Shotgun Lovesongs
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Scott Shepherd
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Ari Fliakos
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Maggie Hoffman
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Scott Sowers
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Gary Wilmes
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By:
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Nickolas Butler
About this listen
Welcome to Little Wing.
It’s a place like hundreds of others, nothing special, really. But for four friends—all born and raised in this small Wisconsin town—it is home. And now they are men, coming into their own, or struggling to do so.
One of them never left, still working the family farm that has been tilled for generations. But others felt the need to move on, with varying degrees of success. One trades commodities, another took to the rodeo circuit, and one of them even hit it big as a rock star. And then there’s Beth, a woman who has meant something special in each of their lives.
Now all four are brought together for a wedding. Little Wing seems even smaller than before. While lifelong bonds are still strong, there are stresses—between the friends, between husbands and wives. There will be heartbreak, but there will also be hope, healing, even heroism as these memorable people learn the true meaning of adult friendship and love.
Seldom has the American heartland been so richly and accurately portrayed. Though the town may have changed, the one thing that hasn’t is the beauty of the Wisconsin farmland, the lure of which, in Nickolas Butler’s hands, emerges as a vibrant character in the story. Shotgun Lovesongs is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place yet movingly describes the universal human condition. It is, in short, a truly remarkable audiobook—a novel that once listened to will never be forgotten.
©2014 Nickolas Butler (P)2013 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
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A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
- Stories
- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became both the recognized master of the form and one of our best-loved fiction writers. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.
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Humanity at the Breaking Point
- By Darwin8u on 03-31-19
By: Raymond Carver
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Whiskey & Ribbons
- By: Leesa Cross-Smith
- Narrated by: Larry Heron, Joe Bearor, Tunisia Hardison
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in contemporary Louisville, Leesa Cross-Smith's mesmerizing first novel surrounding the death of a police officer is a requiem for marriage, friendship, and family, from an author Roxane Gay has called "a consummate storyteller". Evi - a classically-trained ballerina - was nine months pregnant when her husband Eamon was killed in the line of duty on a steamy morning in July. Now, it is winter, and Eamon's adopted brother Dalton has moved in to help her raise six-month-old Noah.
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Beautifully Tragic and Heart Healing
- By Jennifer Glover on 08-17-18
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Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Benjamin Benjamin has lost virtually everything - his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood. With few options, Ben enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving taught in the basement of a local church. There Ben is instructed in the art of inserting catheters and avoiding liability and how to keep physical and emotional distance between client and provider. But when Ben is assigned to 19-year-old Trev, he discovers that the endless mnemonics and service plan checklists have done little to prepare him.
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Unlike!
- By Pamela Harvey on 01-02-13
By: Jonathan Evison
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Signals: New and Selected Stories
- By: Tim Gautreaux
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.
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Perfection! Amazing writer/amazing reader
- By Monique on 01-08-19
By: Tim Gautreaux
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
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I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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My True Love Gave to Me
- Twelve Holiday Stories
- By: Stephanie Perkins - editor
- Narrated by: Various
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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You're going to fall in love with My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories by twelve bestselling young adult writers, edited by the international bestselling Stephanie Perkins. Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa, there's something here for everyone. So curl up by the fireplace and get cozy. You have twelve reasons this season to stay indoors and fall in love.
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Nice Holiday Read
- By Doha on 11-23-16
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
What listeners say about Shotgun Lovesongs
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J'aime Montanye
- 10-31-23
Quick read!
Good characters! I enjoyed hearing each chapter in a new person's point of view.
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- Robin
- 07-10-14
On Wisconsin! Great sense of place
As a Midwesterner I enjoyed the setting of prairie and small town. Someone said the subject was the angst of 30-somethings, but I'd say it's more about the universal experience of never being content with what we have, envying someone else, not knowing they are envying you. It's about the age when people look around and wonder if this is how their lives are supposed to turn out. And it's about figuring out what is really important in life.
I usually don't care for books with multiple narrators because I will hate at least one of them but in this book I thought all the narrators were excellently matched with their characters. The one female character may have been less effective, but I think that's because the male author didn't give her as much depth as he did to the men he created.
It may be unrealistic the way some of the characters described the land in such poetic terms, but I thought it fit in just fine.
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- Suzn F
- 03-15-14
OH WOW, LOVESONGS
This is a terrific book! Since other reviewers have outlined the plot, instead I'll just review the high points, and there are many. It was very clear early on that this book was written by a man. Each character has a clear voice and although there are women characters in this book, this story just exudes testosterone. And I mean this in a very good way. At times I thought I could smell Henry's sweat or taste Leland's tears. The prose is rich and it gives to the listener.
I knew the characters and felt for them. This story about marriage, friendship, loyalty and unrequited love is a winner. Hooray to this author! I had no problem differentiating characters, there were several narrators and each voice / character is introduced in the beginning of each chapter. Enjoy this book..... it's a good one!!
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10 people found this helpful
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- Diana
- 03-28-14
A beautiful, melodic book about small towns
Shotgun Lovesongs captured the essence of trying to find your place in or escaping from a barely surviving small town. What I wasn't prepared for was the absolutely beautiful writing. Melodic, honest, and heartfelt, this book is the story of childhood dreams and friendships that grow together and apart in thousands of little Midwestern towns.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jan
- 03-30-14
Expect to Hear Great Things About This Novel
My favorite contemporary fiction selection so far for 2014. This novel focuses on the comings and goings of lives that were once tightly connected in a small Wisconsin town. This is not a sentimental memoir.. it is solid and reeks of truth. Although the novel spans across a couple of decades, it focuses on the present day effects that friendships from the past have on our lives. Narrators are consistant and likable. Nickolas Butler has written a novel of which almost any reader can relate.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ryan
- 03-19-14
Middlin’ “OMG, adulthood” novel
The setup is a pretty familiar one: a tale of five friends who come from the same American small town, go in different directions in life, and then come together again as 30-something adults, finding that they still have some growing up to do.
