Small World
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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William DeMeritt
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By:
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Jonathan Evison
About this listen
Winner of the Housatonic Book Award
A New York Times Editors' Choice!
One of Booklist’s “Top 10 Historical Fiction Novels of 2022”
One of the Los Angeles Times's “10 Books to Add to Your Reading List”
One of Book Culture's Most Anticipated Reads
“A bighearted, widescreen American tale.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Masterpiece . . . The quintessential great American novel.”—Booklist (starred review)
“A vivid mosaic.”—BookPage (starred review)
Jonathan Evison’s Small World is an epic novel for now. Set against such iconic backdrops as the California gold rush, the development of the transcontinental railroad, and a speeding train of modern-day strangers forced together by fate, it is a grand entertainment that asks big questions.
The characters of Small World connect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways, winning, breaking, and winning our hearts again. In exploring the passengers’ lives and those of their ancestors more than a century before, Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from numerous points of view across place and time. And it does it with a fullhearted, full-throttle pace that asks on the most human, intimate scale whether it is truly possible to meet, and survive, the choices posed—and forced—by the age.
The result is a historical epic with a Dickensian flair, a grand entertainment that asks whether our nation has made good on its promises. It dazzles as its characters come to connect with one another through time. And it hits home as it probes at our country’s injustices, big and small, straight through to its deeply satisfying final words.
©2021 Jonathan Evison (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
A New York Times Editors' Pick | Joyce Carol Oates Prize longlist | One of The Christian Science Monitor's and Bookreporter's “Best Books of 2022” | One of the Los Angeles Times's “10 Books to Add to Your Reading List” | One of Book Culture's Most Anticipated Reads | An Amazon “Best of the Month” Pick in Literature and Fiction
“This is more than a sprawling, big-hearted, blue-collar novel, it’s a Dickensian saga on a grand American scale, filled with beauty and violence, tragedy and redemption. This is the kind of historical fiction that keeps you up all night, burning in your veins like kerosene.”—Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“A creative, insightful work of fiction. Evison pulls off a wonderful high-wire act of storytelling that few would attempt, and even fewer could achieve so sharply!”—Jason Mott, author of the National Book Award winner Hell of a Book
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From humble beginnings in rural Tennessee to his heroic death defending the Alamo, frontiersman, adventurer, and politician David Davy Crockett embodies the spirit and ideals of the national character. Even during his lifetime, tales of the sharpshooting, skilled woodsman were - to his delight - told, retold, and elaborated on. As a US congressman, the former Creek War militiaman steadfastly opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.
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I highly recommend
- By That Man They Call Shad on 05-05-21
By: Cameron Judd
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The Taker
- By: Alma Katsu
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her...despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort.
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Too dark for my taste
- By Margaret on 05-04-14
By: Alma Katsu
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Last Town on Earth
- By: Thomas Mullen
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The Last Town on Earth centers on the inhabitants of a small logging town in Washington and what happens when they take drastic measures (quarantine) to try and protect themselves from the virulent and deadly flu epidemic of 1918. When a deserting WWI soldier demands sanctuary, events are set in motion that change the town forever.
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Thrill for a Reader. Model for a Writer
- By Angela on 03-04-11
By: Thomas Mullen
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Titans
- By: Leila Meacham
- Narrated by: Casey Holloway, Brian Hatch
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Texas in the early 1900s, its inhabitants still traveling by horseback and barely familiar with the telephone, was on the cusp of an oil boom that, unbeknownst to its residents, would spark a period of dramatic changes and economic growth. In the midst of this transformative time in Southern history, two unforgettable characters emerge and find their fates irrevocably intertwined.
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Great story, especially if you are from Texas and love the land.
- By Paige on 04-19-16
By: Leila Meacham
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No Promises in the Wind
- By: Irene Hunt
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In 1932, Americans’ dreams were simple: a job, food to eat, a place to sleep, and shoes without holes. But for millions of people these simple needs were nothing more than dreams. When he was just 15 years old, Josh had to make his own way through a country of angry and frightened people. This is the story of his struggle to find a life for himself during those turbulent times.
