Parakeet
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Angela Dawe
About this listen
Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.
The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the internet?
Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.
In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.
A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change?
Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
©2020 Marie-Helene Bertino (P)2020 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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Trading Dreams at Midnight
- By: Diane McKinney-Whetstone
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.
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Hard to follow
- By Nevada on 08-13-10
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F*ck Marriage
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Meg Sylvan, Connor Crais
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Two years ago, Billie Tarrow's husband left her for another woman. Shamed and divorced, Billie retreated to her family home in Port Townsend, far from her old life in New York. After a near-death encounter, Billie decides to return to the city that took everything from her. But sometimes in the midst of heartache, hope suffocates the pain. Satcher Gable has carried a torch for Billie for 10 years. When she suddenly returns to New York a single woman, he can't believe his good fortune. But convincing Billie to walk away from her heartache is proving more difficult than he anticipated.
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So many emotions
- By KK on 06-16-20
By: Tarryn Fisher
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It Had to Be You
- A Novel
- By: Georgia Clark
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell, Feodor Chin, Frankie Corzo, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past 20 years, Liv and Eliot Goldenhorn have run In Love in New York, Brooklyn’s beloved wedding-planning business. When Eliot dies unexpectedly, he even more unexpectedly leaves half of the business to his younger, blonder girlfriend, Savannah. Liv and Savannah are not a match made in heaven, to say the least. But what starts as a personal and professional nightmare transforms into something even savvy, cynical Liv Goldenhorn couldn’t begin to imagine.
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Distractingly bad narration
- By maggie walsh on 05-12-21
By: Georgia Clark
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I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying
- Essays
- By: Bassey Ikpi
- Narrated by: Bassey Ikpi
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, Bassey Ikpi explores her life - as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist - through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy.
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Full, poignant, purposeful
- By Bree on 08-21-19
By: Bassey Ikpi
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Love Walked In
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos crafts an irresistibly touching debut novel. Love Walked In is a contemporary tale, steeped in nostalgic, cinematic charm, of love in all its forms. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia Brown appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But it is Martin's connection to 11-year-old Clare Hobbes that touches Cornelia's heart in ways she never imagined.
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Dreadful audio quality
- By Marenghi on 09-16-11
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Family Secrets
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Though Diane Randall’s jewelry business is a great success, her marriage is not, and she finds herself growing lonely as her children near adulthood. Meanwhile, her eighteen-year-old daughter Julia is falling dangerously in love, and Diane’s mother, Jean, is relishing her newfound freedom as a single woman in Europe. Distracted by their individual concerns, the three women are ill-prepared for the crisis that suddenly appears on Diane’s doorstep in the form of a handsome FBI agent asking about an explosive secret that’s laid buried for decades.
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Nancy! Is there a sequel? What?
- By PattieLynn on 12-02-22
By: Nancy Thayer
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Nappily Ever After
- A Novel
- By: Trisha R. Thomas
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Venus Johnston has a great job and a long-term, live-in boyfriend who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She also has a weekly beauty-parlor date to keep her long, nappy hair slick and straight. But the tedious hours and harsh chemicals in the salon have long grated on Venus. One frustrating day, she trades in the long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends her commitment-balking boyfriend packing. It's a bold declaration of independence and one that has effects she never could have imagined.
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Great
- By Laura K. on 08-21-09
By: Trisha R. Thomas
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She Regrets Nothing
- A Novel
- By: Andrea Dunlop
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.
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Good Listen
- By Vallena on 02-19-18
By: Andrea Dunlop
What listeners say about Parakeet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- GG
- 06-12-20
Well written, but lackluster main character
I was looking forward to this book as I love magical realism, but the overall plot never came together for me. The novel was very well written with great analogies and satisfying ending. However all of the other characters were more interesting than the main character who just appeared as whiny and disingenuous. Perhaps that's the point, but it just wasn't for me.
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- unco
- 05-23-24
A book I will forget
It was good though I found it hard to relate to any of the characters. It was confusing with occasional moments of brilliance. Ultimately, I hoped for more. I had been swayed by a review in Bookreads Magazine that I wish I had not seen. I felt the book vacillated between the absurd and the possible. It should have just gone with the absurd. It would have been more interesting.
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- Nikki
- 12-22-20
Huh? What?
This is well written and the language is beautifully rendered but I was happy when it was over. It’s likely that, for me, reading about a mental health crisis in the middle of a pandemic just is t very appealing. I loved the characters. I loved the bird. The character transformations that took place were mesmerizing .. and given all the references to Beckett, why should I be surprised at the style?
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- Nathan P. Fleming
- 03-20-21
A few enjoyable moments among many eye rolls
Had a hard time finishing this opaque and overwritten story. The aspects of a good story were there but the author's presentation was poor because it was far more verbose than it needed to be. Listening to this book literally put me to sleep on 3 occasions. I hope to never hear the word "anti-chamber" again. I would not recommend this to anyone except a literary nerd who enjoys lengthy prose.
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1 person found this helpful