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The Art of Vanishing
- A Memoir of Wanderlust
- Narrated by: Laura Smith
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
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Publisher's summary
A young woman chafing at the confines of marriage confronts the high cost of craving freedom and adventure
At 25, as her wedding date approached, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiancé, who shared her appetite for adventure, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free.
Laura wanted her life to be different. She wanted her marriage to be different. And she found in the strangely captivating story of another restless young woman determined to live without constraints both an enticement and a challenge. Barbara Newhall Follett was a free-spirited trailblazer who published her first novel at 11, enlisted as a deck hand on a boat bound for the south China seas at 15 and was one of the first women to hike the Appalachian trail. Then in December 1939, when she was not much older than Laura, she walked out of her apartment on a quiet tree-lined street in Brookline, leaving behind a fraying marriage, and vanished without a trace. Obsessed by her story, Laura set off to find out what had happened.
The Art of Vanishing is a riveting mystery and a piercing exploration of marriage and convention that asks deep and uncomfortable questions: Why do we give up on our childhood dreams? Is marriage a golden noose? Must we find ourselves in the same row houses with Pottery Barn lamps telling our kids to behave? Searingly honest and written with a raw intensity, it will challenge you to rethink your most intimate decisions and may just upend your life.
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"Skillful and sensitive." (The New York Times Book Review)
“Told with real insight and remarkable honesty . . . [The Art of Vanishing] interweaves biographical portraiture that is urgently personal and memoir that is deepened by historical exploration. Smith pushes literary boundaries.” (The Atlantic)
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Overall
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Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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The Book of Separation
- A Memoir
- By: Tova Mirvis
- Narrated by: Tova Mirvis
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age 40 she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence.
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So many parallels
- By Cortney on 01-05-18
By: Tova Mirvis
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Last Evenings on Earth
- By: Roberto Bolano, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: David Crommett
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The first short-story collection in English by the acclaimed Chilean author Roberto Bolano. Winner of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award. "The melancholy folklore of exile", as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades these 14 haunting stories. Bolano's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime.
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Solid Character based Stories
- By Michael on 06-06-24
By: Roberto Bolano, and others
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The Zahir
- By: Paulo Coelho
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi, Emilia Fox
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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It begins with a glimpse or a passing thought. It ends in obsession. One day a renowned author discovers that his wife, a war correspondent, has disappeared leaving no trace. Though time brings more success and new love, he remains mystified - and increasingly fascinated - by her absence. Was she kidnapped, blackmailed, or simply bored with their marriage? The unrest she causes is as strong as the attraction she exerts.
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Beautiful and deep read!
- By Top 1% Buyer on 09-13-15
By: Paulo Coelho
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The Map of True Places
- By: Brunonia Barry
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats—a talent that earned her the nickname Trouble. She’s now a respected psychotherapist working with the world-famous Dr. Liz Mattei. She’s also about to marry one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors. But the suicide of Zee’s patient Lilly Braedon throws Zee into emotional chaos and takes her back to places she thought she’d left behind.
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Bad Narrator
- By Samantha on 06-30-10
By: Brunonia Barry
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Happy Wives Club
- One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage
- By: Fawn Weaver
- Narrated by: Fawn Weaver
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Everywhere she looked, Fawn Weaver saw negative portrayals of marriage dominating the airwaves and dooming everyone to failure. Looking at Keith, the love of her life, she knew that wasn't true. Happy Wives Club is Fawn's journey across the world to meet her friends and discover what makes their marriages great. Join her on this exciting, exotic trip across six continents and through more than 18 cities.
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beautiful
- By Amazon Customer on 07-13-18
By: Fawn Weaver
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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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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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This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
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I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
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Clara Callan
- By: Richard B. Wright
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey, Joanna P. Adler
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Abridged
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Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.
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charming intimate refreshing
- By L on 09-10-04
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The Red-Haired Woman
- A Novel
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee, Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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Drags On
- By T. Conrad on 10-25-17
By: Orhan Pamuk
What listeners say about The Art of Vanishing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hannah Reinish
- 04-05-20
An Excellent Book
A thoughtful and sincere examination of driving forces for love, lust, and adventure.
Highly recommended for anyone battling to reconcile yearnings for comfort and exploration. The two stories expose the struggles of restless hearts trying to keep rhythm in modern domesticity. A beautiful story of uncertainty.
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- Nancy
- 09-12-18
To Repetitive
Way too long, would not recommend the book. Enjoyed the true facts of the story and the quest/journey the author had up to a point. Then I just wanted it to end!!
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- JMust
- 01-25-20
Beautifully honest and brave
The author’s desire to live a life void of meaningless rituals and white picket fences is relatable and refreshing. Her efforts to pursue such a lifestyle, as well as her ability to share the rollercoaster of raw emotions experienced during that pursuit, is both inspiring and admirable. Finally, the honesty within herself, in terms of things she’s drawn to, what she wants to explore, and how she wants to feel, is beautifully brave. I recommend this memoir to any reader who feels trapped by a lineal, limited path in life.
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- L. L. McCall
- 04-20-18
This book is a slog
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
I thought I would really like this book because I love memoir, especially with the twist of a mystery about a adventurous woman who vanished, but this book took what could have been an interesting subject and just devolved into the author's wishful thinking into how it might maybe mirror some themes in her own life and marriage - I don't think it did. The author comes across as a somewhat immature narcissist, and I dislike her so much, it was hard to make myself finish the book.
What do you think your next listen will be?
Something by Rebecca Solnit.
Would you be willing to try another one of Laura Smith’s performances?
No, the author narrated her own book and often overstressed random words and her tone at the end of sentences dropped off so it was hard to hear what those words were.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disappointment and wonder that her editor didn't rein her in.
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