
Parade
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Genevieve Gaunt
-
By:
-
Rachel Cusk
About this listen
This program is read by actor Genevieve Gaunt, who has appeared in Doctor Who, The Royals, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
From Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, comes this startling, exhilarating novel that once again expands the notion of what fiction can be and do.
Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.
In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.
At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.
When a mother dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.
Parade is a novel that demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives. Rachel Cusk is a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
©2024 Rachel Cusk (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Motherhood
- A Novel
- By: Sheila Heti
- Narrated by: Sheila Heti
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with candor, originality, and humor. In her late 30s, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent audiobook considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forebearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice.
-
-
Way beyond what I expected
- By S. Anderson on 01-03-19
By: Sheila Heti
-
Outline
- The Outline Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking - about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens.
-
-
Difficult and Better in Print
- By Nick O. on 07-18-23
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Audition
- A Novel
- By: Katie Kitamura
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day–partner, parent, creator, muse–and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
-
-
Bizarre
- By Kevin on 04-23-25
By: Katie Kitamura
-
The Last Supper
- A Summer in Italy
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Casting off a northern winter and an orderly life, a family decides to sell everything and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. The award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rented villas, of the Piero della Francesca Trail and the tourist furnace of Amalfi, of soccer and the simple glories of pasta and gelato.
-
-
Absolute
- By Veronica on 07-08-24
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Aftermath
- On Marriage and Separation
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk’s marriage of 10 years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms, but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement, and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a “normal” life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.
-
-
Insightful
- By ncnickle on 01-03-25
By: Rachel Cusk
-
The Copenhagen Trilogy
- Childhood; Youth; Dependency
- By: Tove Ditlevsen, Tiina Nunnally - translator, Michael Favala Goldman - translator
- Narrated by: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By David Batcher on 03-21-21
By: Tove Ditlevsen, and others
-
Motherhood
- A Novel
- By: Sheila Heti
- Narrated by: Sheila Heti
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with candor, originality, and humor. In her late 30s, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent audiobook considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forebearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice.
-
-
Way beyond what I expected
- By S. Anderson on 01-03-19
By: Sheila Heti
-
Outline
- The Outline Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking - about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens.
-
-
Difficult and Better in Print
- By Nick O. on 07-18-23
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Audition
- A Novel
- By: Katie Kitamura
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day–partner, parent, creator, muse–and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
-
-
Bizarre
- By Kevin on 04-23-25
By: Katie Kitamura
-
The Last Supper
- A Summer in Italy
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Casting off a northern winter and an orderly life, a family decides to sell everything and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. The award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rented villas, of the Piero della Francesca Trail and the tourist furnace of Amalfi, of soccer and the simple glories of pasta and gelato.
-
-
Absolute
- By Veronica on 07-08-24
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Aftermath
- On Marriage and Separation
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk’s marriage of 10 years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms, but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement, and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a “normal” life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.
-
-
Insightful
- By ncnickle on 01-03-25
By: Rachel Cusk
-
The Copenhagen Trilogy
- Childhood; Youth; Dependency
- By: Tove Ditlevsen, Tiina Nunnally - translator, Michael Favala Goldman - translator
- Narrated by: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By David Batcher on 03-21-21
By: Tove Ditlevsen, and others
-
Vanishing World
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable.
-
-
Excellent
- By Chris Reich on 04-28-25
By: Sayaka Murata
-
Coventry
- Essays
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential listening for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
-
-
This review is biased
- By Paul on 05-16-21
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Blackouts
- A Novel
- By: Justin Torres
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
-
-
meh
- By Thomas E Flint on 10-28-24
By: Justin Torres
-
Severance
- A Novel
- By: Ling Ma
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York.
-
-
4.19 stars
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 12-06-18
By: Ling Ma
-
On the Calculation of Volume, Book I
- By: Solvej Balle
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Liang
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin?
-
-
The Perfect Book
- By Severian on 02-16-25
By: Solvej Balle
-
The Sea, the Sea
- By: Iris Murdoch, Mary Kinzie - introduction
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years.
-
-
Murdoch Amazes
- By Sara on 08-30-17
By: Iris Murdoch, and others
-
Arlington Park
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set over the course of one rainy day in an ordinary English suburb, Arlington Park is a viciously funny portrait of a group of young mothers, each bound to their families, each straining for some kind of independence: Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; Solly, about to give birth to her fourth child; Maisie, struggling to accept provincial life; and Christine, the optimist and host of a dinner party where the neighbors come together.
