The Last Night at the Ritz
Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries
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Narrated by:
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Janet Metzger
About this listen
The charming, and not entirely trustworthy, unnamed narrator of The Last Night at the Ritz invites three friends to join her for lunch at the elegant Ritz-Carlton in Boston to celebrate her birthday. Two of them, Gay and Len, are a long-married couple and her best friends from college. The third, Wes, was once her lover.
As the afternoon gives way to evening and as the drinks flow, the past and present intrude upon the festivities and the atmosphere turns somber. Before the night is through, truths and secrets slip out that will change their relationships forever.
Back in print for the first time in a generation, The Last Night at the Ritz, a masterfully written novel of friendship and love and the ways we deceive each other and ourselves, is quite simply unforgettable.
©1973 Elizabeth Savage (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
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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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Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
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So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
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The Pull of the Moon
- By: Elizabeth Berg
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In the middle of her life, Nan decides to leave her husband at home and begin an impromptu trek across the country, carrying with her a turquoise leather journal she intends to fill. The Pull of the Moon is a novel about a woman coming to terms with issues of importance to all women. In her journal, Nan addresses the thorniness - and the allure - of marriage, the sweet ties to children, and the gifts and lessons that come from random encounters.
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For women over 50
- By Laura on 07-07-15
By: Elizabeth Berg
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Babbitt
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.
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Makes You Think
- By E. Pearson on 02-21-13
By: Sinclair Lewis
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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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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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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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
What listeners say about The Last Night at the Ritz
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Libby
- 06-06-13
Smart and sassy
Would you listen to The Last Night at the Ritz again? Why?
The reader, Janet Metzger, got just the right tone for the unnamed first person narrator, who has a witty, devil may care attitude even in the face of tragedy.
What does Janet Metzger bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The sassy, witty tone that permeates the narration. I don't think I would have gotten it in quite the same way if I had read the book instead of listening. She has a flip way of expressing herself like when her friend is talking about her grandparents' graves and the narrator says, "I thought we were here to have fun."
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
When the narrator gives advice to Charlie, her best friend's son. Also, when her friend says if she won't sleep with her boyfriend someone else will and we suspect that she knows that the narrator has done so.
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- Simone
- 03-10-13
I Feel Like Going to the Ritz For a Drink!
I have no idea how to explain this book. It’s about everything and nothing. A woman and her friends go out for drinks and dinner and through flashbacks we learn about her life.
Sounds boring put that way, but it wasn’t! I liked this woman very much and “enjoyed her company” so to speak. I also enjoyed the fact that it was set in Boston – I went for the first time last December and really enjoyed it; since it’s still fresh in my mind it was easy to picture the story… never mind that it’s set in the 60s.
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