
Small Pleasures
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Karen Cass
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By:
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Clare Chambers
About this listen
In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett - an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion.
"With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details." (The New York Times)
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.
That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life.
Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences.
Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.
©2021 Clare Chambers (P)2021 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The Butler family has had their share of trials - as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest - but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives. Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with, and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband, Proctor, are arrested, and in a heartbeat, the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace.
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Loved It!
- By Amazon Customer on 02-22-19
By: Anissa Gray
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All Our Shimmering Skies
- A Novel
- By: Trent Dalton
- Narrated by: Ruby Rees
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Darwin, 1942. As Japanese bombs rain down on her hometown, newly orphaned Molly Hook looks to the skies and runs for her life. Inside a duffel bag, she carries a stone heart and a map that will lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer whom she believes cursed her family. Accompanying her are the most unlikely traveling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a Japanese fighter pilot who’s abandoned his post. Messages from the skies above guide them towards treasure, but foes are close on their trail.
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Gorgeous
- By Lolly Winston on 07-23-21
By: Trent Dalton
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The Heiress
- The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh
- By: Molly Greeley
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh was prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and now the young woman must take the opium-heavy tincture every day. Growing up sheltered and confined, removed from sunshine and fresh air, the pale and overly slender Anne grew up with few companions except her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Throughout their childhoods, it was understood that Darcy and Anne would marry and combine their vast estates of Pemberley and Rosings. But Darcy does not love Anne or want her.
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Not a pleasant listen
- By Amazon Customer on 02-18-21
By: Molly Greeley
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Aria
- A Novel
- By: Nazanine Hozar
- Narrated by: Neeky Dalir
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the 1950s in a restless Iran, a country rich in oil but deeply divided by class and religion. The government is unpopular and corrupt and under foreign sway. One night, an illiterate army driver hears the pitiful cry of a baby abandoned in an alley and menaced by ravenous wild dogs. He snatches up the child and takes her home, naming her Aria - the first step on an unlikely path from deprivation to privilege. Over the next two decades, the orphan girl acquires three mother figures whose secrets she will learn only much later.
By: Nazanine Hozar
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The Great Offshore Grounds
- A Novel
- By: Vanessa Veselka
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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On the day of their estranged father’s wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It’s been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of personal and professional dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams of fishing off the coast of Alaska. But the promise of a shot at financial security brings the two together to claim what’s theirs.
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Epic Family (blood and chosen) Saga
- By Kait on 09-19-20
By: Vanessa Veselka
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Snowflake
- A Novel
- By: Louise Nealon
- Narrated by: Louisa Harland
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Eighteen-year-old Debbie was raised on her family’s rural dairy farm, 40 minutes and a world away from Dublin. She lives with her mother, Maeve, a skittish woman who takes to her bed for days on end, claims not to know who Debbie’s father is, and believes her dreams are prophecies. Rounding out their small family is Maeve’s brother, Billy, who lives in a caravan behind their house, drinks too much, and likes to impersonate famous dead writers online. Though they may have their quirks, the Whites’ fierce love for one another is never in doubt. But Debbie’s life is changing.
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Fantastic debut!
- By Barbara S on 09-22-21
By: Louise Nealon
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Red Letter Days
- By: Sarah-Jane Stratford
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin, Sarah-Jane Stratford
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Amid the glitz and glamour of 1950s New York, Phoebe Adler pursues her dream of screenwriting. A dream that turns into a living nightmare when she is blacklisted - caught in the Red Menace that is shattering the lives of suspected Communists. Desperate to work, she escapes to London, determined to keep her dream alive and clear her good name. There, Phoebe befriends fellow American exile Hannah Wolfson, who has defied the odds to build a career as a successful television producer in England.
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Subpar
- By Birdy on 09-15-22
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Sorry for Your Trouble
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death....
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Beautifully conceived collection
- By Tom on 10-15-20
By: Richard Ford
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The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
- By: Robert Hillman
- Narrated by: Daniel Lapaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met - she's passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has only read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife - and still missing her sweet son, Peter - Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy.
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Listener beware
- By Little old lady from Iowa on 06-11-23
By: Robert Hillman
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We Wish You Luck
- A Novel
- By: Caroline Zancan
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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It doesn't take long for the students on Fielding campus to become obsessed with Hannah, Leslie, and Jimmy. The three graduate students are mysterious, inaccessible, and brilliant. Leslie, glamorous and brash, has declared that she wants to write erotica and make millions. Hannah is quietly confident, loyal, elegantly beautiful, and the person they all want to be; and Jimmy is a haunted genius with no past. After Simone - young best-selling author and erstwhile model - shows up as a visiting professor, and after everything that happened with her, the trio only become more notorious.
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This book is very boring
- By Anonymous User on 09-13-21
By: Caroline Zancan
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Annelies
- A Novel
- By: David R. Gillham
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, David R. Gillham
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Anne Frank is a cultural icon whose diary painted a vivid picture of the Holocaust and made her an image of humanity in one of history’s darkest moments. But she was also a person - a precocious young girl with a rich inner life and tremendous skill as a writer. In this masterful new novel, David R. Gillham explores with breathtaking empathy the woman - and the writer - she might have become.
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Wow!
- By Amazon Customer on 02-29-20
By: David R. Gillham
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A Play for the End of the World
- A Novel
- By: Jai Chakrabarti
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Traveling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis.
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I can’t believe this is a debut novel
- By Jennifer Lang on 09-28-21
By: Jai Chakrabarti
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To Be a Man
- Stories
- By: Nicole Krauss
- Narrated by: Nicole Krauss
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.
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The joy of great literature
- By Brian Datnow on 01-02-21
By: Nicole Krauss
Wonderful story telling and fabulous narration
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Great writing, great characters but..
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Fantastic captivating story …
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Intriguing question
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Very unique!I
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Thoroughly enjoyable story and performance
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The beginning of the book offers a foreboding warning, but you sail along with the characters seeking the answer to the mystery, knowing it might bring happiness or pain. It doesn't matter because of the Buddhist truism "that which you are seeking is causing you to seek". We are each pulled by our desires; and it doesn't matter where it leads us or even if it will bring tragedy and disappointment because if the journey is rewarding, that is pleasurable reward enough.
Draws you in
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terrible ending
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Slowly drew me in.....
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I suggest ending before last chapter and writing your own ending.
Beautifully written
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