Rules for Visiting
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Emily Rankin
About this listen
National Best Seller
Named One of the Best Books of the Year By: O Magazine * Good Housekeeping * Real Simple * Vulture * Chicago Tribune
Named One of the Best Books of the Summer By: The Today Show * Good Morning America * Wall Street Journal * San Francisco Chronicle * Southern Living
An INDIE NEXT LIST Pick
PickShortlisted for the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize
Long-listed for the 2020 Tournament of Books
"Fun, hilarious, and extremely touching." (NPR)
A beautifully observed and deeply funny novel of May Attaway, a university gardener who sets out on an odyssey to reconnect with four old friends over the course of a year.
At 40, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she's turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm's length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own?
Rules for Visiting is a woman's exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way - afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends' perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones. Ultimately, May learns that a best friend is someone who knows your story - and she inspires us all to master the art of visiting.
©2019 Jessica Francis Kane (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"When 40-year-old gardener May receives a surprise windfall of one month of vacation from the university where she works, she decides to visit four old friends, each one from different periods of her life. Through this initially simple and irresistible starting point, Jessica Francis Kane investigates the most universal mysteries of all." (Isaac Fitzgerald, Today)
“This beautiful novel tackles loneliness in the digital age and the lost art of visiting. Introvert May Attaway is granted some unexpected time off as a university gardener and is inspired to reconnect with four once-close friends. May chooses to bypass her friends' perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them IRL. Gives a whole new meaning to Instagram vs. reality.” (Good Morning America)
"This spirit-warming saga, an antidote to the uncivil, is a novel to be read again and again, whenever one needs a reminder to seize the day.... Treat yourself to Jessica Francis Kane's novel Rules for Visiting, an elixir in book form about a quest for friendship that could have been written by Jane Austen’s great great-great-granddaughter.” (O Magazine)
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Three people find their way back from loss and loneliness to a different kind of belonging in this deeply moving novel. Arthur, an old widower struggling to overcome his grief, meets Maddy, a troubled teenage girl who avoids school by hiding out where Arthur goes every day for lunch. The two strike up a friendship that draws them out of isolation.
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Sickly Sweet
- By Amazon Customer on 01-19-18
By: Elizabeth Berg
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Two Truths and a Lie
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- By: Meg Mitchell Moore
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
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Truth: Sherri Griffin and her daughter, Katie, recently moved to the idyllic beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. They’ve been welcomed by Rebecca Coleman, unofficial former leader of the Newburyport Mom Squad, and her teenage daughter Alexa, Katie’s new babysitter. Truth: Alexa has time on her hands after a falling-out with her friends involving her popular YouTube channel.
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Really more of a YA novel...
- By Faith W. on 09-04-20
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Julia Whelan makes all books great!
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a little much on the intimate details
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After a difficult five years, at age forty-three, Nina Morgan Clarke’s time has finally arrived. With an ex-husband relocated across the country, her father bouncing back after the loss of his beloved wife, and her daughter, Xandra, thriving at boarding school, Nina is stepping into her dream job as a trifecta: a first-generation, Black female head of the storied Royal-Hawkins School. To mark the moment, Nina and her best friend, Marisol, take a long-overdue girls’ trip to celebrate the second half of Nina’s life—which is shaping up to be the best part of her life.
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Love a great story for we 40+ folks
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Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, is looking more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Will she turn out like her despised Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father have spent their whole lives avoiding and deriding? There must be a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.
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In 1918, a fearless 22-year-old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange, she is soon the celebrated owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio. By the early 1930s, determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the US enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice - the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.
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The world has changed around 79-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, a.k.a. Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as a housewife and mother less than satisfying, Missy once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a Classics degree from Cambridge. Now, her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife's native Australia, taking Missy's beloved only grandchild half-a-world away.
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Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.
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Delightful
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Belfast, October 1940. Twenty-year-old zookeeper Hettie Quin arrives at the city docks in time to meet her new charge: an orphaned three-year-old Indian elephant named Violet. As Violet adjusts to her new solitary life in captivity and Hettie mourns the recent loss of her sister and the abandonment of her father, new storm clouds gather. A world war rages, threatening a city already reeling from escalating tensions between British Loyalists and those fighting for a free and unified Ireland.
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Interesting Story, Bad Reader Ruined It
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The Queen of Paris
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- Unabridged
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Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style - the iconic little black dress - and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII - as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.
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Perceptive Biography and Narration
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What listeners say about Rules for Visiting
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- S.C.H.
- 09-29-20
An unexpected pleasure
I found this story to be very touching - a socially awkward botanist finds her way via trees, old friends and Emily Post. Hard to describe. Give it a chance and you may be drawn in as I was. And contrary to some reviews here, I thought the narrator was just right.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joan Heller
- 08-14-21
Three and a half stars
Great writing , mediocre story, until about the last 2 hours , then very moving on friendship , moments of 5 stars writing and heart squeezing. Lots on trees and gardens , probably ala the Ovestory which I haven’t read yet.
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- Wendy
- 01-11-20
A story in which the gardener does some needed growing
Hard to Mark the stars as intended. I meant 4 overall and 3 for the performance since the young and girlish voice of the narrator seemed distressingly at odds with the character of the narrating character.
Gradually the reader realizes how stunted the narrator’s emotional life has been and how much she does need the friend visits she gradually makes. Whew! Growth on many fronts gradually.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Patricia M Bray
- 06-20-20
Friendship & Trees
This is a warm story that teaches much about friendship and trees. One can simply focus on the narrative involving relationships between the human species, but the story is richer with the juxtaposition of the natural world. I was inspired to learn more about trees and plants. This story could be the lighter, more easy-going cousin of Richard Power's Overstory.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Ellen Green Andrews
- 12-12-20
delightful, intuitive listen!
such a good book. I love how the author has woven nature and nurture into a story. I loved the detailed description of all the plants, trees, and even some animals and insects. Her varied friendships shows how we gather friends like we choose our favorite garden plants. some quiet and reserved, some more flamboyant, but all with unique quirks and qualities.
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- Amanda and Chris
- 08-21-22
Beautiful story and narration
This is a lovely book, and I have to disagree with the reviews that criticize the narration. Emily Rankin is a perfect narrator for this precisely because she does not sound prickly, and so she is a great voice for the inner softness of May that is explored through the book.
I will listen to this multiple times I suspect!
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- Victorvtg
- 08-02-24
Bleh story
Great narration, especially accents and speaking for multiple characters. There were lovely moments but not much of a story in the book. I was constantly desiring more.
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- Tamara
- 08-10-19
Reader wasn’t compelling
I think I would have enjoyed this book more than I did if I read it rather than listened. I didn’t enjoy the reader at all and that really detracted from the story.
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- Rachel Miller
- 03-06-23
A Tree-Hugging Book
This book was cute, but for me it missed an essential element to drive the story. The main character is like able but lonely, but beyond her desire to understand friendship there isn’t much a plot. As she is a botanist, the scientific names for plants got a little old.
I think it was a fine listen for turning on while doing chores, but it definitely didn’t grab my attention in the way I hoped it would.
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- Kay
- 08-08-23
Really loved this book!
A thoughtful book about the meaning of friendship and the importance of friendship in midlife, and it was fun to learn something about plants too!
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