-
Spill Simmer Falter Wither
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)
A debut novel already praised as "unbearably poignant and beautifully told" (Eimear McBride), this captivating story follows - over the course of four seasons - a misfit man who adopts a misfit dog.
It is springtime, and two outcasts - a man ignored, even shunned by his village, and the one-eyed dog he takes into his quiet, tightly shuttered life - find each other, by accident or fate, and forge an unlikely connection. As their friendship grows, their small seaside town suddenly takes note of them, falsely perceiving menace where there is only mishap. The unlikely duo must take to the road.
Gorgeously written in poetic and mesmerizing prose, Spill Simmer Falter Wither has already garnered wild support in its native Ireland, where the Irish Times pointed to Baume's "astonishing power with language" and praised it as "a novel bursting with brio, braggadocio and bite". It is also a moving depiction of how - over the four seasons echoed in the title - a relationship between fellow damaged creatures can bring them both comfort. One of those rare stories that utterly, completely imagines its way into a life most of us would never see, it transforms us in our understanding not only of the world but also of ourselves.
Cover image by Helen Fay.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Seven Steeples
- By: Sara Baume
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the winter following the summer they met. A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another—one embedded in ritual, and away from the friends and family from whom they’ve drifted. They arrive at their new home on a clear January day and look up to appraise the view.
-
-
An adventure in language
- By Mike Pearson on 06-29-23
By: Sara Baume
-
Small Things Like These
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
-
-
Charming and Inspiring
- By David P on 09-05-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
A Ghost in the Throat
- By: Doireann Ní Ghríofa
- Narrated by: Siobhán McSweeney
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On discovering her murdered husband's body, an 18th-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. When she realizes that the literature dedicated to the poem reduces Eibhlin Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's girlhood and old age; her unique rages, joys, sorrows, and desires; the shape of her days and site of her final place of rest.
-
-
Captivating
- By Art Librarian on 12-19-21
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
The Rachel Incident
- A Novel
- By: Caroline O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Tara Flynn
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
-
-
Best narration
- By LG on 01-12-24
-
Seven Steeples
- By: Sara Baume
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the winter following the summer they met. A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another—one embedded in ritual, and away from the friends and family from whom they’ve drifted. They arrive at their new home on a clear January day and look up to appraise the view.
-
-
An adventure in language
- By Mike Pearson on 06-29-23
By: Sara Baume
-
Small Things Like These
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
-
-
Charming and Inspiring
- By David P on 09-05-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
A Ghost in the Throat
- By: Doireann Ní Ghríofa
- Narrated by: Siobhán McSweeney
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On discovering her murdered husband's body, an 18th-century Irish noblewoman drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary lament. Eibhlin Dubh Ni Chonaill's poem travels through the centuries, finding its way to a new mother who has narrowly avoided her own fatal tragedy. When she realizes that the literature dedicated to the poem reduces Eibhlin Dubh's life to flimsy sketches, she wants more: the details of the poet's girlhood and old age; her unique rages, joys, sorrows, and desires; the shape of her days and site of her final place of rest.
-
-
Captivating
- By Art Librarian on 12-19-21
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
The Rachel Incident
- A Novel
- By: Caroline O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Tara Flynn
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
-
-
Best narration
- By LG on 01-12-24
-
They Both Die at the End
- By: Adam Silvera
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Robbie Daymond, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They're going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they're both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There's an app for that. It's called The Last Friend, and through it Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure - to live a lifetime in a single day.
-
-
My heart..
- By Shay on 10-03-17
By: Adam Silvera
-
Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 35 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
-
-
Need to Disclose and Highlight Name of Translator
- By Charles B on 08-27-18
By: Leo Tolstoy
-
All the Sinners Bleed
- A Novel
- By: S. A. Cosby
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes.
-
-
Visceral, gripping, thrilling and entertaining
- By Victor @ theAudiobookBlog dot com on 06-26-23
By: S. A. Cosby
-
A Man Called Ove
- A Novel
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: J. K. Simmons
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul.
