
Theory & Practice
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Narrated by:
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Melissa Madden Gray
About this listen
A new novel of startling intelligence from prizewinning Australian author Michelle de Kretser, following a writer looking back on her young adulthood and grappling with what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art
It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
What happens when our desires run contrary to our beliefs? What should we do when the failings of revered figures come to light? Who is shamed when the truth is told? Michelle de Kretser's new novel offers a spellbinding meditation on the moral complexities that arise in the gap between our values and our lives.
©2024 Michelle de Kretser (P)2025 W.F. Howes, LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.
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Everything
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-25
By: David Szalay
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Good Girl
- A Novel
- By: Aria Aber
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist. Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of freedom.
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Rebel, Rebel
- By Suzanna on 02-17-25
By: Aria Aber
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The Boyhood of Cain
- By: Michael Amherst
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In the shadow of an ancient abbey nestled between rivers, Daniel is growing up. He is highly intelligent but little understood by his parents, and a secret passion burns inside him for love and recognition. When his father loses his job as the headmaster of the local school, his family stumbles into a rural life for which they are ill-prepared. Daniel’s sole solace is the arrival of Philip, a new boy at school, whom he worships with a confused intensity.
By: Michael Amherst
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We Pretty Pieces of Flesh
- A Novel
- By: Colwill Brown
- Narrated by: Colwill Brown
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.” But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace―the girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are.
By: Colwill Brown
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Sons and Daughters
- A Novel
- By: Chaim Grade, Rose Waldman - translator, Adam Kirsch - introduction
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 28 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Rabbi Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen’s world, the world of his forefathers, is crumbling before his eyes. And in his own home! His eldest, Bentzion, is off in Bialystok, studying to be a businessman; his daughter Bluma Rivtcha is in Vilna, at nursing school. For her older sister, Tilza, he at least managed to find a suitable young rabbi, but he can tell things are off between them. Naftali Hertz? Forget it; he’s been lost to a philosophy degree in Switzerland (and maybe even a goyish wife?). And now the rabbi’s youngest, Refael’ke, wants to run off to the Holy Land with the Zionists.
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Great writing/disappointing performance
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-25
By: Chaim Grade, and others
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Tilt
- A Novel
- By: Emma Pattee
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
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Over enthusiastic, snarky narrator who can't...
- By NMwritergal on 03-27-25
By: Emma Pattee
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Sister Europe
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Naema, an elderly princess dedicated to her pet causes, is in a bind: struck by a malady that maroons her in Montreux, she’s unable to host an exclusive gala dinner in Berlin to honor the author Masud al-Huzeil for his lifetime achievement in Arabic literature. Not only is she unable to attend, RSVPs have been slow to materialize, and she’s reduced to begging the ancient award winner to find some attendees at the last minute. Masud invites his old friend Demian, a native Berliner, who in turn invites his two best friends.
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a look into such a different world.
- By Rochelle Jewel Shapiro on 05-15-25
By: Nell Zink
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Theft
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Ashley Zhangazha
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.
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Potting more than a slice of life
- By Susan on 06-07-25
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Trauma Plot
- A Life
- By: Jamie Hood
- Narrated by: Jamie Hood
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the thick of lockdown, 2020, poet, critic, and memoirist Jamie Hood published her debut, how to be a good girl, an interrogation of modern femininity and the narratives of love, desire, and violence yoked to it. The Rumpus praised Hood’s “bold vulnerability,” and Vogue named it a Best Book of 2020. In Trauma Plot, Hood draws on disparate literary forms to tell the story that lurked in good girl’s margins—of three decades marred by sexual violence and the wreckage left behind.
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powerful
- By Anonymous User on 06-05-25
By: Jamie Hood
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Stone Yard Devotional
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Wood
- Narrated by: Ailsa Piper
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
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A profound inward journey
- By Kathlene barrett on 02-17-25
By: Charlotte Wood
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All the Lovers in the Night
- By: Mieko Kawakami
- Narrated by: Mirai
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copyeditor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
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Enjoyable listen
- By Rose on 05-16-22
By: Mieko Kawakami