-
The Story of My Father
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Sue Miller
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life. With compassion, self-scrutiny, and an urgency born of her own yearning to rescue her father's memory from the disorder and oblivion that marked his dying and death, Sue Miller takes us on an intensely personal journey that becomes, by virtue of her enormous gifts of observation, perception, and literary precision, a universal story of fathers and daughters. James Nichols was a fourth-generation minister, a retired professor from Princeton Theological Seminary. Sue Miller brings her father brilliantly to life in these pages-his religious faith, his endless patience with his children, his gaiety and willingness to delight in the ridiculous, his singular gifts as a listener, and the rituals of church life that stayed with him through his final days. She recalls the bitter irony of watching him, a church historian, wrestle with a disease that inexorably lays waste to notions of time, history, and meaning. She recounts her struggle with doctors, her deep ambivalence about many of her own choices, and the difficulty of finding, continually, the humane and moral response to a disease whose special cruelty it is to dissolve particularities and to diminish, in so many ways, the humanity of those it strikes. She reflects, unforgettably, on the variable nature of memory, the paradox of trying to weave a truthful narrative from the threads of a dissolving life. And she offers stunning insight into her own life as both a daughter and a writer, two roles that swell together here in a poignant meditation on the consolations of storytelling. With the care, restraint, and consummate skill that define her beloved and best-selling fiction, Sue Miller now gives us a rigorous, compassionate inventory of two lives, in a memoir destined to offer comfort to all sons and daughters struggling-as we all eventually must-to make peace with their fathers and with themselves.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Monogamy
- A Novel
- By: Sue Miller
- Narrated by: Sue Miller
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.
-
-
Monotonous
- By Susan G. on 10-16-20
By: Sue Miller
-
The Distinguished Guest
- A Novel
- By: Sue Miller
- Narrated by: Laura Copland
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and staying with her architect son Alan, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. For Alan, her visit raises old questions about his relationship with her, about the choices he has made in his own life, and about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief.
-
-
exquisite
- By rachel murane on 08-18-24
By: Sue Miller
-
The Good Mother
- A Novel
- By: Sue Miller
- Narrated by: Marni Penning
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After an amicable divorce, piano teacher Anna Dunlap has built an independent life in New England for herself and her four-year-old daughter, Molly. It's all Anna thinks she needs—until she meets Leo Cutter, an artist who makes her feel desired, unabashedly sexual, and filled with certitude and passion for the first time. All it takes is a single unguarded moment for Anna's perfect world to implode. Leveling shocking charges against Leo, Anna's ex-husband crashes back into Anna's life and takes Molly with him.
-
-
As meaningful as it was when it came out.
- By Minneapolis listener on 10-30-20
By: Sue Miller
-
Tasha
- A Son's Memoir
- By: Brian Morton
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tasha Morton is a force of nature: a brilliant educator who’s left her mark on generations of students—and also a whirlwind of a mother, intrusive, chaotic, oppressively devoted, and irrepressible.
-
-
Excellent
- By Amazon Customer on 07-08-23
By: Brian Morton
-
Peace from Broken Pieces
- How to Get Through What You're Going Through
- By: Iyanla Vanzant
- Narrated by: Iyanla Vanzant
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.
-
-
Iyanla is Inspirational! A GREAT LISTEN!!!
- By Theresa on 12-04-11
By: Iyanla Vanzant
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Monogamy
- A Novel
- By: Sue Miller
- Narrated by: Sue Miller
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.
-
-
Monotonous
- By Susan G. on 10-16-20
By: Sue Miller
-
The Distinguished Guest
- A Novel
- By: Sue Miller
- Narrated by: Laura Copland
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and staying with her architect son Alan, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. For Alan, her visit raises old questions about his relationship with her, about the choices he has made in his own life, and about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief.
-
-
exquisite
- By rachel murane on 08-18-24
By: Sue Miller
-
The Good Mother
- A Novel
- By: Sue Miller
- Narrated by: Marni Penning
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After an amicable divorce, piano teacher Anna Dunlap has built an independent life in New England for herself and her four-year-old daughter, Molly. It's all Anna thinks she needs—until she meets Leo Cutter, an artist who makes her feel desired, unabashedly sexual, and filled with certitude and passion for the first time. All it takes is a single unguarded moment for Anna's perfect world to implode. Leveling shocking charges against Leo, Anna's ex-husband crashes back into Anna's life and takes Molly with him.