-
-
Rachel cusk
- By David on 04-16-22
By: Rachel Cusk
-
10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
-
-
A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
-
Health and Safety
- A Breakdown
- By: Emily Witt
- Narrated by: Emily Witt
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt, who would soon publish her first book on sex in the digital age, had recently quit antidepressants for a more expansive world of psychedelic experimentation. From her apartment in Brooklyn, she began to catch glimpses of the clandestine nightlife scene thrumming around her.
-
-
Bored voice
- By Amazon Customer on 12-20-24
By: Emily Witt
-
Second Place
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kate Fleetwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma - and disrupts the calm of her secluded household. Second Place, Rachel Cusk’s electrifying new novel, is a study of female fate and male privilege, the geometries of human relationships, and the moral questions that animate our lives.
-
-
Description of child sex abuse
- By Karin Dicker on 06-01-21
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Blue Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Hari Kunzru
- Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
-
-
An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
-
Gliff
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Eliot Sumner
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.
-
-
No other author comes close!
- By Franki on 02-08-25
By: Ali Smith
Editorial Review
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Rosewater
- A Novel
- By: Liv Little
- Narrated by: Suhaiyla Hippolyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elsie is a sexy, funny, and fiercely independent woman in south London. But, at just 28, she is also tired. Though she spends her days writing tender poetry in her journal, her nights are spent working long hours for minimum wage at a neighborhood dive bar. Not even sleeping with her alluring coworker, Bea, can quell her existential dread. The difficulty of being estranged from her family, struggle of being continually rejected from jobs, and fear of never making money doing what she loves is too great. But Elsie is determined to keep the faith, for a little longer at least.
-
-
The story gets better with each chapter
- By Jenna Barnett on 11-09-23
By: Liv Little
-
What Belongs to You
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence.
-
-
Too short
- By Paul on 05-31-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
Animal
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Emma Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles, Joan unravels the horrific event she witnessed as a child - that has haunted her every waking moment - while forging the power to finally strike back.
-
-
Should come with a lot of trigger warnings
- By Quinn on 07-13-21
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
An Unnecessary Woman
- By: Rabih Alameddine
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's "unnecessary appendage." Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut.
-
-
Tales of a Literary Snob
- By Ilana on 02-14-14
By: Rabih Alameddine
-
10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
-
-
A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
-
The Copenhagen Trilogy
- Childhood; Youth; Dependency
- By: Tove Ditlevsen, Tiina Nunnally - translator, Michael Favala Goldman - translator
- Narrated by: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By David Batcher on 03-21-21
By: Tove Ditlevsen, and others
-
Rosewater
- A Novel
- By: Liv Little
- Narrated by: Suhaiyla Hippolyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elsie is a sexy, funny, and fiercely independent woman in south London. But, at just 28, she is also tired. Though she spends her days writing tender poetry in her journal, her nights are spent working long hours for minimum wage at a neighborhood dive bar. Not even sleeping with her alluring coworker, Bea, can quell her existential dread. The difficulty of being estranged from her family, struggle of being continually rejected from jobs, and fear of never making money doing what she loves is too great. But Elsie is determined to keep the faith, for a little longer at least.
-
-
The story gets better with each chapter
- By Jenna Barnett on 11-09-23
By: Liv Little
-
What Belongs to You
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence.
-
-
Too short
- By Paul on 05-31-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
Animal
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Emma Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles, Joan unravels the horrific event she witnessed as a child - that has haunted her every waking moment - while forging the power to finally strike back.
-
-
Should come with a lot of trigger warnings
- By Quinn on 07-13-21
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
An Unnecessary Woman
- By: Rabih Alameddine
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's "unnecessary appendage." Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut.
-
-
Tales of a Literary Snob
- By Ilana on 02-14-14
By: Rabih Alameddine
-
10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
-
-
A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
-
The Copenhagen Trilogy
- Childhood; Youth; Dependency
- By: Tove Ditlevsen, Tiina Nunnally - translator, Michael Favala Goldman - translator
- Narrated by: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By David Batcher on 03-21-21
By: Tove Ditlevsen, and others
-
Home Fire
- A Novel
- By: Kamila Shamsie
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she's accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma's worst fears are confirmed.
-
-
one of most important books of this time
- By N. D. Warren on 11-24-17
By: Kamila Shamsie
-
Praiseworthy
- By: Alexis Wright
- Narrated by: Jacqui Katona
- Length: 36 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors. A crazed visionary looks to donkeys to solve the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife, seeking solace from his madness, follows the dance of butterflies and scours the internet to find out how her Aboriginal/Chinese family could be repatriated to China. One of their sons, named Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide.
