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The Museum of Modern Love
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
Our hero, Arky Levin, has reached a creative dead end. An unexpected separation from his wife was meant to leave him with the space he needs to work composing film scores, but it has provided none of the peace of mind he needs to create. Guilty and restless, it is almost by chance that he stumbles upon an art exhibit that will change his life.
Based on a real piece of performance art that took place in 2010, the installation that the fictional Arky Levin discovers is inexplicably powerful. Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art sit across a table from the performance artist Marina Abramovic, for as short or long a period of time as they choose. Although some go in skeptical, almost all leave moved. And the participants are not the only ones to find themselves changed by this unusual experience: Arky finds himself returning daily. As the performance unfolds over the course of 75 days, so, too, does Arky. Connecting with other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.
This is a book about art, but it is also about success and failure, illness, death, and happiness. It's about what it means to find connection in a modern world. And most of all, it is about love, with its limitations and its transcendence.
An iBooks bestseller. Winner of the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize. Winner of the 2017 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. Winner of the 2017 Stella Prize. Shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society's 2017 Gold Medal. Shortlisted for the 2017 University of Queensland Book Award for Fiction.
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- 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
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Love Walked In
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos crafts an irresistibly touching debut novel. Love Walked In is a contemporary tale, steeped in nostalgic, cinematic charm, of love in all its forms. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia Brown appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But it is Martin's connection to 11-year-old Clare Hobbes that touches Cornelia's heart in ways she never imagined.
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Dreadful audio quality
- By Marenghi on 09-16-11
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Vine of Desire
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil's attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America - and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.
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Vine of desire
- By Mz Shantay on 03-27-21
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Stars over Sunset Boulevard
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles, present day. When an iconic hat worn by Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind ends up in Christine McAllister's vintage clothing boutique by mistake, her efforts to return it to its owner take her on a journey more enchanting than any classic movie.... Los Angeles, 1938. Violet Mayfield sets out to reinvent herself in Hollywood after her dream of becoming a wife and mother falls apart, and she lands a job on the film set of Gone with the Wind.
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Pass on this
- By Lulew on 03-24-17
By: Susan Meissner
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Duet
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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From the London pop scene, to the opera stages of Europe; from a tiny Greek island, to a stifling manor house full of secrets and deceptions; from the sun-drenched Queensland coast, to the silent outback; Angela and Ellie are two women both looking for something. One in search of her identity and her memory; the other in search of the love that she had and lost; theirs is a duet whose last note will not be sung until the heart-stopping climax, when a shadow from the past returns to claim them both.
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Gosh that was a great story!
- By Anonymous User on 06-10-09
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Silver Wattle
- By: Belinda Alexandra
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In fear for their lives after the sudden death of their mother, Adéla and Klára must flee Prague to find refuge with their uncle in Australia. Later, Adéla becomes a film director at a time when the local industry is starting to feel the competition from Hollywood. But even while success is imminent, the issues of family and an impossible love are never far away.
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Groan, Snore and Wince!
- By OrangeWisteria on 02-12-12
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Gold Dust
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
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It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
- By Maria on 12-04-17
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The Wife
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
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A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
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If I Forget You
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from alternating points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair.
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Good, but not great.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-16
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
- Stories
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Piter Marek, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In "Books and Roses", one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers' fates. In "Is Your Blood as Red as This?", an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. "'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" involves a "house of locks", where doors can be closed only with a key - with surprising unobservable developments. And in "If a Book Is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think", a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).
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clever
- By jared rogerson on 03-15-18
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Red Address Book
- By: Sofia Lundberg, Alice Menzies - translator
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The global fiction sensation - published in 32 countries around the world: Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny - her American grandniece, and her only relative - give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. In writing down the stories of her colorful past - working as a maid in Sweden, modelling in Paris during the '30s, fleeing to Manhattan at the dawn of the Second World War - she may help Jenny, haunted by a difficult childhood, unlock the secrets of their family....
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narrator was overwrought
- By Janet L. Hamilton on 02-22-19
By: Sofia Lundberg, and others
What listeners say about The Museum of Modern Love
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Aliza
- 08-15-19
A beautiful meditation on art, life, and risk.
This book slowly won me over. As an artist, I deeply appreciated the intuition and love that illuminated this book. I was also moved to hear that the author battles with considerable pain from arthritis. These are not facile insights. If you, in turn, love the life of art and art of life, I believe you may love this book the way I do.
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- julienne perez
- 10-26-20
was hoping for a happier ending
I first thought this book was about the archy character but it seems to be that it was more about the artist. I was hoping for a happier ending but over all I liked it
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- lindamarie
- 08-21-19
Encourages thought about 'what is art'
From the title, I would not have selected this audible. After reading the description and some of the reviews, I selected this audible book, and am glad I did. I read about the MoMA exhibit 'The Artist is Present', yet did not give much thought to it, other than to read a bit about the artist. This book is both about the observer and the artist. Philosophical questions from both sides emerge. As the reader/listener is another outside observer, this gives yet another vantage to posed life questions. All in all, listening to the audible was well-spent thought provoking time.
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- H. Brown
- 11-20-20
Simply Lovely
I experienced this novel as an unexpected combination of the and the complex. The result was lovely and painful; heartwarming and heartbreaking. The stories of each character combined to produce a tale as shimmering as the play of light on water. Simply lovely.
