Pierre; or, the Ambiguities
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Narrated by:
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Robin Field
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By:
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Herman Melville
About this listen
Pierre Glendinning is the 19-year-old heir to the manor at Saddle Meadows in upstate New York. Engaged to the blonde Lucy Tartan in a match approved by his domineering mother, Pierre encounters the dark and mysterious Isabel Banford, who claims to be his half sister, the illegitimate and orphaned child of his father and a European refugee.
Driven by his magnetic attraction to Isabel, Pierre devises a remarkable scheme to preserve his father's name, spare his mother's grief, and give Isabel her proper share of the estate.
First published in 1852, Pierre; or the Ambiguities was condemned by critics of the time: "a dead failure", "this crazy rigmarole", and "a literary mare's nest". Latter-day critics, however, have recognized in the story of Melville's idealistic young hero a corrosive satire of the sentimental Gothic novel and a revolutionary foray into modernist literary techniques.
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In Frankenstein, a classic tale of bio-engineering gone horribly wrong, Victor Frankenstein uses body parts of the dead to bring a creature to life. When Frankenstein abandons his experiment in horror, the Monster embarks on a quest that results in the ultimate revenge. In Dracula, a timeless gothic vampire romance, young solicitor Jonathan Harker must shield his fiancé, Mina, from the predations of the insatiable Count Dracula. Mysteriously drawn to the Count, Mina, however, struggles to break free from the psychic grip of the mysterious dark stranger from Transylvania.
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Wonderful rendition of two Gothic Horror classics!
- By Teela'Na on 10-03-19
By: Mary Shelley, and others
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The Scarlet Letter
- By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Narrated by: Kate Petrie
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most important novels in classic literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter tackles the subject of adultery, with the notorious Hester Prynne at the forefront of the scandal in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the beginning of the novel, Hester is serving time in prison for having a child out of wedlock and is forced to wear a scarlet A on her clothing at all times, so she cannot run from her sin no matter where she goes.
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missing the introductory???
- By Savannah on 05-20-20
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Tess of the D'urbervilles
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Jennifer Dixon
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Tess of the d'Urbervilles is the 19th century novel lately thought to be one of the inspirations of E .L.James' Fifty Shades of Grey. It depicts the life of an impressionable, naive, somewhat educated young woman who yearns to be free to live her own life, but finds herself constricted by the bonds of the sexual, religious and socially hypocritical customs that have surrounded her from birth.
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Jenny Dixon
- By Amazon Customer on 08-09-15
By: Thomas Hardy
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Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
- A Novel
- By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Jull Costa Margaret - translator, Robin Patterson - translator
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Machado de Assis’ classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for 21st-century audiences. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: “I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”
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Incredible story from an incredible author
- By Anonymous User on 01-01-21
By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and others
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The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
- By: James Hogg
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny, Nick McArdle
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A psychological thriller before its time, James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824, takes us back to the world of 18th-century Scotland, into a mind haunted by religious obsession, and driven to commit murder. The events are told from several different viewpoints, so that truth and reality appear to dissolve in this disturbing story of the dark legacy of Calvinist doctrine, and how it led one man to madness.
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A gripping story
- By fred greene on 04-19-18
By: James Hogg
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Poor People
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen, Julia Emlen
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical "man of the underground", he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches.
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Background before listening recommended!
- By Rebecarol on 10-02-08
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Le Pere Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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At the shabby boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, petty Madame Vauquer and her tenants wonder at the plight of the aging resident Goriot. Once a well-heeled merchant, Goriot was, at first, afforded special treatment from the Madame. But now something is clearly amiss in his financial affairs, and his increasingly tawdry appearance makes him a subject of ridicule in the household.
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balzac rocks
- By beatrice on 03-12-10
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Edgar Allan Poe - The Complete Short Stories
- By: Edgar Allan Poe
- Narrated by: Bob Thomley
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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All of Edgar Allan Poe’s great short stories in one 16-hour collection.
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NEVERMORE
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-23-15
By: Edgar Allan Poe
What listeners say about Pierre; or, the Ambiguities
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kheir Fakhreldin
- 07-24-24
Great book and very well done audiobook
Incredible story, psychologically sophisticated. Beautifully narrated, well edited. I really enjoyed it. I learned about this book in Beyond the American Renaissance by David Reynolds.
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- M
- 09-05-20
Well worth the listen if you like Melville!
Here's a wonderfully narrated Proustian Melville with a mystik twist.It was great to listen to. I'm not sure I would have taken the time to completely read the text.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 07-21-17
A rare treat for Melville fans
The novel is incredible and this audiobook provides an unabridged edition - this is important because many who are familiar with Pierre these days are familiar with the abridged edition edited by Herschel Parker and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. I personally appreciate this full unabridged edition and find it indispensable to an understanding of Melville and his work.
It is easy to call the novel itself "flawed," as indeed it has been so called, but it's quality is of the sort that rather than having virtues and flaws it rather seems like a titanic mountain with crags and gorges, roughly but beautifully complex in its textures. If you enjoy Melville in general, the narrative voice in this novel is frankly lovable. Listening to it in audiobook form, I felt as if wearing this lovely narrative voice like a cloak. I am loath to cast it off!
Robin Field's reading is generally excellent and his tone, especially as narrator, is quite fine for this writing. However, I did occasionally wince at his reading of female voices - sometimes a little too much of the "damsel in distress" tone that male readers are sometimes wont to fall into. But it is a minor quibble (and some of that tone is in the writing as well, though not so much as it sounds in the recording), especially considering that this is really the only recording of Pierre that I am aware of that is a professional production, and unabridged to boot. Overall, highly recommended!
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8 people found this helpful