-
-
By Far the Best Narrator of a Book I've Had
- By WanderLaw on 04-05-20
By: Fredrik Backman
-
White Fang
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the desolate, frozen northwest of Canada, a lone wolf fights a heroic daily fight for life in the wild. But after he is captured and cruelly abused by men, he becomes a force of pure rage. Only one man sees inside the killer to his intelligence and nobility. But can his kindness touch White Fang?
-
-
Who's the animal: Man or Wolf?
- By Erik on 08-14-15
By: Jack London
-
Foster
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.
-
-
A story that will stay with me a long time
- By CTKG on 11-01-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
East of Eden
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 25 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
-
-
Why have I avoided this Beautiful Book???
- By Kelly on 03-25-17
By: John Steinbeck
-
All the Light We Cannot See
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Zach Appelman
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is 12, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
-
-
Afraid to Write a "Less-Than-Positive" Review
- By Elizabeth on 08-06-14
By: Anthony Doerr
-
The Goldfinch
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
-
-
Boy, am I in the minority on this one.
- By Bonny on 11-04-13
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
- A Novel
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. He is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie - magical, comforting, wise beyond her years - promised to protect him, no matter what.
-
-
Shadows Dissolved in Vinegar
- By Cynthia on 06-20-13
By: Neil Gaiman
-
The Messy Lives of Book People
- By: Phaedra Patrick
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mother of two Liv Green barely scrapes by as a maid to make ends meet, often finding escape in a good book while daydreaming of becoming a writer herself. So she can't believe her luck when she lands a job housekeeping for her personal hero, megabestselling author Essie Starling, a mysterious and intimidating recluse. The last thing Liv expected was to be the only person Essie talks to, which leads to a tenuous friendship.
-
-
I'm giving up on this author
- By NMwritergal on 07-11-22
By: Phaedra Patrick
-
Great Expectations
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most revered works in English literature, Great Expectations traces the coming of age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire.
-
-
The narrator!!
- By Dana on 06-13-13
By: Charles Dickens
Critic reviews
Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award 2015, A Readers' Choice
Long-listed for 2015 Edinburgh First Novel Award
Featured Article: Standout Contemporary Irish Authors You Should Give a Listen
Ireland may be a small country, but it's brimming with talent. Just listen to some of these popular contemporary Irish authors and see if you're not impressed with what this North Atlantic island has to offer to the literary community. Winning prestigious awards and topping best seller lists, today’s Ireland-born-and-bred authors are making a big impression on the literary world. Here are some contemporary Irish authors you should listen to now.
Related to this topic
-
The Shell Collector
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take listeners from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties - metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts - and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power.
-
-
Narrator not appropriate to the book.
- By Janet on 02-18-17
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
-
-
Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
-
Everything Under
- A Novel
- By: Daisy Johnson
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals.
-
-
A brilliantly understated classic
- By Jeff Lacy on 10-29-19
By: Daisy Johnson
-
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English
- By: Natasha Solomons
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the start of World War II, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum flee Berlin for London with their baby daughter, Elizabeth. Upon arrival, Jack receives a pamphlet from the German Jewish Aid Committee on how to act like a proper Englishman. He follows it to the letter -Saville Row suits, the BBC, trips to Covent Garden, a Jaguar - and it works like a charm. The Rosenblums settle into a prosperous new life.
-
-
Endearing
- By Emily on 09-09-11
By: Natasha Solomons
-
Long Lankin
- By: Lindsey Barraclough
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Cora and her little sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their great-aunt in the isolated village of Bryers Guerdon, they receive a less than warm welcome and are desperate to go back to London. But Auntie Ida’s life was devastated the last time two young girls were at Guerdon Hall, and now her nieces’ arrival has reawakened an evil that has lain in wait for years. A haunting voice in an empty room; a strange, scarred man lurking in the graveyard; mysterious words scrawled on the walls of the abandoned church ... all point to a horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its grip for centuries.
-
-
AMAZING!!!
- By Sharron on 09-06-14
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
-
-
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Shell Collector
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take listeners from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties - metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts - and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power.
-
-
Narrator not appropriate to the book.
- By Janet on 02-18-17
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
-
-
Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
-
Everything Under
- A Novel
- By: Daisy Johnson
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals.
-
-
A brilliantly understated classic
- By Jeff Lacy on 10-29-19
By: Daisy Johnson
-
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English
- By: Natasha Solomons
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the start of World War II, Jack and Sadie Rosenblum flee Berlin for London with their baby daughter, Elizabeth. Upon arrival, Jack receives a pamphlet from the German Jewish Aid Committee on how to act like a proper Englishman. He follows it to the letter -Saville Row suits, the BBC, trips to Covent Garden, a Jaguar - and it works like a charm. The Rosenblums settle into a prosperous new life.
-
-
Endearing
- By Emily on 09-09-11
By: Natasha Solomons
-
Long Lankin
- By: Lindsey Barraclough
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Cora and her little sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their great-aunt in the isolated village of Bryers Guerdon, they receive a less than warm welcome and are desperate to go back to London. But Auntie Ida’s life was devastated the last time two young girls were at Guerdon Hall, and now her nieces’ arrival has reawakened an evil that has lain in wait for years. A haunting voice in an empty room; a strange, scarred man lurking in the graveyard; mysterious words scrawled on the walls of the abandoned church ... all point to a horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its grip for centuries.
-
-
AMAZING!!!
- By Sharron on 09-06-14
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
-
-
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
- An African Childhood
- By: Alexandra Fuller
- Narrated by: Lisette Lecat
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.
-
-
An African Childhood of Harrowing Proportions
- By Sara on 10-12-15
By: Alexandra Fuller
-
The Trees
- By: Ali Shaw
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.
-
-
Post apocalypse with a little bit of magic
- By Tam on 09-20-16
By: Ali Shaw
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Jagannath
- By: Karin Tidbeck
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A child is born in a tin can. A switchboard operator finds himself in hell. Three corpulent women float somewhere beyond time. Welcome to the weird world of Karin Tidbeck, the visionary Swedish author of literary sci-fi, speculative fiction, and mind-bending fantasy who has captivated fans around the world. Originally published by the tiny press Cheeky Frawg - the passion project of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer - Jagannath has been celebrated by listeners and critics alike, with rave reviews from major outlets and support from lauded peers like China Mieville and even Ursula K. Le Guin herself.
-
-
Always unique, usually quite good, sometimes meh
- By Eugene on 02-13-19
By: Karin Tidbeck
-
Beatlebone
- By: Kevin Barry
- Narrated by: Kevin Barry
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching 40s, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.
-
-
Nooooo way
- By James on 11-17-15
By: Kevin Barry
-
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
- By: David Wroblewski
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 21 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled with breathtaking scenes, the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a meditation on the limits of language and what lies beyond, a brilliantly inventive retelling of an ancient story, and an epic tale of devotion, betrayal, and courage in the American heartland.
-
-
Devastatingly Dark Story
- By Knitme23 on 02-07-15
By: David Wroblewski
-
Nothing with Strings
- NPR's Beloved Holiday Stories
- By: Bailey White
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The mundane and the miraculous stand side by side in these sketches and stories of Southern small-time life by the author of Quite a Year for Plums.
-
-
A real jewel.
- By Mary on 12-31-08
By: Bailey White
-
Disappearing Act
- A Host of Other Characters in 16 Short Stories
- By: Robert Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robert Sheehan
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.
-
-
as strange as he is
- By DEKEY on 04-08-24
By: Robert Sheehan
-
Scribbling the Cat
- Travels with an African Soldier
- By: Alexandra Fuller
- Narrated by: Lisette Lecat
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.
-
-
Astonishing
- By G. Robinson on 06-27-04
By: Alexandra Fuller
-
Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
-
-
Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
-
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Bianca Amato
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even a life on the untamed plains of Africa can't prepare Wilhelmina for the wilds of an English boarding school in this lovely and lyrical novel from the author of Rooftoppers, which Booklist called "a glorious adventure". Wilhelmina Silver's world is golden. Living half-wild on an African farm with her horse, her monkey, and her best friend, every day is beautiful. But when her home is sold and Will is sent away to boarding school in England, the world becomes impossibly difficult.
-
-
Wonderful!
- By Clayton on 10-11-24
-
Coraline
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
-
-
Scary, but interesting for both adults and kids
- By Melise on 03-19-08
By: Neil Gaiman
What listeners say about Spill Simmer Falter Wither
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michael C.
