
Scaffolding
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
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $17.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lauren Elkin
-
By:
-
Lauren Elkin
About this listen
A novel of Paris, desire, love, psychoanalysis, and the turbulent affairs of two couples across time.
After a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, finds herself unable to return to work, obsessing instead over a kitchen renovation and befriending a new neighbor-a younger woman called Clementine who has just moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective.
Forty years earlier, in the same apartment, Florence and Henry are renovating their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology and attending feminist meetings and Jacques Lacan's infamous seminars. She is hoping to conceive their first child, though Henry isn't sure he's ready for fatherhood.
Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
©2024 Lauren Elkin (P)2024 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Anthropologists
- By: Aysegül Savas
- Narrated by: Kathryn Aboya
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”
-
-
Can't say it's good
- By Moraz on 12-22-24
By: Aysegül Savas
-
Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
-
-
The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
-
The Repeat Room
- A Novel
- By: Jesse Ball
- Narrated by: Erik Bloomquist
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
-
-
kept me engaged
- By Nia S on 04-07-25
By: Jesse Ball
-
The Coin
- A Novel
- By: Yasmin Zaher
- Narrated by: Sarah Agha
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
-
-
Interview of author on podcast piqued interest
- By amybarnard on 08-03-24
By: Yasmin Zaher
-
Theory & Practice
- By: Michelle de Kretser
- Narrated by: Melissa Madden Gray
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
-
Shred Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
-
-
Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
-
The Anthropologists
- By: Aysegül Savas
- Narrated by: Kathryn Aboya
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”
-
-
Can't say it's good
- By Moraz on 12-22-24
By: Aysegül Savas
-
Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
-
-
The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
-
The Repeat Room
- A Novel
- By: Jesse Ball
- Narrated by: Erik Bloomquist
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
-
-
kept me engaged
- By Nia S on 04-07-25
By: Jesse Ball
-
The Coin
- A Novel
- By: Yasmin Zaher
- Narrated by: Sarah Agha
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
-
-
Interview of author on podcast piqued interest
- By amybarnard on 08-03-24
By: Yasmin Zaher
-
Theory & Practice
- By: Michelle de Kretser
- Narrated by: Melissa Madden Gray
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
-
Shred Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
-
-
Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
-
Dear Dickhead
- A Novel
- By: Virginie Despentes, Frank Wynne - translator
- Narrated by: Gina Rogers, Patrick Zeller
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oscar is a B-list novelist in his forties. He used to be an alcoholic and a cokehead, but now he keeps himself busy by ranting on social media. When Rebecca, an actress whose looks he insulted, sends him an angry email, they strike up a combative correspondence—at the very moment that Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. What ensues is a no-holds-barred conversation about life under the patriarchy, and above all about addiction—to drugs, to alcohol, to the internet, to rage.
-
-
Great reads
- By MKAT on 03-04-25
By: Virginie Despentes, and others
-
Held
- A Novel
- By: Anne Michaels
- Narrated by: Anne Michaels
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures
-
-
Would give six stars if possible
- By love it on 08-31-24
By: Anne Michaels
-
You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
- By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Gabriel Porras
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
-
-
Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
By: Álvaro Enrigue, and others
-
The Book of George
- A Novel
- By: Kate Greathead
- Narrated by: Blair Baker
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; sweet yet noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend; distant from but still reliant on his mother; charmingly funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.
-
-
Lots of potential, little payoff
- By Chalin Smith on 10-24-24
By: Kate Greathead
-
My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Anonymous User on 06-24-24
By: Hisham Matar
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
Rejection
- Fiction
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Allyson Ryan, Quincy Surasmith, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
-
-
Trigger warning for one chapter, otherwise really creative
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-24
-
This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
-
-
Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
- By Thomp/Suis on 05-17-24
By: Claire Messud
-
Good Material
- A Novel
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Arthur Darvill, Vanessa Kirby
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
-
-
not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
By: Dolly Alderton
-
Every Arc Bends Its Radian
- By: Sergio De La Pava
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Riv—poet, philosopher, private eye—arrives in Cali, Colombia, hoping to find reprieve. Running away from an unspeakable event surrounding his ex Jane, Riv accidentally connects with his cousin Mauro and family friend Carlotta, who asks him to find her daughter Angelica Alfa-Ochoa. No sooner is Riv on the trail when it becomes clear that not only are the cops not looking for Angelica, but they are actively preventing him from finding her.
-
-
The silliness of it all
- By James on 02-23-25
-
Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
-
-
Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
-
Intermezzo
- A Novel
- By: Sally Rooney
- Narrated by: Éanna Hardwicke
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret.
-
-
I felt a lot of empathy towards the excellently developed characters.
- By Hanoverian girl on 09-29-24
By: Sally Rooney
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Flâneuse
- Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a "determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk." Virginia Woolf called it "street haunting"; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany's; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s NYC.