The writing isn't really anything ground-breaking, but it's not bad either, and I thought that there was a basic honesty to Nickolas Butler's sense of people and places. Two of the five main characters resonated with me. First, there’s Lee, the brooding alt-rock superstar who keeps returning to the town in which he had recorded his first hit album during a depressive phase and -- probably relatedly -- been in love (ah, hipster nostalgia). Then, there’s Ronnie, the former rodeo stud, now living with the after-effects of a brain hemorrhage connected to the alcoholism of his younger days, looked after by neighbors. Both of their restless, slightly-unhinged narrative voices are well done, and are brought to life by the audiobook readers.
The novel's central dramas, though, weren't very dramatic to me. Henry and Beth are both solid, decent midwesterners, but a bit dull as characters (however capable Maggie Hoffman is at reading Beth’s parts), and I couldn't get excited about Beth's one act of “infidelity”, which never seemed to have much emotional conviction on her side. As for Kip, the high-powered broker, he felt tacked-on to the story, never really graduating from a trope to a convincing character. As another user review noted, cutting a protagonist might have forced Butler to add more layers to the others.
Still, just as a cup of microwave soup is sometimes comforting, a well-worn story format is sometimes just fine for my listening needs during a Sunday trip to the grocery story. There are a few moments of familiar poignancy in this tale of people realizing that their youth is over and they must deal with their baggage and make choices about the rest of their lives. What a serious time our thirties are! Some readers may find the (literally) painful male bonding in the last chapter silly, but I liked that Butler finally upped the level of chaos and didn’t go for the easy happy ending.
Shotgun Lovesongs would probably work well as the kind of movie my parents like to stream, if given some charismatic actors, good midwestern panorama shots, and a stirring soundtrack. As a novel, it was a pleasant if not hugely memorable time-passer.
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5 people found this helpful
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- penny i. evans
- 01-28-16
another woman in love with a rock-n-roll singer
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
certain friends of mine would like it very much. friends of mine who, along with me, were very much in tune with the rock-n-roll lifestyle-the fleetingness of everything-what matters once doesn't seem to anymore
Who was your favorite character and why?
lee was my absolute favorite although i did like all of the other one's too. kip grew on me once his relationship with harvey was brought in to the story. it isn't very often that i like all of the narration-but i think everyone did a great job. especially scott shepard- he broke my heart a million times.
What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
a depth and an addition al layer of the human existence that wouldn't have stood out as much if i had read it.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
i knew someone who died in the snow-when ronnie was walking in the blizzard it was very intense. the love story between lee and beth was very familiar to me. very melancholy love story.
Any additional comments?
loved the title-it was the reason i first noticed the book-it reached out and grabbed me.
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- Awg
- 08-18-14
More than I thought it would be.
Where does Shotgun Lovesongs rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Near the top.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Shotgun Lovesongs?
Don't know.
Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes
Any additional comments?
Expected it to be a corny love story just to fill time. Liked it so well I bought the audio edition for my sister. It mimicked real life.
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- Taryn
- 03-17-14
Charming story and Great listen
I found this book to be entertaining and enjoyable. I loved the different readers and the way they captured the voice of each character. I disagree with reviews that said each character was too similar and all male dominated which didn't provide balance. FIrst of all, it was about mostly male characters who grew up together which gives them a similar base and a common voice despite their different lives and experiences. Second, there didnt have to be balance with the one female character - the story was primarily about male friendship throughout 30+ yrs. The end did get a bit contrived and it was kind of abrupt so I took off one star for that. However, I think the book captured the essence of small town life and the ebb and flow of long lasting friendships. I enjoyed this audio and I recommend it for a pleasant easy listen!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Margaret
- 06-24-18
Walk like a man
I came late to the Nikolas Butler party, but I’m glad I finally got here. So many Wisconsin writers try to articulate the magic of this place, the connection we have with the land, our simple and somewhat goofy – but beautiful – culture – and so many Wisconsin writers end up making us into cartoon characters. Butler, second only to David Rhodes in painting the powerful beauty of rural and small-town Wisconsin, does not make us into cartoon characters. Whether his man-pack of central characters is pissing off a small-town water tower, stepping out onto a wooden porch as the fog lifts at daybreak, or dancing at a wedding that brings the entire community together under starlight, Butler gets it. And he gives it, in a perfect and illuminated package, to the lucky reader.
Butler tells his story through five characters – four men, whose individual voices and personalities Butler draws beautifully – and a woman. Butler’s male characters are pitch-perfect – the high school buddies who all went their separate ways to the rodeo and alcoholism, to the farm, to indie rock stardom, to hedge funds and then back again to their small town roots.
That’s the thing about small town Wisconsin. When you’re from here, it keeps singing you back, not only through nostalgia, but through the rolling landscape, the sound of the trees, and the simple decency of the people. Each male character has a strong, clear voice, real problems, and real dimension.
There’s also a female main character – Beth – who of course is the wife of one of the buddies and the love object of another. Butler is less successful with Beth’s voice, which ultimately comes off as the way a man thinks women think. It’s a venial rather than a cardinal sin, and even as a female reader, I forgave Butler and kept going, because Butler is a virtuoso of showing what Springsteen calls “learning how to walk like a man.”
His portrayal of small-town life – from the pickled eggs on the back bar at the VFW to the brand of beer in our refrigerators to the crushing worry about finances that harry a family farmer every day – is perfect. Butler is a master of creating the magic moments that become the touchstones of our life forever.
A beautiful, masterful book. Magic.
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1 person found this helpful