-
-
As meaningful as it was when it came out.
- By Minneapolis listener on 10-30-20
By: Sue Miller
-
Tasha
- A Son's Memoir
- By: Brian Morton
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tasha Morton is a force of nature: a brilliant educator who’s left her mark on generations of students—and also a whirlwind of a mother, intrusive, chaotic, oppressively devoted, and irrepressible.
-
-
Excellent
- By Amazon Customer on 07-08-23
By: Brian Morton
-
Peace from Broken Pieces
- How to Get Through What You're Going Through
- By: Iyanla Vanzant
- Narrated by: Iyanla Vanzant
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.
-
-
Iyanla is Inspirational! A GREAT LISTEN!!!
- By Theresa on 12-04-11
By: Iyanla Vanzant
-
The Rainbow Comes and Goes
- A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss
- By: Anderson Cooper
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though Anderson Cooper has always considered himself close to his mother, his intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS affords him little time to spend with her. After she suffers a brief but serious illness at the age of ninety-one, they resolve to change their relationship by beginning a yearlong conversation unlike any they have ever had before. The result is a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discuss their lives, the things that matter to them, and what they still want to learn about each other.
-
-
Enjoyed the early parts
- By Dedrick on 07-06-16
By: Anderson Cooper
-
The Interestings
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Jen Tullock
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence.
-
-
Needs a better title, but a good read (listen)
- By Tango on 04-12-13
By: Meg Wolitzer
-
The Center Cannot Hold
- By: Elyn R. Saks
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
-
-
Schizophrenia Inside Out
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-23-09
By: Elyn R. Saks
-
Where Memories Go
- Why Dementia Changes Everything
- By: Sally Magnusson
- Narrated by: Sally Magnusson
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird Magnusson's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain in the grip of a disease which is fast becoming the scourge of the 21st century. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, they had five children of whom Sally is the eldest.
-
-
Very much appreciated.
- By M. Bond on 04-21-14
By: Sally Magnusson
-
This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
-
-
I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
-
The Orphaned Adult
- Understanding and Coping with Grief and Change After the Death of Our Parents
- By: Alexander Levy
- Narrated by: Jeff Steitzer
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Losing our parents when we ourselves are adults is the natural order of things, a rite of passage into true adulthood. But whether we lose them suddenly or after a prolonged illness, and whether we were close to or estranged from them, this passage proves inevitably more difficult than we thought it would be. The Orphaned Adult guides listeners through the storm of change this passage brings and anchors them with its compassionate and reassuring wisdom.
-
-
Disappointing
- By D. Ballard on 03-05-20
By: Alexander Levy
-
Between Them
- Remembering My Parents
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Christian Baskous
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How is it that we come to consider our parents as people with rich and intense lives that include but also exclude us? Richard Ford's parents - Edna, a feisty, pretty Catholic-school girl with a difficult past; and Parker, a sweet-natured, soft-spoken traveling salesman - were rural Arkansans born at the turn of the 20th century. Married in 1928, they lived "alone together" on the road, traveling throughout the South. Eventually they had one child, born late, in 1944.
-
-
I wish Ford had read it himself
- By barbara l. bornstein on 05-11-17
By: Richard Ford
-
Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
-
-
Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
-
Lost & Found
- A Memoir
- By: Kathryn Schulz
- Narrated by: Kathryn Schulz
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. Having spent years looking for the right relationship, she was dazzled by how swiftly everything changed when she finally met her future wife. But as the two of them began building a life together, Schulz’s beloved father—a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee—went into the hospital with a minor heart condition and never came out. Newly in love yet also newly bereft, Schulz was left contending simultaneously with wild joy and terrible grief.
-
-
Bored to death
- By Amazon Customer on 03-15-22
By: Kathryn Schulz
-
Resilience
- Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities
- By: Elizabeth Edwards
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Edwards
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While on the campaign trail, Elizabeth Edwards met many others who have had to contend with serious adversity in their lives, and in Resilience, she draws on their experiences as well as her own, crafting an unsentimental and ultimately inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life's biggest challenges.