-
-
rambling unfocused
- By Peachy2 on 12-18-19
By: Lauren Elkin
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
Shred Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
-
-
Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
-
The Empusium
- A Health Resort Horror Story
- By: Olga Tokarczuk
- Narrated by: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Natasha Soudek
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
-
-
Never ending Misogyny
- By Nina O on 10-11-24
By: Olga Tokarczuk
-
Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
-
-
The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
-
Bad Habit
- A Novel
- By: Alana S. Portero, Mara Faye Lethem - translator
- Narrated by: Alexandra Grey
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anchored by the voice of its sweet and defiant narrator, Bad Habit casts a trans woman’s trying youth as a heartfelt odyssey. Raised in an animated yet impoverished blue-collar neighborhood, Alana S. Portero’s protagonist struggles to find her place. As the city around her changes–the heroin epidemic that ravages Madrid through the '80s and '90s, rallying calls of worker solidarity and the pulsing beat of the city's night scene– she becomes increasingly detached from the world and, most crucially, herself.
By: Alana S. Portero, and others
-
Flâneuse
- Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a "determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk." Virginia Woolf called it "street haunting"; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany's; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s NYC.
-
-
rambling unfocused
- By Peachy2 on 12-18-19
By: Lauren Elkin
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
Shred Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Betsy Lerner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
-
-
Fairly common storyline
- By Placeholder on 10-22-24
By: Betsy Lerner
-
The Empusium
- A Health Resort Horror Story
- By: Olga Tokarczuk
- Narrated by: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Natasha Soudek
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
-
-
Never ending Misogyny
- By Nina O on 10-11-24
By: Olga Tokarczuk
-
Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
-
-
The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
-
Bad Habit
- A Novel
- By: Alana S. Portero, Mara Faye Lethem - translator
- Narrated by: Alexandra Grey
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anchored by the voice of its sweet and defiant narrator, Bad Habit casts a trans woman’s trying youth as a heartfelt odyssey. Raised in an animated yet impoverished blue-collar neighborhood, Alana S. Portero’s protagonist struggles to find her place. As the city around her changes–the heroin epidemic that ravages Madrid through the '80s and '90s, rallying calls of worker solidarity and the pulsing beat of the city's night scene– she becomes increasingly detached from the world and, most crucially, herself.
By: Alana S. Portero, and others
-
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 Coin
- A Novel
- By: Yasmin Zaher
- Narrated by: Sarah Agha
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
-
-
Interview of author on podcast piqued interest
- By amybarnard on 08-03-24
By: Yasmin Zaher
-
Art Monsters
- Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Art Monsters is a landmark feminist intervention in the way we think about women's stories and bodies, calling attention to a radical genealogy of feminist art that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims. Exploring a rich lineage of visual artists, thinkers, and writers, Elkin examines the ways feminists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth of their experiences as bodies.
-
-
This book changed me.
- By Sonni Adams on 12-31-24
By: Lauren Elkin
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
-
-
Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
-
August Blue
- A Novel
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson—former child prodigy, now in her thirties—walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance. Now she is in Athens, watching an uncannily familiar woman purchase a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history. So begins her journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who seems to be her double.
-
-
Unsure about this
- By Maryanne T. on 12-31-23
By: Deborah Levy
-
The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
-
-
Great book.
- By T on 04-06-25
By: Kelly Link
-
Several People Are Typing
- A Novel (Good Morning America Book Club)
- By: Calvin Kasulke
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Neil Shah, Dani Martineck, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York-based public relations firm, has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels - at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from-home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from...wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his coworker Pradeep to help him escape and to find out what happened to his body.
-
-
Spooky, funny, surprisingly touching
- By TD on 11-03-23
By: Calvin Kasulke
-
American Rapture
- By: CJ Leede
- Narrated by: Moniqua Plante
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust. Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin… The end times are coming.
-
-
Lord, let's survive the apocalypse as a horny teen
- By Megan on 11-02-24
By: CJ Leede
-
Crush
- A Novel
- By: Ada Calhoun
- Narrated by: Robyn Maryke
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She’s happy and settled and productive and content in her full life—a child, a career, an admirable marriage, deep friendships, happy parents, and a spouse she still loves. But when her husband urges her to address what the narrow labels of “husband” and “wife” force them to edit out of their lives, the very best kind of hell breaks loose. Using the author’s personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes.
-
-
This Spoke to my soul
- By Lloyda on 04-03-25
By: Ada Calhoun
-
Greek Lessons
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, Deborah Smith - translator, Emily Yae Won - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung, Earl T. Kim
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.
-
-
Deeply rewarding
- By Pedro on 04-07-25
By: Han Kang, and others
-
The Emperor of Gladness
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: James Aaron Oh
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak.
By: Ocean Vuong
What listeners say about Scaffolding
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Laura M
- 11-14-24
Wonderful
There’s a very light-handed, subtle way this story unfolds that I’m so impressed by. It just sweeps you along. It’s a total pleasure to read, as well as being thought-provoking and, on certain themes, quite powerful. There have been quite a few dissection-of-marriage/monogamy books published recently, and some are good, but this is excellent.
I love that the book examines relationships without creating a kind of fishbowl effect. The world goes on around the relationships, and in some way they seem vastly significant, and in some way not at all. This is what I’m always hoping for in literature, and it’s been missing from a lot of the recent “dissection”books. It reminds me of Jenny Offill’s work.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bluebird
- 03-09-25
Young woman’s perspective, not for me
Infidelity. Middle/upper class female discontent. Sex. Self centered cynical romance. It’s perhaps just me outgrowing the genre.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!