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- Joseph Mckenna
- 08-11-19
A grown up book for grown up people.
Thought you would know yourself by 50? Guess what...age doesnt provide the answers, just better articulated questions. Read this novel and let author Heather Rose, help. The insights and reflections will hit home. Whatever your age, we all need love.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-10-21
Deep literary dive into a major performance artist
If this book were a painting it would be an enormous abstract with a multitude of separate pieces held together by a unifying color. The color would be blue. There is a lot of deep sadness in this book. A lot of grief. Yet because it’s written in a detached style, it’s not necessarily depressing.
The writing goes from brutal to lyrical.
As much as I appreciated the literary quality, and it definitely feels like literature, the brutality of some of the performance pieces as well as historical references of war, coupled with the lack of connection I felt with any of the characters, led me to feel as detached about the book as the writer seemed to feel about it herself.
The protagonist, a composer named Arky Levin, is wracked with deep confusion. This inner cacophony is counterpointed with the incredible grounded stability of the artist who sits all day looking at various people who come to sit across from her.
I gave it four stars because it’s worthwhile, highly intelligent and studded with myriad historial, musical, film, literary and art related references all of which make it interesting, even compelling at times, but I would never say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was enriching, if a bit of a slog sometimes.
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- Barbara
- 10-15-20
Love life art
I had no idea what I was getting into with this book! From the beginning I was charmed by the narrator, the observations, the characters. I just wanted to spend more time with them. Very like those in the crowds that gather to see the artist sit, present to each in turn, for 75 days. It’s quite a journey.
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- Joe Kraus
- 08-25-19
The Art of Presence
In college, I spent a lot of time trying to think about Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Why I Am Not a Painter.” Part of that was because my father and O’Hara split the major Hopwood Awards at the University of Michigan in 1950 – Dad won for prose and O’Hara for poetry – so that difference in genre seemed personal. And part of it was for the poem itself: what might it mean to go after a similar artistic statement in paint rather than words.
This novel explores a real-life conceptual artist’s work. Marina Abramovic sat at a table in a New York gallery for 75 days, and hundreds of people sat across from her briefly to meet her gaze. She was “present” to strangers, and it was an event that resonated. I was surprised to hear that even my children had heard of it.
It was also, it seems, powerful for the thousands who witnessed it, and Heather Rose has set out here to transform some of that experience from the performance genre to the novel.
As a result, this is both an effort to reclaim Abramovic’s original experiment – what does it feel like to be present for anyone who comes before you? – and an experiment in genre. It’s a little bit of what O’Hara was doing in trying to bring a painting into his poem.
I love that ambition, and I love that this novel works as well as it does to make Abramovic’s work resonate. I don’t know whether I’d have been moved by the actual experience of it, but I do know that I appreciate having it brought to me through multiple perspectives – including Abramovic’s own (thought much of that, I gather, is fictionalized from her biography).
Conceptually, then, this is more than worth it.
As a novel itself, though, it has its ups and downs. Our main protagonist is a composer of movie soundtracks. And, as such, he is himself invested in the work of transforming the images of cinema art into musical art.
Arky Levin is carrying a deep sadness. His best friend and closest collaborator has died in a recent car accident, and his wife is slowly dying from a wasting neurological disease. What’s more, because she remembers how devastated her father was when her mother died in similar fashion, she has fashioned a legal care document that denies him access to her. She’s left him all the money and resources he needs to continue his art, but he’s not allowed to come see her.
I get why that situation has emotional power here – and I get that it sets up an emotionally effective conclusion when [SPOILER:] Levin finally insists on visiting his nearly unconscious wife and being fully present for her as Abramovic has been for him – but I can’t escape the deeply contrived nature of it. The genuine power that Rose gives this is diminished by the clear artificiality of the barriers she’s thrown up for Levin.
There are a range of other characters too, most prominently a gentle woman from the South who’s lost her husband to cancer and sought distraction in New York. I love the way she and Levin bond over watching Abramovic watch others, and I love the way Rose conjures a sense of community among those who have been moved by the experience.
That said, though, I think the second half of this begins to run a little out of steam. The intense focus of the beginning, when Levin and his new friend forge a connection of mourners who can’t quite name their pain, gives way to other sub-plots that deal more with the world of art, its making, and its marketing. The characters that emerge there are ones, as I see it, who are less affected by the experience of the art than by the work of creating it. All that still works, but without quite the same beautiful edge of the opening chapters.
In any case, this is certainly a strong and moving work. It’s a reminder of how hard it is to open yourself to another’s pain, and that’s worth exploring in every medium we have.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Sharlotte
- 08-12-19
Loved it!
The author drew me in immediately and the story spoke to me. I will probably listen to this again in the future. Excellent narration.
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- Jaye Nelia
- 01-10-23
Art and fiction, working it out
This book is a marvel—a twining of several love stories with the work of artist Marina Abramovic, who was “Present” in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC for 75 days in 2010. Obviously this book isn’t for everyone, but you don’t have to be interested in Abramovic or performance art as a discipline to appreciate the beautiful writing and narrative. I knew nothing about Abramovic going in and quite a lot coming out, and I like what I learned. The author placed several characters in proximity to the extraordinary exhibition, and showed how it transformed them. That’s all the plot description I feel equal to right now. You don’t need more. If you love excellent fiction, you’ll love this. It will make you feel alert and in love with the world!
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