-
-
Beautiful, powerful book full of poetry
- By Guy on 11-11-24
By: Alexis Wright
-
The Day Tripper
- By: James Goodhand
- Narrated by: James Meunier
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of an amazing woman named Holly and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a brutal encounter with a ghost from his past sees him beaten, battered and almost drowning in the Thames. He wakes the next day to find he’s in a messy, derelict room he’s never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn’t recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he’s older—much older—and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions.
-
-
Can you change your life?
- By Lynda Engler on 12-19-24
By: James Goodhand
-
Harold
- By: Steven Wright
- Narrated by: Steven Wright
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the outside, Harold is an average seven-year-old third grader growing up in the 1960s. Bored by school. Crushing on a girl. Likes movies and baseball—especially the hometown Boston Red Sox. Enjoys spending time with his grandfather. But inside Harold’s mind, things are a lot more complex and unusual. His thoughts come to him as birds flying through a small rectangle in the middle of his brain. He visits an outdoor cafe on the moon and is invited aboard a spaceship by famed astronomer Carl Sagan.
-
-
Yes, Harold?
- By DC333 on 06-27-23
By: Steven Wright
-
Blackouts
- A Novel
- By: Justin Torres
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
-
-
meh
- By Thomas E Flint on 10-28-24
By: Justin Torres
-
The New One
- Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad
- By: Mike Birbiglia, J. Hope Stein
- Narrated by: Mike Birbiglia, J. Hope Stein
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With laugh-out-loud funny parenting observations, the New York Times best-selling author and award-winning comedian delivers a book that is perfect for anyone who has ever raised a child, been a child, or refuses to stop acting like one. Along with hilarious and poignant stories he has never shared before, this audiobook is sprinkled with poetry Jen wrote as she navigated the same rocky shores of new parenthood.
-
-
5 whining hours from formerly-uproarious comedian
- By Thomas Cook on 06-20-20
By: Mike Birbiglia, and others
-
Godshot
- A Novel
- By: Chelsea Bieker
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it's an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret "assignments," to bring the rain everybody is praying for.
-
-
flawless novel, not the best narration
- By Adrienne on 05-05-20
By: Chelsea Bieker
-
Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
-
-
Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
Full Tilt
- Ireland to India with a Bicycle
- By: Dervla Murphy
- Narrated by: Emma Lowe
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way. The route takes her through the valleys and snowy mountain passes of Europe and India to the scorching deserts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the metal of her bicycle, Rozinante (named after Don Quixote's steed), becomes too hot to touch.
-
-
Prejudice personified
- By Steve on 09-27-20
By: Dervla Murphy
-
Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
-
-
California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
-
In Tongues
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Grattan
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon—handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction—takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him—and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.
-
-
Engaging, smart and witty storytelling!
- By Bruce Cannella on 09-30-24
By: Thomas Grattan
-
Bucky F*cking Dent
- A Novel
- By: David Duchovny
- Narrated by: David Duchovny
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American novel, and spends the waning malaise-filled days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent.
-
-
David Fucking Duchovny
- By Kelly W. on 05-04-16
By: David Duchovny
No clue what it was about…
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very Insightful, a Wow for me!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A challenging listen
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The writing style of Parade is self-indulgent to an extreme, abandoning any plot development or even sense of linearity in time in favor of an insufferable spiral of obsessive navel-gazing about gender and fine art. There is something to be said about how this sort of obsession could form in the deeply misogynist culture that we come from, but in 2025 I have a very difficult time relating to any languishing self-victimizing narrative coming from the perspective of a successful white woman (both within the fiction and from the author). Misogyny is very much real and worthy of discussion, but anyone who blames every single minuscule aspect of their suffering in life on gender politics is imprisoning themselves more than anyone else ever could.
Given that the perspective on gender and sex in this book seems rooted in second-wave feminism at best I was stunned to learn just before writing this review that it was released in 2024… and then I wasn’t, when I remembered the current state of gender politics in Britain and how prominent voices like JK Rowling have shaped the narrative of misogyny to revolve solely around the biological processes of people assigned female at birth. Reality is not so simple. It is regressive, depressing and inaccurate to reduce the experiences and marginalizations of all of womankind solely to this concept of a childbearing nature. Please let women be more than that.
And as a side note, the fine art discussion also calls to mind parodies of art critics where the critic turns every single image they see into a confirmation of their own preexisting worldview, turning every little thing into a deep commentary about some philosophy of life that the writer carries. I am an artist myself; while analysis does have its place, sometimes a painting really is just a damn painting.
Narrator was fine, nothing exceptional about the performance. To be fair it’s hard to be exceptional when you’re given source material as dull as this.
Incomprehensible biologically-essentialist nonsense
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.