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The Brooklyn Follies
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man". But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others.
The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.
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A shattering childhood tragedy left Quentin Fears devastated. But the wealthy, enigmatic recluse has experienced the extraordinarily unexpected: love at first sight, with Madeleine. Now he must meet his new wife's family. A bizarre, dysfunctional collection of extreme characters, they are guarding a secret both shocking and terrifying, as is Madeleine herself. And suddenly Quentin Fears must prevent his dream woman from unleashing an ageless malevolence intent on ruling the world.
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OSC at his best!!!
- By KaHef on 01-13-07
By: Orson Scott Card
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The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
- By: Sloan Wilson
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race - what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out.
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great read/listen
- By BBJ on 09-26-16
By: Sloan Wilson
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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All You Could Ask For
- A Novel
- By: Mike Greenberg
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Happily married Brooke discovers her loving husband has led a separate life with…another wife. Newlywed Samantha learns of her husband's cheating heart when she finds the goods on his computer. High-powered career woman Katherine works with heartbreaker Phillip, the man who hurt her early on in her career. Brooke, Samantha, and Katherine don't know one another, but their stories are about to intertwine in ways no one could have imagined. And all three are about to discover the power of friendship to conquer adversity.
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Annoyed by Hidden Theme
- By parsnip on 08-12-13
By: Mike Greenberg
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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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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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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BUtterfield 8
- By: John O'Hara, Lorin Stein - introduction
- Narrated by: Gretchen Mol
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterpiece of American fiction and a best seller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy.
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Wildly Uneven
- By David P on 08-27-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
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At Home with the Templetons
- By: Monica McInerney
- Narrated by: Ulli Birve
- Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Templeton family from England takes up residence in a stately home in country Australia, they set the locals talking – and with good reason. From the outside, the seven Templetons seem so bohemian, peculiar even. No one is more intrigued by the family than their neighbours, single mother Nina Donovan and her young son Tom. Before long, the two families' lives become entwined in unexpected ways.
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A dreadful mistake
- By Julie on 11-14-10
By: Monica McInerney
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In Love with a Younger Man
- By: Cheryl Robinson
- Narrated by: Nikki Amsterdam
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Olena Day’s first love died tragically, and her college boyfriend left her for nother woman. Now a successful, independent 43-year-old,she begins a passionate relationship with Matthew, a man 18 years her junior. Can a relationship finally end happily-ever-after for Olena—or will it be torn apart once again?
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A Sequel Will Be Coming From This...
- By Leejorae on 03-15-10
By: Cheryl Robinson
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A Great Listen
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After losing his wife and two young sons in an airplane crash, professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he sees a clip from a lost film by the silent comedian Hector Mann. Zimmer soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to study the works of this mysterious figure who vanished from sight in 1929.
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Hmmm....
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Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast.
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Really loved this novel
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Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, 34-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.
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The Master Speaks
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Moon Palace
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Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next 40 years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.
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A Great Listen
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Hmmm....
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Really loved this novel
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Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, 34-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.
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Facing his 63rd winter, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations - both pleasurable and painful. Thirty years after the publication of The Invention of Solitude, in which he wrote so movingly about fatherhood, Auster gives us a second unconventional memoir in which he writes about his mother's life and death. Winter Journal is a highly personal meditation on the body, time, and memory, by one of our most intellectually elegant writers.
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Memorable
- By Diane on 09-02-12
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Mr. Bones, the canine hero of this astonishing book, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant and troubled homeless man from Brooklyn. As Willy's body slowly expires, he sets off with Mr. Bones for Baltimore in search of his high-school English teacher and a new home for his companion. Mr. Bones is our witness during their journey, and out of his thoughts, Paul Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in American fiction.
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Should I Have Said Gehrig?
- By Dubi on 11-10-14
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It is the late 1920's, the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone, and Walt is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by the mysterious Hungarian Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. The vaudeville act that results from Walt's marvelous new abiltiy takes them across a vast and vibrant country, where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob.