-
-
Sad
- By kathryn on 02-02-10
-
The Long Goodbye
- A Memoir
- By: Meghan O'Rourke
- Narrated by: Meghan O'Rourke
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of 55, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief - an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond.
-
-
Really great. Loved it.
- By Pamela Harvey on 04-18-11
By: Meghan O'Rourke
-
The Wheel of Life
- A Memoir of Living and Dying
- By: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- Narrated by: Ellen Burstyn
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Wheel of Life, when Kübler-Ross was 71 years old and facing her own death, this world-renowned healer told the story of her extraordinary life. Having taught the world how to die well, she offered a lesson on how to live well. The Wheel of Life is an adventure of the heart - powerful, controversial, inspirational - a fitting legacy of a powerful life.
-
-
This was NOT the complete book DONT BUY
- By Mari on 04-30-21
Critic reviews
“Deft, sincere and eloquent. . . With the care, restraint, and consummate skill that define her well-crafted and bestselling fiction, Sue Miller has now written a beautiful, compelling memoir about her father and his downward spiral into the demonic grasp of Alzheimer’s disease.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Stunning. . . A remarkable yet self-effacing testament to the vagaries of memory . . . [Miller] turns a man’s simple life and tragic death into a lively and unforgettable narrative.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Deeply affecting . . . Like any memoir, this one is a way of bringing its subject back to life. . . . [This] beautifully written little book takes on the narrative power of first-rate fiction.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Related to this topic
-
This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
-
-
I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
-
Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
-
-
Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
-
Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
-
-
Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
-
A Stitch of Time
- The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life
- By: Lauren Marks
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Marks was 27 when an aneurysm ruptured in her brain and left her fighting for her life. She woke up in a hospital soon after with serious deficiencies to her reading, speaking, and writing abilities, and an unfamiliar diagnosis: aphasia. This would be shocking news for anyone, but Lauren was a voracious reader, an actress, director, dramaturg, and pursuing her PhD. At any other period of her life, this diagnosis would have been a devastating blow. But she woke up...different.
-
-
Absolutely wonderful book
- By SJMT on 01-27-19
By: Lauren Marks
-
Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
-
-
William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
-
Modern Loss
- Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
- By: Rebecca Soffer, Gabrielle Birkner
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
-
-
Not What I Was Expecting
- By Bessie Mae on 03-01-23
By: Rebecca Soffer, and others
-
This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
-
-
I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
-
Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
-
-
Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
-
Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
-
-
Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
-
A Stitch of Time
- The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life
- By: Lauren Marks
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Marks was 27 when an aneurysm ruptured in her brain and left her fighting for her life. She woke up in a hospital soon after with serious deficiencies to her reading, speaking, and writing abilities, and an unfamiliar diagnosis: aphasia. This would be shocking news for anyone, but Lauren was a voracious reader, an actress, director, dramaturg, and pursuing her PhD. At any other period of her life, this diagnosis would have been a devastating blow. But she woke up...different.
-
-
Absolutely wonderful book
- By SJMT on 01-27-19
By: Lauren Marks
-
Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
-
-
William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
-
Modern Loss
- Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
- By: Rebecca Soffer, Gabrielle Birkner
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
-
-
Not What I Was Expecting
- By Bessie Mae on 03-01-23
By: Rebecca Soffer, and others
-
The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
-
-
Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
-
The Mathematician's Shiva
- By: Stuart Rojstaczer
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil, Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the greatest female mathematician in history passes away, her son, Alexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch, just wants to mourn his mother in peace. But rumor has it the notoriously eccentric Polish émigré has solved one of the most difficult problems in all of mathematics and has spitefully taken the solution to her grave. A ragtag group of mathematicians from around the world descends upon Rachela's shiva, determined to find the proof or solve it for themselves - even if it means prying up the floorboards for notes.
-
-
Great read
- By Lee Crowe on 07-27-15
-
Because I Come from a Crazy Family
- The Making of a Psychiatrist
- By: Edward M. Hallowell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.
-
-
Love and connection permeates through this book!
