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The Country Girls
- Narrated by: Edna O'Brien
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
It is the early 1960s in a country village in Ireland. Caithleen Brady and her attractive friend, Baba, are on the verge of womanhood and dreaming of spreading their wings in a wider world - of discovering love and luxury and liquor and above all, fun. With bawdy innocence, shrewd for all their inexperience, the girls romp their way through convent school to the bright lights of Dublin – where Caithleen finds that suave, idealised lovers rarely survive the real world.
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
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Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
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South Riding
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).
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Worth Revisiting
- By Ilana on 11-04-12
By: Winifred Holtby
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How Green Was My Valley
- By: Richard Llewellyn
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn’s best-selling - and timeless - classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn’s characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people. Richard Llewellyn (1906–1983), a Welsh novelist, was born in Hendon, England, in the county of Middlesex.
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The rhythm of life... the pattern of words...
- By Jan on 04-16-13
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National Velvet
- By: Enid Bagnold
- Narrated by: Annette Chown
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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National Velvet is a classic tale of dreams, ambition and one girl's belief in a horse. Velvet is mad about horses. When she wins a piebald horse in a raffle, she knows he's something special. His heart is as big as the five-foot fences he jumps, and he'll do anything for Velvet. Soon she and her friend, Mi, have their sights set on the biggest race in England. But can a girl win the Grand National?
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Just wonderful
- By Shiloah Baker on 11-18-16
By: Enid Bagnold
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Michael C. Hall
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Golden Globe-winning actor Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) performs Truman Capote's masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbor, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialization, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist.
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"Better to look at the sky than live there"
- By W Perry Hall on 02-12-14
By: Truman Capote
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Fragile Things
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Marvelous creations, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his entertaining (and dark) sense of humor.
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Perhaps a different format?
- By Karen on 11-03-10
By: Neil Gaiman
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The Star of Kazan
- By: Eva Ibbotson
- Narrated by: Ruth Jones
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. One day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door.
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not recommended for pleasure
- By SEE on 08-27-17
By: Eva Ibbotson
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vignettes rather than a novel
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Publicist. NBA player. Career ending Injury. Family Secrets. Undeniable attraction.
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Love this book
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Pip Appleby seems to have it all, with her prestigious job as a human rights lawyer and her enviable London home. But then a tragic accident stops her life in its tracks, and in an instant everything changes. Retreating to her family’s rural farm and the humble origins she has been trying to hide, Pip is haunted by what she has done. When she discovers the diary of actress Evelyn Mountcastle in a box of old books, Pip revels in the opportunity to lose herself in someone else’s life rather than focus on the disaster that is her own. But soon she sees parallels....
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Special reads
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What listeners say about The Country Girls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Juniperk
- 12-05-18
Author should not read her book
This book was part of a book club list, therefore I did not choose to read it. That said, I started off with the written version and decided that maybe I would progress faster with the recording. I was very excited to see that the author was reading her book, but, in this case I think that maybe she made a mistake.
I did not enjoy her reading, there was no characterization: usually a reader gives each character a different rhythm of speech or tone of voice... in this case it was monotonous, the story being a bit monotonous to start with.
And then there was the BREATHING, this was the most difficult part to handle as I really had to make an effort not to concentrate on the intake of air through the nostrils and listen to the words.
Personally I did not enjoy this book, there were too many unnecessary descriptions of nature, which I found had no positive use to the story, they just made it long drawn out. I think there are sufficient descriptions of the story and the characters, so I will not go into them in this review, except to say that the outcome was very abrupt.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anita Tarlton
- 01-04-23
interesting
This was slow (to me) at the start. I am glad I continued with it, though. Ms. O'Brien has a melodious Irish brogue that lends reality to the story.
A great coming of age story, with the thrills and heartaches of first love.
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- TiffanyD
- 11-25-19
Is an author always the best reader?
I plan to read the whole trilogy and part of me thinks I should wait until I've finished to pass judgement on part one but let's go with first impressions anyway. While I do plan to read the entire series, that has more to do with my own interest in the author's work, the time and place she's writing about, and a weird compulsion to complete things. Would this book, on its own, compel me to finish reading about frenemies Caithleen and Baba? Maybe, maybe not. Although the cast of characters from the home village is actually very richly drawn.
More to the point, I am not certain I want to continue listening to the book as read by the author. There's an odd sniffling quality to the reading that doesn't match up with the voice I'd associate with a young girl and I wonder if I'd have liked the story better if there had been a different reader.
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1 person found this helpful
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- V. Bonnie King
- 06-07-16
Friendship of circumstance
Newly exploring Edna O'Brien as a wise woman writer. Her description of Ireland sets the stage, viscerally visual, against which the dialects of the main characters in conversation pulled me even further into the world a country girl in Ireland existed in.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Cynthia
- 07-06-13
Where have all the romantics gone?
Where does The Country Girls rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Right at the top.
What other book might you compare The Country Girls to and why?
Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Terribly Mitford-esque..
What about Edna O'Brien’s performance did you like?
Sound of her voice, incredible diction. marvelous irony.
If you could take any character from The Country Girls out to dinner, who would it be and why?
Mr. Gentleman. You have to ask why?
Any additional comments?
Where are the negative reviews coming from? Really ladies and gentlemen, have we forgotten the romance of courtship and are we too old to remember how hard our hearts ached when we first fell in love? Edna O'Brien has not forgotten, I am hard pressed to find more than a handful of writers who could write about this experience with as much beauty and haunting charm as she evokes This is the first audiobook that has pressed a review from me. Well, I'd put Jeremy Irons reading of Lolita as my all time no. 1, but it's pretty damn hard to knock Nabokov off the top..
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- ervaret
- 01-29-11
delightful and compelling
A humorous, mesmerizing and well-observed story of the difficulties and excitements of a young girl growing up poor in Ireland. Charmingly and movingly read by the author. I was hooked from the beginning and listened to many passages twice to enjoy them again.
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3 people found this helpful
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- SwissAmerican
- 02-21-20
Authors are not always the best readers
I can see why this book in its time and place made a splash, but from the present perspective I can't agree that Edna O'Brien is/was the "Faulkner" of female Irish writers. Still, it is an interesting slice of life in a small Irish village in the fifties from the viewpoint of a naive young girl.
I would have enjoyed it more had it been read by a good voice actor. Authors are not always the best readers of their work (in fact, rarely), and Ms. O'Brien lacks the training that would have made this more enjoyable. She has a pleasant voice, but she doesn't have her breathing under control, and her constant wheezing/gulping for air is more than a little distracting.
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- Susan Henry
- 10-29-15
Marvelous.
Marvelous reading, old world tone, and sultry, captivating description. I'd listen to this again and again
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- Luisa Barnes
- 04-25-22
Good story, dismal performance
I almost always appreciate authors reading their work, but in this case the narration is so bad. The audio quality is so low that I couldn’t listen to it loudly or via Bluetooth . You can hear the author breathing and swallowing throughout.
The novel is wonderful. I love a coming of age tale from a female point of view. Many points of beautiful prose within the writing.
All in all this is one I wish I had read with my eyes.
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- David P
- 09-02-16
Spectacular Writing and Narrating
I was almost swayed by negative reviews of Edna O'Brien's narration. Wow, am I glad I downloaded it anyway. O'Brien is a spectacular writer whose sensitivity to small details and physical gestures rivals that of Proust. She brings the world of her youth to life in such vivid complexity and psychological honesty, I was completely transported.
As for the reading, it's true she is not a professional narrator and you can hear her taking breaths and pausing at odd moments. HOWEVER, she has a gorgeous voice that is so full of feeling--plus the lovely accent, and a hushed, expectant tone--that I was captivated and hanging on every sentence.
One of the best listens of the year for me. I was driving for much of this and at one point was so moved I had to pull over!
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8 people found this helpful