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The World Below
- Narrated by: Judith Ivey
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
From the author of While I Was Gone, a stunning new novel that showcases Sue Miller's singular gift for exposing the nerves that lie hidden in marriages and families and the hopes and regrets that lie buried in the hearts of women.
Maine, 1919. Georgia Rice, who has cared for her father and two siblings since her mother's death, is diagnosed, at 19, with tuberculosis and sent away to a sanitarium. Freed from the burdens of caretaking, she discovers a nearly lost world of youth and possibility, and meets the doomed young man who will become her lover.
Vermont, the present. On the heels of a divorce, Catherine Hubbard, Georgia's granddaughter, takes up residence in Georgia's old house. Sorting through her own affairs, Cath stumbles upon the true story of Georgia's life and marriage, and of the misunderstanding upon which she built a lasting love.
With the tales of these two women - one a country doctor's wife with a haunting past, the other a twice-divorced San Francisco schoolteacher casting about at midlife for answers to her future - Millers offers us a novel of astonishing richness and emotional depth. Linked by bitter disappointments, compromise, and powerful grace, the lives of Georgia and Cath begin to seem remarkably similar, despite their distinctly different times: two young girls, generations apart, motherless at nearly the same age, thrust into early adulthood, struggling with confusing bonds of attachment and guilt; both of them in marriages that are not what they seem, forced to make choices that call into question the very nature of intimacy, faithfulness, betrayal, and love.
Marvelously written, expertly told, The World Below captures the shadowy half-truths of the visible world and the beauty and sorrow submerged beneath the surfaces of our lives - the lost world of the past, our lost hopes for the future. A tour de force from one of our most beloved storytellers.
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Story
For 35 years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967.
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Loved it!
- By Denise Wallace on 06-26-09
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Up a Road Slowly
- By: Irene Hunt
- Narrated by: Jaselyn Blanchard
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Julie would remember her happy days at Aunt Cordelia’s forever. Running through the spacious rooms, singing on rainy nights in front of the blazing fireplace. There were rides in the woods on Peter the Great, the races with Danny Trevort. Maybe best of all were the precious moments alone in her room at night, gazing at the sea of stars. But there was sadness too - the painful jealousy Julie felt after her sister got married, the tragic death of a schoolmate, and the bitter disappointment of her first love. Sometimes it all seemed like too much to handle.
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Coming of age in mid century
- By Mary A. Kozy on 01-17-21
By: Irene Hunt
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
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Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
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The Waiting
- The True Story of a Lost Child, a Lifetime of Longing, and a Miracle for a Mother Who Never Gave Up
- By: Cathy LaGrow, Cindy Coloma - contributor
- Narrated by: Pamela Klein
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1928, sixteen-year-old Minka was looking forward to a sewing class picnic. This would be a rare chance to put aside farm chores, don a pretty dress, and enjoy an outing with other girls. It would be a day to remember. And it was - but not in the way Minka had dreamed. Cornered by a stranger in the woods, the young girl was assaulted. Minka still believed that the stork brought babies; she would not discover for months that she was pregnant.
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Captivating and fantastic
- By John alexander on 10-03-19
By: Cathy LaGrow, and others
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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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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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An Available Man
- A Novel
- By: Hilma Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Edward Schuyler - a modest and bookish 62-year-old science teacher - is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching.
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Lovely book, easy read, wonderful characters
- By Molly-o on 02-17-12
By: Hilma Wolitzer
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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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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The Brimstone Wedding
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is elegant, smart and in control. Only Jenny, her care assistant, knows that she harbours a painful secret, and only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. As the women talk, Jenny pieces together the answers to many questions that arise: Why has she kept possession of a house that her family don’t know about? What happened there that holds the key to a distant tragedy?
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Amazing reader elevates book to a higher level
- By Doggy Bird on 10-04-14
By: Barbara Vine
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
What listeners say about The World Below
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeanne
- 04-23-19
A wonderfully quiet book
Sue Miller writes wonderfully quiet, thoughtful, beautiful stories of our interior lives. If that sounds boring, it isn’t at all. She takes you into a character’s life, where you reside. You come to know this woman (and the central character is alway a woman) and you thoroughly enjoy coming to know her and learning about her life in the way you do making a new friend.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- SB
- 07-05-10
Mediocre
I found that the author got lost between memoir and story telling, with a lot of "philosophizing" about the state of mid-life the main character finds herself in. The story of her grandmother that is revealed in diary flashbacks was strong enough to redeem the listen and make it worthwhile. okay, but not amazing.
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Overall
- Sandy R
- 09-29-04
5 enthusiastic stars- compelling, a joy to read
The World Below was among the most spirited, insightful, and engaging books I've read/heard in a long time. I found that the somewhat tired story of a tired mom, empty-nested and nearly joyless (save the phone calls and visits with her adult children) was made fresh again by Miller's thoughtful prose, layered plot, and generational shifts of narratorial perspective.
The main character is a 50-something woman who can't shake the feeling that she is in some way abnormal, partly stemming from a disappointing childhood abruptly shortened by the demands of a mentally ill mother. What's more, she feels she has fallen short of the expectations thrust upon her by two ex-husbands, and with believable self-doubt she ponders how in the world she had become "one of those women" with two failed marriages.
It happens that she must decide the fate of her grandparents' home. It is a family duty which affords her, if nothing else, something useful to do that is refreshingly removed from her current state of affairs. When she visits the estate- packed with dusty artifacts of family history-- she slowly begins piecing together the chronology of a mysterious and taboo period in her late grandmother's life. As she struggles to make sense of terse diary entries, she is both intrigued and somehow strengthened by what she learns of her grandmother's imperfect past.
For me, it was fascinating to glimpse the grandmother's life as a patient in an early 1900's sanitorium. Also interesting was the friendship which developed between the (present day) granddaughter and an elderly neighbor-- a chivalrous gentlemen who had been a diligent "caretaker" of the quaint New England home.
Miller is masterful in the art of character development; even minor characters are infused with personality and are strikingly believable. It is a thoughtful story of self-discovery and personal growth, of familial strengths and the flaws which must always coexist.
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Barb
- 10-18-04
One of My Favorites
Enjoyed the complexities of this book and a glimpse into a past unspoken world similar to my own mother's. Although this is a work of fiction, I understand the research that must have gone into the descriptions of TB and life in a sanitarium in hope of recovery.
This is no Harlequin romance. Thank goodness!
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- M.
- 08-25-07
Good story, but...
I love Sue Miller and liked the book. However, some books are better read than listened to and I suspect this is one such book. It was well read, but very hard to get into and follow as an audio book. So, as an audio book it's just okay, but I suspect it would be really great on paper.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jojo0826
- 06-07-24
Loved the connection of generations
The back and forth between the voices of the two generations were seamless ans wove a wonderful story. Great historical fiction.
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Overall
- Kristy
- 07-26-06
Slow
I usually like Sue Miller but this book was so boring. I only finished it so I wouldn't waste my money. I didn't care for the story.
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 01-17-03
Boring Boring Boring
This is the worst book I've heard in a long time. The charaters barely developed, nothing happened, nothing grew, the story was lame, there was nothing interesting, and to top it off, the narrator has an annoying way of ending her sentences. I only listened to the whole thing because I kept hoping something would happen.
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8 people found this helpful
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- jameyvalentine
- 02-10-17
Weak for Miller
Pretty pointless story. Not moving or interesting and rather shot through with loose ends. Kept waiting for something to happen.
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Overall
- Samantha
- 07-25-05
Two Words
BOR-ING!!!! I got half-way through and I finally gave up! This book goes nowhere FAST. I don't recommend it.
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2 people found this helpful