- By Steve Steinmetz on 06-29-18
-
The Center Cannot Hold
- By: Elyn R. Saks
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
-
-
Schizophrenia Inside Out
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-23-09
By: Elyn R. Saks
-
Peace from Broken Pieces
- How to Get Through What You're Going Through
- By: Iyanla Vanzant
- Narrated by: Iyanla Vanzant
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.
-
-
Iyanla is Inspirational! A GREAT LISTEN!!!
- By Theresa on 12-04-11
By: Iyanla Vanzant
-
Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
-
-
Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
-
Beyond Tears
- Living After Losing a Child, Revised Edition
- By: Carol Barkin, Barbara J. Goldstein, Audrey Cohen, and others
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The death of a child is that unimaginable loss no parent ever expects to face. In Beyond Tears, nine mothers share their individual stories of how to survive in the darkest hour. They candidly share with other bereaved parents what to expect in the first year and long beyond.
-
-
Comforting and familiar
- By Jeanne on 01-12-17
By: Carol Barkin, and others
-
Switching Time
- A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities
- By: Richard Baer M.D.
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Switching Time is the first story centering on multiple personality disorder to be told by the treating physician. It is the incredible saga of a young woman stranded in unimaginable darkness who, in order to survive, created 17 different versions of herself. One by one, Karen's "alters" began showing themselves: men, women, young boys, a toddler, black, white, vicious, nurturing, prim, licentious. And their "stepping out" confronted Baer with the challenge of a lifetime.
-
-
Couldn't help myself
- By Tech Nut on 12-31-07
-
The Gift of Adversity
- The Unexpected Benefits of Life's Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections
- By: Norman E. Rosenthal M.D.
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The noted research psychiatrist explores how life's disappointments and difficulties provide us with the lessons we need to become better, bigger, and more resilient human beings. Adversity is an irreducible fact of life. Although we can and should learn from all experiences, both positive and negative best-selling author Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal believes that adversity is by far the best teacher most of us will ever encounter.
-
-
Book ruined by the narrator
- By David C. on 12-07-22
-
The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
-
-
Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
-
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
- The Journals of Alice Walker
- By: Alice Walker, Valerie Boyd - editor
- Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis, Alice Walker, Janina Edwards
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women’s activist, and intellectual.
-
-
A must-read for any creative artist!!
- By amazonluver on 04-30-22
By: Alice Walker, and others
-
The Blood Doctor
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Robert Powell
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The First Lord Nanther, expert in blood diseases, particularly the royal disease of Heamophilia, and favoured physician to Queen Victoria, clearly hoped to be the subject of an admiring posthumous biography. But when his great-grandson, Martin Nanther begins to research his life for a biography, the Martin comes to suspect that his great-grandfather’s old records conceal more than they reveal.
-
-
clever, excellent storytelling
- By connie on 07-09-11
By: Barbara Vine
What listeners say about The Story of My Father
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- EShaw
- 06-06-21
Wonderful
This memoir has given me great solace as I move through the last stage with own father and this disease.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Carolyn
- 07-20-03
Excellent book-beautifully written
Sue Miller's narration of her beautifully written book is as intimate and personal as someone speaking to you across her kitchen table. You share her pain, her doubt, her devotion, her anger, all the disjointed emotions she feels, as she journeys with her much admired father through his slow descent into a devastating disease. It's a story that is heart-breakingly sad and yet woven through with threads of humor and treasured memories.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Ginette
- 06-11-10
not a novel but an autobiographical essay
I am a great fan of Sue Miller and was surprised this wasn't a novel but an autobiographical essay. This is the story of her father, a scholar, who's a victim of Alzheimer's disease. She chronicles the onset of the disease, how she and her siblings noticed her father's deterioriration and how they all coped with it. Sue Miller is the narrator in this case and it adds to the quality of the reading. Very moving and insightful, at times funny but most often very moving. A great book to help understand this terrible disease and to help you cope if you have it in your family. Addresses guilt issues, feelings of loss, etc.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cliff B
- 05-14-12
Title should be "The Story of My Father's Death"
I like Sue Miller's work, and this book is well written, but I had thought this would be a woman's memories of her father - not primarily about a woman's struggle with coming to grips with her father's illness and death. If you're looking for insights into dealing with someone who has Alzheimer's, then it's worth reading. If you're looking for a loving memoir, don't.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful