Straight Man
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Sam Freed
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By:
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Richard Russo
About this listen
William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.
Such is the canvas of Richard Russo's Straight Man, a novel of surpassing wit, poignancy, and insight. As he established in his previous books—Mohawk, The Risk Pool, and Nobody's Fool—Russo is unique among contemporary authors for his ability to flawlessly capture the soul of the wise guy and the heart of a difficult parent. In Hank Devereaux, Russo has created a hero whose humor and identification with the absurd are mitigated only by his love for his family, friends, and, ultimately, knowledge itself.
Unforgettable, compassionate, and laugh-out-loud funny, Straight Man cements Richard Russo's reputation as one of the master storytellers of our time.
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....
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Nothing like anything T E Woods has written B4!!!
- By shelley on 03-01-18
By: T. E. Woods
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The Other Side of the Bridge
- By: Cameron Wright
- Narrated by: Nancy Peterson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Katie Connelly has lived in San Francisco all her life. Her late father made his career as an ironworker on the Golden Gate Bridge, and the many stories of him trying to save jumpers still haunt her. When she's asked to write a history about the bridge, her research uncovers a secret journal hidden in her father's desk, pages of familiar advice penned by the hand of a stranger. The scribbled words tell of a promise ring and a distant love, clues that Katie hopes may answer her own unresolved sorrow.
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Enjoyable enough story, terrible female narrator
- By Rebecca on 04-02-20
By: Cameron Wright
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Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
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I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
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Babylon Sisters
- By: Pearl Cleage
- Narrated by: Pearl Cleage
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Catherine, busy working with refugee and immigrant women through her small firm, Babylon Sisters, has taken on a powerful new client. She doesn't have much time for Phoebe's complicated questions of paternity - that is, until Phoebe's real father, B. J., a renowned investigative reporter, shows up in town to work on a story connected to Catherine.
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Sister Love
- By Florence Graydon on 03-26-21
By: Pearl Cleage
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The Accidental Bestseller
- By: Wendy Wax
- Narrated by: Khristine Hvam
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Once upon a time four aspiring authors met at their very first writers' conference. Ten years later they're still friends, survivors of the ultra-competitive New York publishing world. Mallory St. James is a workaholic whose best sellers support a lavish lifestyle. Tanya Mason is a single mother juggling two jobs, two kids, and too many deadlines. Faye Truett is the wife of a famous televangelist and the author of inspirational romances: No one would ever guess her explosive secret.
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Meh....just okay.
- By S on 02-19-13
By: Wendy Wax
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A Pedigree to Die For
- A Melanie Travis Mystery
- By: Laurien Berenson
- Narrated by: Jessica Almasy
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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The apparent heart attack that killed kennel owner Max Turnbull has left seven pups in mourning, and his wife Peg suspecting foul play. But the only evidence is their missing prize pooch - a pedigreed poodle named Beau.
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Could not get beyond first chapters
- By DamselflyStudio on 11-07-20
By: Laurien Berenson
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The Night Listener
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrated by: Armistead Maupin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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This unprecedented audio project is as thought-provoking as it is mesmeric. The Night Listener is a meditation on the power of voices and the faith we place in them, and an extraordinary audio experience from an American literary icon.
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Wheels within wheels
- By Naomi on 07-06-03
By: Armistead Maupin
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Charley's Web
- By: Joy Fielding
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Charley Webb is a beautiful single mother who writes a successful and controversial column for the Palm Beach Post. She's spent years building an emotional wall against scathing critics, snooty neighbors, and her disapproving family. But when she receives a letter from Jill Rohmer, a young woman serving time on death row for the murders of three small children, her boundaries slowly begin to fade. Jill wants Charley to write her biography so that she can share the many hidden truths about the case that failed to surface during her trial.
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not the norm
- By D. Mains on 02-04-09
By: Joy Fielding
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Too Close to Home
- By: Linwood Barclay
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In a quiet suburban neighborhood, in the house next door, a family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason. You can't help thinking, "That could have been us". And you start to wonder, "What if we're next?" That's the question Jim and Ellen Cutter are asking, and the answers aren't reassuring.
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Plots and subplots galore
- By shelley on 04-10-14
By: Linwood Barclay
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Hush Money
- Hush Money Mystery Series, Book 1
- By: T. E. Woods
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Madison is booming with dreamers and drifters, visionaries and entrepreneurs. Among them is Sydney Richardson, the daughter of a cop who died on these streets and now the proud, stressed-out owner of Hush Money, one of the city's top new restaurants. Like everyone else in town, Sydney is shocked when Madison's popular mayor - a crusty, charismatic man of the people - is shot to death in his own home. But the news hits especially close to home for Sydney because one of her own stands accused of the brutal crime. Sydney's the one person that Wanda Fields, a quiet, hardworking waitress and single mother, can think to call after her arrest.
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T E Woods sure know how to write 'em!
- By shelley on 02-14-18
By: T. E. Woods
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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Murder at the Kennedy Center
- By: Margaret Truman
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kenneth Ewald has what it takes to win the presidency: the support of his party, a lovely wife, a dynamic campaign. What neither he nor any candidate needs is a corpse. He knows only one man capable of solving a crime, clearing his son, putting his campaign back on track and catching a killer: his best friend Mac Smith. Oddly enough, it was Mac and his dog Rufus who found the body in the first place.
