Second Place
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Kate Fleetwood
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By:
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Rachel Cusk
About this listen
A haunting fable of art, family, and fate from the author of the Outline trilogy.
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. It reminds us of art’s capacity to uplift - and to destroy.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
©2021 Rachel Cusk (P)2021 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Chicago Tribune Best Books of the Year, 2021
The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year, 2021
National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee, 2021
Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, 2021
New York Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2021
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Man Booker Award - Nominee, 2021
Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2021
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- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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World-famous 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer. It was originally published in 1923. It is Gibran's best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.
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Literally the best book!
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-20
By: Khalil Gibrán
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Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
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Beautiful memoir
- By Gabriel Smith on 07-25-22
By: Jan Morris
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The Yellow Wallpaper
- By: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Narrated by: Jo Myddleton
- Length: 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.
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A Visceral Reaction
- By Em on 05-02-12
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Siddhartha
- By: Hermann Hesse
- Narrated by: Harish Bhimani
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Hermann Hesse’s classic novel Siddhartha, takes place in ancient India around the time of the Buddha (6th century BC). Siddhartha and his companion Govinda set out in search of enlightenment. Siddhartha goes through a series of changes and realizations as he attempts to achieve this goal. Siddhartha joins the ascetics, visits Gotama, embraces his earthly desires, and finally communes with nature, all in an attempt to attain Nirvana.
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Sounds rushed
- By Viviane on 10-17-11
By: Hermann Hesse
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Demian
- By: Hermann Hesse
- Narrated by: Michael A. Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The passionate account of a young man's growing awareness of his own identity, of his involvement in the secret and dangerous world of petty crime, and how, influenced by a precocious schoolmate, he rebels against convention and discovers not only the great joy of independence, but his own new powers for good and evil.
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i came here because of kpop
- By Christine K. on 09-07-16
By: Hermann Hesse
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The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
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Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
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The Dream House
- By: Craig Higginson
- Narrated by: Terry Lloyd-Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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A farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman – called ‘the barren one’ behind her back – dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life.
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Brilliant Dream House Narration
- By Simon Griffiths on 05-05-21
By: Craig Higginson
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Jenny
- By: Sigrid Undset
- Narrated by: K. G. Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Jenny is the story of Jenny Winge, a talented Norwegian painter who lives a free and independent life in Rome. Betraying her own ideals, she has an affair, resulting in a child out of wedlock, and decides to raise the child on her own. Undset gives a gripping portrayal of a woman struggling towards fulfillment and independence, who at the same time wrestles with mental problems. It is written with unflinching honesty, which makes her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago.
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Undset is an Astute Observer of Human Nature
- By Amazon Customer on 08-05-17
By: Sigrid Undset
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The Wings of the Dove
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Milly Theale is a young, beautiful, and fabulously wealthy American. When she arrives in London and meets the equally beautiful but impoverished Kate Croy, they form an intimate friendship. But nothing is as it seems: materialism, romance, self-delusion, and ultimately fatal illness insidiously contaminate the glamorous social whirl.
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Not an easy read but SO worth it!
- By Julie Gray on 10-31-17
By: Henry James
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Cold Hand in Mine
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("Pages from a Young Girl's Journal") but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.
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Aickman is unique
- By Stark on 08-19-23
By: Robert Aickman
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The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
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Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
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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.
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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.
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Absolute
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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.
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Good book great author
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When Stella leaves London for a small village in Sussex, she hopes that the country life will be conducive to her journey toward self-discovery. She'll have no more insipid lover, dead end job, or controlling parents to endure. But, as an au pair for a dispiriting family, she's stalked by bad-tempered people, misfortune from weather and wildlife, and unwelcome suitors. Spunky and resourceful, she manages to keep a stiff upper lip, even when her darkest secret manages to catch up with her.
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Excellent, loved this listen
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A good happy girl
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If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English
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Wow!
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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.
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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.
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Absolute
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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.
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Good book great author
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When Stella leaves London for a small village in Sussex, she hopes that the country life will be conducive to her journey toward self-discovery. She'll have no more insipid lover, dead end job, or controlling parents to endure. But, as an au pair for a dispiriting family, she's stalked by bad-tempered people, misfortune from weather and wildlife, and unwelcome suitors. Spunky and resourceful, she manages to keep a stiff upper lip, even when her darkest secret manages to catch up with her.
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Excellent, loved this listen
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A Good Happy Girl
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Helen, a jittery attorney with a self-destructive streak, is secretly reeling from a disturbing crime of neglect that her parents recently committed. Historically happy to compartmentalize—distracting herself by hooking up with lesbian couples, doting on her grandmother, and flirting with a young administrative assistant—Helen finally meets her match with Catherine and Katrina, a married couple who startle and intrigue her with their ever-increasing sexual and emotional intensity.
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A good happy girl
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In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.
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In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her.
