fresh start, expecting to leave all their problems safely behind.
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Good syuff
- By Kindle V C on 10-12-19
By: Paul Pen, and others
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Stranded
- By: Chris Bruno, David Howard Lee, Shukri R. Abdi
- Narrated by: Taraji P. Henson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Blake Griffin, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 7 mins
- Original Recording
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Separated by 10 years, 3,000 miles, and the unrelenting stresses of adulthood, best friends Janet and Serena plan a 40th birthday girls’ trip to reconnect. But after a massive crash, they’re the only survivors to wash ashore on an uncharted Caribbean Island. Armed with only the clothes on their backs and zero survival skills, they fight to overcome hunger, thirst, deadly wildlife—and most terrifyingly—decades of accrued resentment. Can they find their way home, or will they kill each other first?
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Get ready to Laugh
- By Lasheree McFarlane on 11-08-24
By: Chris Bruno, and others
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Born a Crime
- Stories from a South African Childhood
- By: Trevor Noah
- Narrated by: Trevor Noah
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.
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Great book and perfect narration
- By MarilynArms on 12-15-16
By: Trevor Noah
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The Best Man's Ghostwriter
- By: Matthew Starr
- Narrated by: Glen Powell, Nicholas Braun, Ashley Park, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Original Recording
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A bad best man’s speech can ruin a wedding. Why do we plan every detail of a perfect day and then give the groom’s idiot best friend five minutes of total power? Enter Nate (Glen Powell), a speechwriter-for-hire who helps people write incredible best man speeches. To keep the best man from embarrassing himself (and the newlyweds), Nate uses his list of don’ts: Don’t mention the exes, don’t be rated R, and don’t bum everyone out. Nate’s system never fails. That is, until he meets Dan (Nicholas Braun).
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SO GOOD
- By Csutty on 09-23-24
By: Matthew Starr
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Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
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Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
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Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
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I Can't Make This Up
- Life Lessons
- By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
- Narrated by: Kevin Hart
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.
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Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To
- By Sam Clear on 07-13-17
By: Neil Strauss - contributor, and others
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The Perfect Find
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Wesleigh Siobhan
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jenna Jones, former It-girl fashion editor, is broke and desperate for a second chance. When she’s dumped by her longtime fiancé and fired from Darling magazine, she begs for a job from her old arch nemesis, Darcy Vale. The beyond-bitchy publisher of StyleZine.com, Darcy agrees to hire her rival - only because her fashion site needs a jolt from Jenna’s old school cred. But Jenna soon realizes she’s in over her head.
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A-FREAKING-MAZING!!!
- By Bernadette on 05-30-21
By: Tia Williams
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American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
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Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
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CRAY
- By: Darrell Hammond, Elizabeth Stein
- Narrated by: Darrell Hammond
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Original Recording
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He is one of the longest-running cast members on Saturday Night Live, an American comedy genius renowned for his spot-on sendups of politicians and celebrities. But off-stage, Darrell Hammond’s life was anything but a joke. In CRAY, a special audio performance captured live onstage at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, Hammond brings to life his acclaimed memoir, God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem.
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Thanks for sharing
- By Nickisnotgary on 09-06-24
By: Darrell Hammond, and others
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So glad I was drawn to this book.
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What listeners say about Our Country Friends
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Robert Cudahy
- 07-09-22
Tooooo loooooong
The first three acts were brilliant story telling. The act was long, tedious, and self-indulgent.
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- Jessie Bradley
- 01-22-22
A good listen
The book is very interesting as Covid isolation surprised and affected us all in profound ways. At times the story is annoying and feels a tad contrived. Irregardless, it is definitely worth listening to. It was our book group pick and we certainly had plenty to talk about.
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 01-20-22
Unlikable characters
First part quite engaging and the writer is talented. However, the last part with the flashbacks was uninteresting and bloated. The most likable character died, leaving the rest humbled but not sure that was enough to change them. Money and property changed hands but they will continue their pretentious ways. Bummer.
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- Annoyed
- 02-21-22
Amazing performance
I’ve been a fan of Gary Shteyngart for years, but I have to say that I might have enjoyed this book mainly because of the amazing performance. The story is fine, though it leaves weird holes and leads the reader down a few blind alleys without any reason I could see, but Rob Shapiro makes each character come alive so fully that you fall in love with each of them in turn.
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- Jim
- 11-08-21
Beautifully written, painful, but very, very moving
Gary Shteyngart’s comic self loathing can be an acquired taste for some, but I think his keen observance of human nature, in all its glory and gory warts, is magnificent. Our Country Friends is *the* novel of the pandemic, when it comes to the second generation immigrant, creative, work-from-home class. Buried beneath the comedy of human failings is ultimately a deeply moving portrait of what is feels like to be human during this time, how we yearn for connection and family, and what it means to be American when America feels of the brink of dissolving. I sobbed at the end and was completely surprised to find myself doing. My favorite novel of 2021, hands down.
As an aside, the narration was fabulous, absolutely spot on, and elevated the story for this listener. The story constantly shifts narrative perspective among the characters and the narrator did a phenomenal job of shifting personas!
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12 people found this helpful
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- William Michael Dunn
- 03-02-22
Enjoyable , written with great skill.
Great writer, lovable plot, to the extent there is a plot. Very good characterization. Worth taking the time to enjoy it. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
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- Fancy Cat
- 11-16-21
America in the time of covid
Immigrants, pandemic, celebrity, forever love, earth-shattering disappointment. This extraordinary novel is destined to be a snapshot in time ala Love in the Time of Cholera
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lisa@Sohoparenting
- 11-08-21
Perfect Pandemic Novel
Witty, timely, heartbreaking. Captured the feeling of the country respite in the middle of the terrifying spring and summer of 2020. Wonderful characters. Finished it just in time to return to the city.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Xavier
- 06-10-22
Some great spots
The story most definitely had brilliant moments But parts that plodded on with no relevance to anyone but the author, tempered the overall enjoyment of the novel. Is the story about friends in quarantine ? Or a vehicle to tell stories of growing up as immigrants in the US? It is both, and each side of these vying stories suffer. I probably will remember it. At my age that is quite an accomplishment.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-07-22
Want your mind blown?
I loved this story and the audio performance as well. A perfect read for these convoluted times- deeply human and nourishing like mother’s milk. Brilliant in every sense.
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