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Truman
- By Barbra on 01-01-08
By: Margaret Truman
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Faces of the Gone
- Carter Ross, Book 1
- By: Brad Parks
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That's the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter with the Newark Eagle-Examiner. Immediately dispatched to the scene, Carter learns that the four victims - an exotic dancer, a drug dealer, a hustler, and a mama's boy - came from different parts of the city and didn't seem to know one another.
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Wish Brad Parks were more prolific!!!!
- By shelley on 02-16-18
By: Brad Parks
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Instantly-recognizable Richard Russo book
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An old favorite!
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The Sportswriter
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Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world.
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Everyone at the large agricultural college dubbed Moo U. has an agenda. Whether it's massaging data, running secret experiments, or seducing the powerful, each person is dedicated to a plan. Meet Dr. Lionel Gift, who feels that his economic principles come directly from God. Visit with "Earl Butz", who is being groomed to be the biggest hog in history. Mull over The Common Wisdom, what every secretary knows. As these agendas begin to collide, Moo trots toward a deliciously loony climax.
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Totally hilarious and too true
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Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.
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The position of the feet during reading...
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White Noise
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When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event", a lethal black chemical cloud floats over the Gladneys' lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life yet suggesting something ominous.
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Designed to be analyzed by an English class
- By RI in Canada on 10-15-16
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The Remains of the Day
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This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
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Beautiful and ever relevant
- By bbots on 07-04-20
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When the Moon Hits Your Eye
- By: John Scalzi
- Length: Not Yet Known
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.
By: John Scalzi
What listeners say about Straight Man
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- JOHN
- 11-25-07
Russo Rocks!
So I gave it only 4 stars. This isn't because Straight Man isn't wonderful. Perhaps when I compare it to the richness of Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool, it just doesn't quite fill those shoes. But don't let this stop you.
In some ways I enjoyed this book more than the other Russo books I have had the pleasure to listen to. This book was funnier. And I could not help but wonder how much of the protagonist, Hank Devereaux, was really Richard Russo himself as an irreverant wise-cracking head of a college English department.
Devereaux's own mother criticized her son telling him "you've become a clever man." To understand how this is considered a fault, you really have to listen to this book.
One hundred percent enjoyable!
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15 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Dan
- 04-15-05
Great fun--give this a try!
Hilarious satire combined with warm sympathetic characters. The satire is funny but never cruel--difficult balance to maintain but Russo pulls it off. Delicious send-up of pompous college administrators and members of the college English department. Even when Russo is at his satiric best, almost all of the characters, though flawed, are presented as sympathetic complex human beings. I laughed alot--sometimes so hard that I had to stop listening. All in all, a wonderfully entertaining, intelligent and humane book--highly recommend.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- nancy campione
- 04-24-10
TEDIOUS
Although I've previously enjoyed Russo's work, this was disappointing. Tedious pace, tired humor, uninspired characters. Overall, I was bored.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Kenneth Powell
- 01-15-23
Absolute brilliance
I’ve loved this book since I spotted it on a store shelf - a plain white cover with a duck on the front … or maybe it’s a goose!
This is Russo at his very best - cutting through the dark and scary passage through middle age and beyond, with an incredible sarcastic wit that makes everything seem less dire.
Sam Freed is PERFECTLY suited for this work’s tone and pace, and you’re left wishing he’d hurry up and take his time! 2023 sees a third book in Russo’s North Bath series - I would LOVE to see him revisit Lucky Hank (as the tv series adaptation comes in 2023 as well). And please have Sam Freed return as well.
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- Holly Squares
- 06-04-23
Love the shenanigans and sarcasm
I really enjoyed all the shenanigans and sarcasm of the main character in the book. Great inner monologue.
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- Todd Mclaughlin
- 03-14-24
Every sentence is masterfully created
I really enjoyed this tale. This is my first read of this author and what a treat. Being a 50 year old male I can’t help but relate to the main character. I laughed out loud so many times throughout. Don’t hesitate and give this a go!
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- Holly Abery-Wetstone
- 10-17-03
Straight Man
This is the funniest book I have listened to since John Grisham's Skipping Christmas. It is a hilarious account of the trouble a middle aged college professor can find while his wife is away for several days. Russo's writing combines humor with the trials and tribulations of growing old or should I say growing up? A must listen!
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24 people found this helpful
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- Dominic
- 03-19-05
not his best
Having read Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool before listening to this book
I would reccomend one of those two first. This book does create memorable characters but I came away with the impression of a kind of mid-life crisis book. I really enjoy this author. This is not a action oriented book but is worth listening because of his strength as a writer.
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2 people found this helpful
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- F
- 05-22-08
Absolutely great
This immediately became one of my favorite novels. The characters are interesting, funny, and completely believable. (If you have spent any time working in higher education, you will able to recognize the characters and their foibles from your own experience.) I cannot say enough good things about this novel.
I only have two regrets: (1) that Audible does not have all of the author's books in its library, and (2) that the reader has not recorded more books of interest to me (I am not a fan of Danielle Steel or Robert James Waller) - he did a great job.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Charles Cyr
- 09-02-13
Among The Best I've Ever Heard!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Absolutely! I already have!
What did you like best about this story?
Russo's ability to depict the humorous aspects of the ordinary lives of these small town academicians.
What does Sam Freed bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
A matter-of-fact reading that underscores and enhances the wry, witty, prose of Russo.
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