The Wapshot Chronicle
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Narrated by:
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Joe Barrett
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By:
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John Cheever
About this listen
When The Wapshot Chronicle was published in 1957, John Cheever was already recognized as a writer of superb short stories. But The Wapshot Chronicle, which won the 1958 National Book Award, established him as a major novelist.
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the tradition of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James.
As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of John Cheever's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Blake Bailey about the life and work of John Cheever – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.
This production is part of our Audible Modern Vanguard line, a collection of important works from groundbreaking authors.©1957 John Cheever (P)2009 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
- By: Robert Hillman
- Narrated by: Daniel Lapaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met - she's passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has only read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife - and still missing her sweet son, Peter - Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy.
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Listener beware
- By Little old lady from Iowa on 06-11-23
By: Robert Hillman
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Jane of Lantern Hill
- By: L.M. Montgomery
- Narrated by: Lauren Saunders
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For as long as she can remember, Jane Stuart and her mother have lived with her controlling grandmother in a dreary mansion in Toronto. Jane always believed her father was dead, so she was shocked to receive an invitation to stay with him for the summer on Prince Edward Island. But from their very first meeting, Jane fell in love with her charming father and his whimsical cottage. During her stay with him, she even found herself daring to dream that there could be such a house back in Toronto.
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Adore the book. The recording needs to be EDITED!
- By Island Girl on 06-17-20
By: L.M. Montgomery
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Lark Rise
- By: Flora Thompson
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Lark Rise is Flora Thompson's childhood memories of a north Oxfordshire village, the people who lived and worked in it, and a way of life that has totally disappeared. The story is built around Laura and her brother Edmund, through whose eyes are seen 'old Sally', whose grandfather built the house she lived in before the enclosure of the heathland, children's games, the interaction of village and gentry, and the way in which the seasons governed life.
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A glimpse...
- By Shananiganians on 05-31-20
By: Flora Thompson
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America Is in the Heart
- By: Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo - foreword, E. San Juan Jr. - introduction, and others
- Narrated by: Ramon de Ocampo
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.
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Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
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The Golden Hour
- A Novel
- By: Beatriz Williams
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.
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Stick with it!
- By Colleen on 07-17-19
By: Beatriz Williams
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The Sheep Queen
- By: Tom Savage
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Savage, a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a PEN/Faulkner Award nominee, has long been a critically acclaimed author. The New Yorker calls him "a writer of the first order". This starkly elegant story details the lives of Emma Russell Sweringen and her family in the early 1900s. Emma’s daughter Beth secretly gave up a baby girl for adoption many years ago. Now, Beth’s secret life is being unraveled as her daughter comes looking for her long-lost family.
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Excellent in all respects
- By Marlene J. Gustafson on 05-11-19
By: Tom Savage
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Fifty-Two Stories
- 1883-1898
- By: Anton Chekhov, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
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From the celebrated, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and War and Peace: a lavish, masterfully rendered volume of stories by one of the most influential short fiction writers of all time.
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Better alternatives for Chekhov
- By Carol V. Macvey on 03-04-21
By: Anton Chekhov, and others
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What listeners say about The Wapshot Chronicle
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Debbie
- 08-03-15
Long Meandering Tale
Though the author has a gift with words and listening to the Wapshot Chronicle has its times of funny or poignant interest, overall it seemed to go nowhere. I listened to the end, waiting for some conclusion, something to tie the thing together, but its not there. Instead it is a tale about an eccentric, all-over-the place family, that in the end is sad to me. I don't know about you, but who wants to hear, over and over about three men who meander through life and never really resolve anything?
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5 people found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 05-31-13
Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
"Man is not simple. Hobgoblin company of love always with us."
The Wapshot Chronicle is a twin Bildungsroman of sons Moses and Coverly, framed by the letters, journaling, and loneliness of their father Leander. It is a crazy beautiful 20th Century Great Expectations-like novel of a family's depth and breadth, its secrets and its flaws. The two brothers are saddled with the albatross and obligation to insure ensure that Old Honora’s keeps paying the bills (future) for the boys and (current) for their parents.
Cheever fills his novel with dominating mothers, idiosyncratic and co-dependent guardians, changeable wives and costly lovers. The trinity of Wapshot men, float throughout Cheever's novel in a wayward, rudderless boat. Their lives are constantly taking on water and they seem destined to be blown further from the shore by the dominant humor of the nearest strong-willed female.
The characters in The Wapshot Chronicle were amazing. Its language and narrative were incredible. Cheever's satire and ribald humor constantly bit this reader in his lusty-for-good-literature ass.
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26 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 02-27-19
Surprisingly Great
I thought I had never heard of Cheever and was surprised how great this novel was. I looked up the author after enjoying the novel and found he was the author of several of my all time favorite short stories including "The Swimmer" and "The Enormous Radio".
This novel is long and complex with interesting and dynamic characters that not only grow, but vacillate, as real people do. The writing is bold, yet makes subtle points with rye, satirical, humor.
Some reviews call the story meandering, and it one sense it is, but there is method below the meander, and for me it was very enjoyable.
The narration was clear and enjoyable.
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- Hannah
- 03-22-22
beautiful novel, absolutely stunning narration.
A novel and world you truly get sucked into and become a part of - and much credit to Joe Barrett for his terrific performance and for bringing the wapshots to life.
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- David C.
- 01-29-22
On the chronicling of family quirk and disfunction
#johncheever earned a great living churning out short stories for the New Yorker, a talent for which my well read In-laws knew him well and loved him. As a family of bibliophiles who have consumed countless volumes each over a lifetime, I was surprised to discover that, when I pulled them, none had read any of his novels.
So, when diving into the #thewapshotchronicle , number 63 on my list of the #modernlibrarytop100novels , I had limited frame of reference as to expectation other than a knowledge that Cheever had earned a reputation as a prolific documentarian of the 50's era American Middle Class. This aspect of his writing comes through in two of the book's main characters, Moses and Coverly Wapshot, two brothers who were the benefactors of an old New England family name in a small Massachusetts coastal town with a cash strapped father and a rich aunt who controls the family legacy as well as the purse strings.
One of the family legacies is this tendency of many of the men to keep personal diaries from which the title is derived, and the family secrets that can be learned from them. As a prolific daily journal keeper myself, I understand that, though I have done this primarily as a method of keeping notes with respect to my fertile imagination that churns up endless story ideas (and, of course, the accompanying side effect of not remembering so many fleeting musings) and, to be candid, a residual fear of Alzheimer's which permeates my maternal line.
Being that this was not only Cheever's debut novel but noted as semi-autobiographical, I am sure Cheever had a similar inclination to denote mundane events that mask profound ideas. #joebarrett , the #audible performer, was outstanding and I will seek out other works by him.
I recommended this to my in-laws who seemed reticent about reading a novel from one of their favorite short story writers. It is humourous and, at times, painful. But it shows how legacies endure, even when that legacy took root in a small, seaside New England town.
#americanliterature #readtheworldchallenge #reatheworld #globalreadingchallenge
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