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So wonderful!
- By Patterson Family CEO on 03-31-18
By: Irene Hunt
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The Last Ballad
- A Novel
- By: Wiley Cash
- Narrated by: Karen White, Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Twelve times a week, 28-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. Two in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill's owners - the newly arrived Goldberg brothers - white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for 72 hours of work each week, it's the only opportunity she has.
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Dryer than a popcorn fart
- By Scott Wilson on 02-11-18
By: Wiley Cash
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Forgiveness
- A Gift from My Grandparents
- By: Mark Sakamoto
- Narrated by: Geoff Sugiyama
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Admirable progenitors
- By M. D. Baines on 04-24-18
By: Mark Sakamoto
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The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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The Chronoliths
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past-and soon to be haunted by the future. In early 21st-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter.
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A haunting, beautiful work...
- By M. Stephenson on 11-20-09
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Hard Country
- A Novel
- By: Michael McGarrity
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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National best-selling author and New Mexico native Michael McGarrity takes listeners to the wild territory of the late 19th-century American Southwest for this epic tale. After the deaths of his wife and brother, John Kerney gives up his West Texas ranch and heads south in search of a new home. Soon Kerney is offered work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory - a job that will forever change his life.
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Hard Country lives up to it's title.
- By mar on 12-14-12
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Beautiful
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It's 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.
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tedious boring trite
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CATEGORY AND SUMMARY MISLEADING
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Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together—at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged.
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Dave Cartwright used to be good at a lot of things: good with his hands, good at solving problems, good at staying calm in a crisis. But on the heels of his third tour in Iraq, the fabric of Dave’s life has begun to unravel. Gripped by PTSD, he finds himself losing his home, his wife, his direction. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: the two of them will flee their damaged lives, heading off the grid to live in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
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What listeners say about Small World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ChrisW
- 08-15-23
Thoroughly Enjoyed
Since I play most audiobooks while driving, I often find novels with multiple characters difficult to follow. This was an extraordinary exception. The characters were distinct and interesting, the rhythm was enjoyable and the narration was perfect for the story. I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this production
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1 person found this helpful
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- David C.
- 03-19-22
A tale of the roots of America
Excellent construct of the stories of the varied people that make America. I loved it. Wonderfully read.
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- RueRue
- 01-15-24
Very engaging
Quite a sweeping saga of multiple characters making their fortunes -or not - in America. Even at 16 hours, I felt like it could have been a bit longer, to give more resolution to several of the characters. Maybe it was the authors intent to allow the reader to fill in those open endings. Excellent narrator.
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- Katalin T. Torok
- 04-13-24
Details of people of the historical times.
Engrossing story of immigrants, native peoples and African AMERICANS over 65 years just after the gold rush.
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- Barbara A.
- 02-09-22
Tremendously entertaining
I just would’ve liked to know a little bit more about how each character’s story ends, but I have to admire the way the author left it up to the reader’s imagination.
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- Inrange6
- 01-31-22
Accentuates our great need to never forget our history
Especially now more than ever in our world, we all need to remember our past, our story. This book is such an amazing intertwined novel of todays characters and storytelling a character from their history in the past. The ending left me wanting more. It also made me have great conversations with others about our personal history and how we can never forget what our ancestors did to help build this country.
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- zBrightEyezz
- 06-26-22
The American journey
What a wonderful story of Americans finding their way through challenges and hardships of immigration and survival. The narration is very good. The novel just terrific.
I highly recommend this.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Susan
- 08-17-24
Story of interesting lives across generations
A few of the people’s descendants do connect but the ending seemed abrupt without satisfying what happened in several people’s lives.
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- Arlieta H.
- 04-26-22
The Face of Americans
This book tied this country together from its inception until now. A person from each ethnic group from the past beautifully tied to same family now with drama and excitement. I loved reading this book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anne
- 05-26-22
Loved the narrator!
The narrator did a great job distinguishing so many personalities without making them sound silly.
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