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Narrated by:
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Pippa Bennett-Warner
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By:
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Zadie Smith
About this listen
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
A New York Times best seller.
An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty.
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.
Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, the women dance just like Tracey - the same twists, the same shakes - and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time.
Zadie Smith's newest book, Grand Union, published in 2019.
©2016 Zadie Smith (P)2016 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
“A sweeping meditation on art, race, and identity that may be [Smith’s] most ambitious work yet.” (Esquire)
“Smith’s thrilling cultural insights never overshadow the wholeness of her characters, who are so keenly observed that one feels witness to their lives.” (O, The Oprah Magazine)
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
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One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
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Everywhere I Look
- By: Helen Garner
- Narrated by: Helen Garner
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Spanning 15 years of work, Everywhere I Look is an audiobook full of unexpected moments, sudden shafts of light, piercing intuition, flashes of anger and incidental humour. It takes us from backstage at the ballet to the trial of a woman for the murder of her newborn baby. It moves effortlessly from the significance of moving house to the pleasure of rereading Pride and Prejudice.
By: Helen Garner
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Deborah Moggach
- Narrated by: Juliet Mills
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, reaches the breaking point with his difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: “Can’t we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away.” His prayer is seemingly answered when Ravi’s entrepreneurial cousin sets up a retirement home in India, hoping to re-create in Bangalore an elegant lost corner of England. Several retirees are enticed by the promise of indulgent living at a bargain price, but upon arriving, they are dismayed to find that restoration of the once sophisiticated hotel has stalled....
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Screenwriters Changed it for the Better
- By Carole T. on 06-05-12
By: Deborah Moggach
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Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
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Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Very disappointing
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Incomplete
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When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back...
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Disappointingly and surprisingly explicit
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Americanah
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Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
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dialogue
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Lapvona
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Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, believes his mother died giving birth to him. One of Marek’s few consolations is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby. For some people, Ina’s ability to receive transmissions of sacred knowledge from the natural world is a godsend. For others, Ina’s home in the woods is a godless place.
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uncomfortable
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North Woods
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When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
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An American Masterpiece
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What listeners say about Swing Time
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- BNBNYC
- 02-19-17
Wonderful characters, no resolution -a very satisfying read
An engaging journey through two women's growing up years, from public housing to a third-tier university, one-name celebrities and the complexities of fighting African poverty. Many fascinating female characters, vivid writing and time-shifting made this an engrossing novel.
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- Therese Van Arsdale
- 05-10-18
Sadie Does It Again
What do we owe one another? It 's the central question of Swing Time. That and when does rescue become interference? For two little girls growing up in the northern suburbs of London, these questions are as intertwined as their lives as they grow up and go their separate ways. The talented one is admired. The admirer is supported. Does this make all the difference?
As always Ms Smith's writing is precise, funny, heartbreaking and true.
Adored it.
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- Kimberly
- 01-16-17
I really enjoyed this book
The narration was solid, and clever, and in some places fun. The story was interesting, and crafted in a way that pulls you in by noting the layers and depth in a chance meeting. I really enjoyed this book, and think that the pairing of Zadie Smith's words, with Pippa Bennett-Warner's performance, was an inspired choice.
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- Chris
- 12-10-16
Oh zadie
This is a huge book. But one thing Keeps it back for me. It's not the lack of resolution that it lacks rather the lack of anything to be resolved. But still loads of zadie wisdom in here. And I'm quite sure it will Age well!
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- Angelo Bergs
- 08-18-18
very realistic fiction
Swing Time is relevant and relatable while grappling difficult social and systemic issues for a modern audience.
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- Becky
- 02-12-17
A sandwich, where the bread is the best part
A somewhat evocative story, Swing Time offers a fascinating beginning and ending that almost made it worth the lengthy investment in listening to the full book. The early narrative is promising and then it's set aside for a tale involving a host of unsympathetic characters and a meandering storyline. There was so much potential in continuing to develop the tension between the two initial characters, but this relationship was unfortunately abandoned until the final chapters.
I listen to 3-4 audio books per month and finding an interesting read is such a prize. Although at times well written and intriguing, Swing Time was not a great book. I can't recommend it.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Fran
- 02-02-17
Good listen and or read just not quite as good as White Teeth
Zadie Smith is one of the great writers of our time. Her insight into characters, and the reexamination of events from different perspectives, provided not just by race or country of origin, but also by time itself makes for a compelling read or listen.
With that said I never lost myself into it like I did with White Teeth. Perhaps it's nearly impossible to match White Teeth's achievements. Perhaps it's that I'm listening to this after Trump, the anti -immigrant, anti -refugee took office and I was hoping for the feel good inclusiveness of White Teeth. Really it's hard to judge anything because it feels like we have been thrown back into Germany in the 30's. White Teeth gave me hope for humanity. This book just left me sad, albeit with greater insight.
But, like I said, every dad feels dark and ominous since Trump got elected.
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- Msafiri
- 05-10-18
Not for me
The book had a lot of hype around it. I did not enjoy it. Maybe it’s a British thing. But I also did not like the main character. They continually made decisions I couldn’t relate to and I was frustrated by them putting themselves in bad situations.
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- ozoze
- 05-11-17
Excellent!
Loved it. Great book and will share with my friends. Happy Reading and on to the next book.
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- Victoria
- 01-04-17
Interesting Ending
So much detail but I wished there was a bit more closure in the story. I understand the way jealousy ,rivalry and personal insecurities can cause so much dismay in a persona life. I wish the main character had developed strength.
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