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Nothing else like it
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Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house, happy enough daughter, and an eerie sense that life might be happening elsewhere. Then Tonie accepts a big promotion at work and Thomas agrees to become a stay-at-home dad. While Thomas is suddenly faced with the daily silence of an empty house, Tonie finds herself alive to previously unimagined possibilities. And at the head of the family, the aging Bradshaw parents continue their marital dynamic of bickering and petty undermining.
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Brilliant but tedious
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Saving Agnes
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The story of a young British woman's first affair and entry into adulthood.
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most boring book I've ever read.
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Coventry
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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.
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This review is biased
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By: Rachel Cusk
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A Woman's Story
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Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.” She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love.
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Beautiful Tribute, Beautiful Writing
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It’s hard to remember now that I was once that girl, lying in the sand in my red swimsuit and swimming late into the day. Sharkbait, he called me. It’s in the water where she first sees him: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing college, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life.
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Beautifully written novel ruined by weak story
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All the Lovers in the Night
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Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copyeditor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
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Enjoyable listen
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Animal
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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.
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Should come with a lot of trigger warnings
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Arlington Park
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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.
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Rachel cusk
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By: Rachel Cusk
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Milk Blood Heat
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A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning.
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Wonderful
- By Anonymous User on 05-28-21
By: Dantiel W. Moniz
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The Transit of Venus
- By: Shirley Hazzard
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- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
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Story
Caro, gallant and adventurous, has been courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and the characters weave in and out of each other's lives, love, death, and two secrets wait in ambush for them.
By: Shirley Hazzard
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The Mars Room
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Featuring original music by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon! It's 2003 and Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner evokes with great humor and precision.
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Too bleak for me; well-written
- By Margaret on 08-09-18
By: Rachel Kushner
What listeners say about Second Place
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kate Juliff
- 08-08-21
Beautifully executed. Impressionism in words, philosophy in motion
I enjoyed “Second Place” though the only characters that rang true were M, the writer and L the artist. The others were shallow.
The philosophizing was annoying at times, insightful occasionally. I recommend it if only for the exquisite writing. Her picture of paras is Impressionism in English words,
It slows down a bit about 3/4 through but is worth preserving to the end. Don’t think it’ll win the Booker, but for a novel written in these troubled times of Brexit, climate crisis and Covid, it hits the mark though these tragedies are not directly alluded to..
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- Xmimix
- 01-03-22
Her best book to date…
If you love Rachel Cusk, as I do, you will rejoice in this book of hers. An intriguing and thoughtful story and the narration is outstanding.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-29-22
Incredible!
Best audiobook I’ve ever listened to. The performance is electrifying and the prose, nourishment for the soul. Must listen!
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- TCBailey
- 03-28-22
Horrible narrator, boring story
The narrator when voicing other characters was like nails on a chalk board. The story was whiny and self indulgent.
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2 people found this helpful
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- JKG
- 02-20-22
The problem with Audible
Truly, I expected more from Kate Fleetwood and Audible. This is an annoying performance that brings into view the difficulties of narrating novels. The male voices are all mannered and unpleasant, as if life or novels gave out those cues. The unpleasant L speaks with a drawl, unless he’s using the more menacing croak of the villain in a film made for children. Little is left to the listener’s imagination, when the book itself wants to engage just that faculty.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 10-13-21
Rachel Cusk is so brilliant!
Oh my God. Thank you Audible algorithm for recommending this to me. But then, it should be obvious that I hang on every word she writes.
Before I downloaded I read a couple of reviews that crabbed about the narration. I don’t see what their problem was.
Interestingly the story takes place during the pandemic, but that formed only the most distant backdrop, alluded to by snippets like, "...now that travel had become less of a problem..."
Fans will not be disappointed: there is the obligatory cringy scene where a man, with the greatest awkwardness, tries to force himself on the POV character.
I never tire of Rachel Cusk's startlingly original turns of phrase coupled with her penetrating wisdom and disarming vulnerability. If you are anything like the fanboy I am don't pass this up.
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- Jonathan
- 08-30-21
Great book, acting fail.
This is an awful performance. I have never had such a visceral reaction to a reader. The voices she adopts for the characters are so exaggerated, especially for the men. it's almost funny, but mostly just annoying. Rachel Cusk deserves better!
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- Naveen S.
- 08-30-21
Kind of liked it?
A bit rambling and boring but the author uses beautiful and precise language which I liked. There is no real plot but I guess that would be a feature and not a bug from this author’s perspective. Nice unromantic view of what might be considered an “impressive” man particularly in contrast to the other characters.
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Story
- Oleksandra
- 02-10-22
Amazing book
I think this is one of author’s greatest books ever. It was a pure pleasure…
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- barbara
- 08-31-22
The Narrator is distractingly bad
It’s interesting to read a book yourself (words on the page) and another to be read to. I’ve read (and listened to) several of Rachel Cusk books - I can hear Cusk’s voice in my head. Listening to this, in my opinion a ridiculously awful narrator is completely ruining it for me. She is getting in the way of the book with her unconvincing voices! yikes
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