- 03-23-16
Poetic novel
The narrator draws us slowly but surely into the mind(s) of two misfits both of whom you come to love for reasons that are hard to define. The performance was stellar. The author avoids sentimentality and brings the story to a conclusion which is satisfying and coherent. I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend to all.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Shelley M. Mather
- 07-03-16
Lovely
Profoundly beautiful. Terribly sad. Beautifully performed. Astonishingly human.
I highly recommend this book, if only to help you find your compassion.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cheryl Zeyher
- 09-06-16
Disturbing life
Liked the writing
". The narrator
". Many things about the book
Didn't like the ending!
Realistic but depressing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bernadette Tibazi
- 05-29-17
A taste of Ireland
Would you listen to Spill Simmer Falter Wither again? Why?
Yes, the language was loverly. All the observations were acute and the descriptions and metaphors surprising. It was very 'Irish' in its feel.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Spill Simmer Falter Wither?
The cadence of the three repetitions used throughout the book. "Smoking, smoking, smoking...." etc.
What does John Keating bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Oh his voice was wonderful!
If you could take any character from Spill Simmer Falter Wither out to dinner, who would it be and why?
Ha, there is only one and I felt compassion for him. He was sad, limited but wonderfully complex.
Any additional comments?
Thank you!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- D. Nelson
- 10-25-16
A very interesting read.
I had some difficulty getting started and feeling my way to the perspective of this story. I stopped and started it twice. It is not a tale that takes you by the hand and leads you to the end. You really have to make a decision to go with the man; almost, to climb into his skin, to understand why he makes the choices he does.
At first, I didn't know if I could do it. As some of his past life becomes revealed, I found myself falling in deeper with his understanding of his world.
It is a profound look, from the inside, of the world of a person that was raised ALL of his life, alone. He is isolated by some sort of deformation that is never given a name, the death of a mother he never knew and a father that felt he needed to be hidden away.
His life takes on new meaning to him when he adopts a dog that is destined to be put down. The man makes some changes to his life for a time and you want to hope that it will all be better for him.
Now, you must read it for yourself to see all that is revealed and all that comes to pass.
I gave this 5 stars all the way around because it is so well read by Keating. I don't know if I would have fallen into this story without him. And without him, I would never have seen this story for the 5 star tale, by Baume, that it is.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Reademandweep
- 09-30-16
Ruined by the singsong reading
This is a sweet story and probably would have been nice but it was extremely difficult to get feeling or meeting from the narrators repetitive singsong voice. Every line is treated the same, read the same with no more or less inflection. It's a shame
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sandra
- 04-15-16
Wow! Not sure now I feel about this amazing book
What did you love best about Spill Simmer Falter Wither?
Two marginalized souls find and love each other.
What did you like best about this story?
The introspection. I will be thinking about this story for a very long time.
What does John Keating bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
His performance was lyrical, lyrical, lyrical.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
19 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Patricia L Stacy
- 03-24-16
Still calling One Eye...calling, calling, calling.
Would you listen to Spill Simmer Falter Wither again? Why?
Yes, because of the prose, the flow, and John Keating's voice.
What other book might you compare Spill Simmer Falter Wither to and why?
None. This book is unique.
What does John Keating bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The lilt of the Irish. Sometimes hard to follow, always surprising.
Who was the most memorable character of Spill Simmer Falter Wither and why?
One Eye, the dog, so fierce, always.
Any additional comments?
With a few odd words, the picture of a life.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jay
- 01-25-17
Humdrum
Any additional comments?
I kept hoping this book would go somewhere but it was basically a series of mundane detailed observations of one man's small world as he talked to himself and a dog. This is not a quote, but for me this captures the tone of the book if you imagine it spoken in an Irish/English accent - Do you remember how the tide rose and made the sand wet? Aye, very wet sand indeed, and a few hours later would you believe it but the tide went out and the sand became dry. After 9 hours of such accounts I was glad to move on to another book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- helle
- 09-14-16
Wow
Anyone who loves dogs . will just love this book
I will certainly read this at least one more time. You will have a smile
On your face as you read this
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful