The Cleaners
Faraway collection
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Narrated by:
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Kate Rudd
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By:
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Ken Liu
About this listen
Touch the past or wash it away? Two sisters have a choice in this unforgettable short story of everyday magic and the power of memory by the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Ken Liu.
Gui is a professional cleaner at A Fresh Start, scrubbing away the unpleasant layers of memory that build up on the personal objects of his customers. Memory-blind himself, he can’t feel those wounds. Clara can, and she prefers them irretrievable. Until her sister, Beatrice, ultrasensitive to memory, raises one that could change Clara’s mind. For Gui, the past is gone. For Clara and Beatrice, deciding what to remember reaches to the heart of their shared history.
The Cleaners is part of Faraway, a collection of retold fairy tales that take the happily-ever-after in daring new directions. Whether read or listened to in one sitting, prepare to be charmed, moved, enlightened, and frightened all over again.
©2020 Ken Liu (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from best-selling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, 11-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there 30 years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life.
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Character story or ghost story ?
- By RueRue on 12-18-17
By: Gail Godwin
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The Time Collector
- By: Gwendolyn Womack
- Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo, Will Damron
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Roan West was born with an extraordinary gift: he can relive memories across centuries and glean history first-hand. A highly skilled psychometrist, Roan is able to perceive the past of any object he touches. He has spent his life as a voyeur, using his talents to find and sell valuable antiques, but his quiet life in New Orleans is about to change. Stuart, a fellow pyschometrist and Roan's close friend, has just unearthed several "ooparts": out-of-place artifacts that challenge recorded history....
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Wish I had known this was a “romance” story
- By Paisley on 04-26-20
By: Gwendolyn Womack
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Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
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Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
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A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
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Prose style not to my liking
- By C.V. Cox on 10-18-20
By: V. E. Schwab
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Martin Eden
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin Eden, Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel, is about a struggling young writer. It is considered by many to be the author’s most mature work. Personifying London’s own dreams of education and literary fame as a young man in San Francisco, Martin Eden’s impassioned but ultimately ineffective battle to overcome his bleak circumstances makes him one of the most memorable and poignant characters Jack London ever created.
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My favorite Jack London book.
- By j daly on 11-26-14
By: Jack London
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The Ghost and Mrs. McClure
- The Haunted Bookshop Mystery Series, Book 1
- By: Cleo Coyle
- Narrated by: Caroline Shaffer, Traber Burns
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure and her old Aunt Sadie are making ends meet by managing a mystery book shop - a quaint Rhode Island landmark rumored to be haunted. Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity - like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing. But soon after the bestselling thriller writer reveals a secret about the store's link to a 1940s murder, he keels over dead - and right in the middle of the store's new community events space. Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder?
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Creative take of a ghost detective
- By Victoria J. Mejia-Gewe on 12-05-18
By: Cleo Coyle
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Abandon Me
- Memoirs
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection - with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery.
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This journey is captivating to say the least!
- By Ilanna on 08-11-17
By: Melissa Febos
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What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
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We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
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Elfland
- Aetherial Tales, Book 1
- By: Freda Warrington
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Elfland is an intimate, sensual novel of people—both human and Aetherial—caught between duty and desire. It is a story of families, and of Rose Fox, a woman born to magic but tormented by her place in her adopted world.Led by Auberon Fox, a group of Aetherials—call them the Fair Folk, if you will—live among us, indistinguishable from humans. Every seven years, on the Night of the Summer Stars, Lawrence Wilder, the Gatekeeper, throws open all gates to the Other World. But this time, something has gone wrong.
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Miscommunication is an obnoxious plot device
- By Robin on 05-26-16
By: Freda Warrington
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Trashlands
- By: Alison Stine
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
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Trashlands
- By Richard W. Carlson on 01-10-23
By: Alison Stine
What listeners say about The Cleaners
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Alissa Christine Reid
- 08-12-23
The Cleaners was Unique
This short story is very unique. It talks about the power of memories and how they affect different people. How people can distance themselves from others due to the emotions caused by the memories and how others can find strength in holding on to them.
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- Sunrise Books
- 01-02-21
Deserves a Whole Novel
I need more time in this universe to truly understand the way memory cleaning works, to get to know the characters more. And I really, really want too! Very intriguing and thought provoking
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1 person found this helpful
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- T. Dibble
- 01-20-21
Excellent concept
I really enjoyed the premise of this book. The idea was novel and the story told in a believable way. With it split from three different people's point of view, it got a bit hard to follow at points, trying to remember whose point was being made, but overall a pleasant listen.
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- Elisabeth Carey
- 01-03-21
A touching story about family and memory
Giu is a cleaner, the owner of A Fresh Start, and he cleans away the unpleasant memories that have adhered to his customers' personal possessions. Giu has an unusual handicap in this world; he's memory-blind. He's not able to feel or read even his own memories on objects, and that created a challenge for his parents in teaching him their trade. Yet it also gives him certain advantages; he doesn't feel the pains of the bad memories he's scraping away.
Beatrice is hyper-sensitive, and makes a very good living doing forensic readings of memories attached to items involved in legal cases.
Clara has a fairly normal level of memory sensitivity, and after a bad breakup with her former boyfriend, wants to rid their shared items that he left behind of the painful memories. For this, she turns to Giu.
But Clara and Beatrice are sisters, and has an old, four-color pen that holds a memory that's at the heart of what binds them together.
When Beatrice invites Clara to lunch, and hands Clara that pen, Clara experiences that memory again, in full, and has something to think about that might change her mind.
It's an interesting, thoughtful, and touching story.
Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Hall Ways
- 01-24-21
So much to contemplate that I listened twice
THE CLEANERS by Ken Liu has an amazing premise, and it was fascinating to think about it on a personal level: what memories would I have removed from my life and existence? Any? Many? The writing really stands out , with a bunch of quotable lines that really sink in and mean something bigger, beyond the story itself. Particularly interesting to me and what I really enjoy are the bookish references and the idea of what each reader brings with them to read the book. There is much to contemplate in this short story (a one-hour listen), so I listened to it twice in a row. Kate Rudd’s narration is excellent.
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- escoocoo
- 11-06-21
Didn’t Like It! 😔
Didn’t like this story. Just did not work for me. At only about 53 minutes, I honestly could not wait for this one to be over….boring. 😒
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- Blue's Purple
- 12-27-20
Loved It!!
A great story that I'm going to both listen to & read a few times in order to do it justice.
An original idea based on ancient wisdom. Bravo!
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- ReadingRover
- 01-12-21
Meh
I didn’t enjoy this one even close to as much as the first 3. The narration was good but I found the story lacking.
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- Kevin Nguyen
- 06-28-23
Worth the listen.
Good, as expected for Liu’s work. Short tight and sweet.
I liked it a lot.
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- Stacey-Author and reader
- 03-10-21
Creative and thought provoking
A very intriguing story and one I wouldn't mind reading a longer version of.
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