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I take it all back! Love the book
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When his closest friend, Benjamin Sachs, accidentally blows himself up on a Wisconsin road, Peter Aaron attempts to piece together the life that led to Sachs' tragic demise and determine the reason for his death.
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Better than the "trilogy"
- By P K on 06-09-11
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4 3 2 1 [Danish Edition]
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Paul Austers største, mest hjerteskærende og overbevisende roman. En overvældende og overraskende fortælling om arv og miljø, om kærlighed og livet selv. Den 3. marts 1947 bliver Archibald Isaac Ferguson født på hospitalet i New Jersey. Fra det øjeblik han kommer til verden, tager familiens liv fire samtidige og uafhængige retninger. Hver af de fire versioner af Ferguson bliver tryllebundet af den skønne og mageløse Amy Schneiderman, og hver af de fire Ferguson'er får hver deres egen helt enestående relation til hende. Som læser følger man alle fire i medgang og modgang. Forskellige liv og dog det samme.
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If only I could understand Danish!!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-07-18
By: Paul Auster
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Invisible
- By: Paul Auster
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- Unabridged
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Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster's fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.
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One of Auster's Best
- By David and Shoshana Cooper on 02-06-10
By: Paul Auster
What listeners say about The Brooklyn Follies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Francisco DY
- 01-09-23
Awesome
Fabulous narrative and gets you submerged into a clever, warm and unexpected turn of events
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- me
- 07-17-24
The greatest modern American story teller never lets us down.
As with all of Auster’s novels while the plot is simple the characters have complicated lives and Auster develops them in ways which allow the reader to associate with them.
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- Carolyn
- 03-18-12
Redemption
I heard the voice of Nathan Glass as Paul Auster read his own words. Cannot imagine a more perfect tone. Pre 9/11 Brooklyn and indeed the USA is captured by Mr. Auster as he finds redemption from a life looking at his own naval. There is life and there is living. Nathan Glass lived but soon after moving to Brooklyn and reuniting with his beloved nephew he starts living again and listening to this story we rejoice in his great good fortune. There is a wild mix of characters well described and rounded out. We meet several real scoundrals, some strong women and a smart and sometimes smart ass little girl named Lucy who gives everyone a second chance. If you are looking for wild action and mystery this book is not for you. If you are anywhere right of moderate the politics in the book will turn you off. Nathan and crew are decidedly Democrat. However, if you are in the mood for a book in which things turn out all right this is for you. 9/11 happens just as the book ends. Good job Mr. Auster. Write more.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Barbara Dumas
- 07-04-15
Awesome listen!!!
I listen to books while walking; this morning I walked an extra mile, just to hang in with uncle Nate until his last words had been spoken.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Hanktuna
- 06-02-19
Loved this
I’ve enjoyed other books by Paul Auster and this is the first one I’ve listened to. He wraps a captivating story into a bigger message about life. Thoroughly enjoyed it and was sad to finish.
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- Danielle
- 10-02-22
Uneven but worth listening to
I will start off by saying I am a huge Auster fan. This book has quite a few highs but also be prepared for just some out of left field randomness. The ending is a bit meh but I still would recommend reading this.
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Overall
- LA
- 03-30-06
a beautiful week
I have long loved Auster's books, but now I know that I have to listen to them, not just read them. I agree that 5 stars are not enough -- it has been completely satisfying listening to this wonderful book. The pacing provided frequent, unpredictable surprises. The reflections of Nathan on everything around and inside him are fresh, certainly not detached, and they moved me frequently. I was uneasy sometimes about everything moving to too many happy endings, but the unease was unwarranted. I'll certainly listen to this one more than once.
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7 people found this helpful
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- David P
- 08-04-15
Overall Entertaining
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The Brooklyn Follies has a great deal of charm. The characters are interesting and their lives are brought to life with insight and a lot of detail. There are many eccentrics and appealing fools, and Auster has tremendous affection for all of them. This reader did, too. As suggested by the title, it's more of a picaresque or pastiche than a novel. Lives randomly or coincidentally colliding. Many sections of the book involve one character telling his story to the narrator. While the stories are good, it pulls you away from the narrator himself and his emotional journey. The fact that things end well for these likable characters is welcome, but it didn't feel entirely earned. The book rushes headlong toward a conclusion in the last half hour or so, with a let's-wrap-it-up quality. The prose is clean, straightforward, and effective. Overall, I was happy to have listened but not wildly enthusiastic.
What about Paul Auster’s performance did you like?
While Auster doesn't create specific voices and intonations for his characters as the best readers do, he has a wonderfully interesting and rich voice. He brought the book to life and I enjoyed his reading.
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- Joe Kraus
- 01-13-16
An Aging Rocker Who Still Hits the Right Notes
Any additional comments?
I’m thinking: if Philip Roth is the Bob Dylan of literature, then maybe Paul Auster is Lou Reed. There’s a similar slight age difference, and the fact that both pairs are Jewish, with the older ones much more upfront about it. Then there’s the idea that Roth and Dylan both seemed intent on telling stories that resonated across the country, while Auster and Reed embraced New York City, both, in their way, becoming regional writers who happened to be in the cultural capital.
I haven’t always liked what I’ve read of Auster. I enjoyed Mr. Vertigo, but the New York Trilogy seemed cold and almost mechanical to me. I could say the same of Lou Reed; I love the Velvet Underground stuff, but find his solo work uneven – never because it’s inept but sometimes because it seemed more committed to the experiment than to the result.
I think the late Lou Reed, as much in his interviews as his music, became someone who was the best of his middle work, someone who could stand on his history of experimentation and make himself accessible, someone whose credibility let him talk more nakedly about being human than most people could get away with.
The Brooklyn Follies seems to me a similar sort of statement, and it’s similarly magical. This is a great book. It’s about aging and regret – all the species of folly that fit into the taxonomy our narrator Nathan Glass puts forward – but it’s also deeply human. The structure is deeply sophisticated: Nathan tells us up front that he’s suddenly aware impending death and then he talks of his experiences in Brooklyn as he reconnects with his favorite nephew and an ever-widening cast of characters. In the course of it, he veers from one anecdote to another, compressing time and rendering dialogue indirectly.
The heart of the novel is the “Book of Folly” that Nathan composes. He sets out to record stories of unfulfilled ambition, ironic failure, and undeserved optimism. He shares only a few of those with us, but I’d sum up the bottom line with the old Yiddish maxim, “Man plans. God laughs.” We rarely hear about his writing, but it’s always there, always something that calls to him. And that theme of folly, of people believing they are chosen for good fortune or that they have the capacity to chart the lives they want for themselves, runs throughout.
Without giving away too much, let me say that Nathan and the others collectively trend toward settling down. They want to connect to others. They want to build homes. In the late Lou Reed vein of things, Auster is able to celebrate that allure of domesticity because he gives a consistent sense of Nathan’s (and by extension his own) world weariness. “Let’s all get married and have kids” sounds pollyanna-ish from someone who’s prone to conservative experiences. It’s something else when it comes from someone who finds himself startled to be alive, someone who has discovered conventional values along an unconventional path.
The bottom line is that you’re in the hands of a master with this one. This is a great meditation on aging and on our American moment at the start of the 21st century, and I’ll be looking for more Auster again soon.
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Overall
- M Shep
- 05-13-09
Plot & characters s/t strain credulity
I've never read Paul Auster before, but suspect this is not his best work. Brooklyn Follies is well written, well read, and mostly interesting, with a likable narrator. I'm giving it only three stars because its creaky plotline is at times trite and predictable and at other times strains credulity. The plot is also occasionally advanced through tediously long monologues by various family members, monologues which copy exactly the style and syntax of the narrator himself, rather than what you'd expect from the various characters. (As an aside, I didn't understand why are there musical interludes if this is an unabridged book?)
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6 people found this helpful