Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton
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Narrated by:
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Imani Jade Powers
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By:
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Gail Crowther
About this listen
In this vividly rendered and empathetic biography of two of the greatest poets of the 20th century - Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton - “the friendship and rivalry that the pair shared - not to mention the titular cocktails at a Boston hotel - is explored in fascinating detail” (Town & Country).
Introduced at a poetry workshop in Boston University, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton formed a friendship that would soon evolve into a fierce rivalry, colored by jealousy and respect in equal terms.
In the years that followed, these two women would not only become iconic figures in literature, but also lead curiously parallel lives haunted by mental illness, suicide attempts, self-doubt, and difficult personal relationships. With weekly martini meetings at the Ritz to discuss everything from sex to suicide, theirs was a relationship as complex and subversive as their poetry.
Based on in-depth research and unprecedented archival access, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz will leave you “hungering for more of what these two literary comets burned with: the power of a little poetry. Deliriously fast-paced and erudite, this is highly recommended” (Library Journal, starred review).
©2021 Gail Crowther. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
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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.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed
- Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller, Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed "fertility crisis" and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all - a successful, demanding career and the required 2.3 children - before their biological clocks stopped ticking. Now, however, conversation has turned to whether it's necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life.
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Am I the only sane childfree woman in here?
- By J. Malouin on 09-29-15
By: Meghan Daum
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Crazy Time, Revised Edition
- Surviving Divorce and Building a New Life
- By: Abigail Trafford
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this intelligent and insightful book, Abigail Trafford charts the emotional journey of a breakup of a marriage, identifying the common phases in the evolution from marriage to separation to divorce, and eventually to a new life. This revised edition includes the most up-to-date research on the personal and economic effects of divorce in adults and children's lives, addresses the special challenges of becoming single again in the age of the Internet, and broadens the experience of divorce to the breakup of all committed relationships.
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Better as an additional book
- By Ethan on 09-18-19
By: Abigail Trafford
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Sybil Exposed
- The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case
- By: Debbie Nathan
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Debbie Nathan reveals the true story behind the famous case of Sybil, the woman with sixteen different personalities.
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No definitive answer, just speculations all around
- By Amy A on 12-30-18
By: Debbie Nathan
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How to Be Sad
- Everything I’ve Learned About Getting Happier by Being Sad
- By: Helen Russell
- Narrated by: Helen Russell
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Helen Russell has researched sadness from the inside out for her entire life. Her earliest memory is of the day her sister died. Her parents divorced soon after, and her mother didn’t receive the help she needed to grieve. Coping with her own emotional turmoil — including struggles with body image and infertility — she’s endured professional and personal setbacks as well as relationships that have imploded in truly spectacular ways. Even the things that brought her the greatest joy — like eventually becoming a parent — are fraught with challenges.
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More an self biography
- By Jaime Murillo on 04-27-24
By: Helen Russell
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Labyrinths
- Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.
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Carl plays center stage
- By Sparrowhawk on 12-23-16
By: Catrine Clay
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Capture
- Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering
- By: David A. Kessler MD
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Why do we think, feel, and act in ways we wish we did not? For decades, New York Times best-selling author Dr. David A. Kessler has studied this question with regard to tobacco, food, and drugs. Over the course of these investigations, he identified one underlying mechanism common to a broad range of human suffering. This phenomenon - capture - is the process by which our attention is hijacked and our brains commandeered by forces outside our control.
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Confused
- By TS on 05-17-16
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
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The Survivors
- A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing
- By: Adam Frankel
- Narrated by: Adam Frankel, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines - a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is.
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Amazing story
- By Alissa on 12-26-19
By: Adam Frankel
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Manifesto
- On Never Giving Up
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Bernardine Evaristo
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo’s memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism.
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Glorious performance and inspiring story
- By Maggi Morehouse on 01-25-22
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The glamorous extravagances and devastating lows of her time in Hollywood are revealed as never before in this fresh new biography of Dorothy Parker—from leaving New York City to work on numerous classic screenplays such as the 1937 A Star Is Born to the devastation of alcoholism, a miscarriage, and her husband’s suicide. Parker’s involvement with anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, which led to her ultimate blacklisting, and her early work in the civil rights movement that inspired her to leave her entire estate to the NAACP are also explored as never before.
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Published in their entirety, Sylvia Plath's journals provide an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life some of the most extraordinary poems of the 20th century. Faithfully transcribed from the 23 journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath includes two journals that Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, unsealed just before his death in 1998.
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The timely, never-before-told story of five brilliant, passionate women who, in the early 1960s, converged at the newly founded Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study and became friends as well as artistic collaborators, and who went on to shape the course of feminism in ways that are still felt today.
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Good Overview
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New York Times bestselling author Laurence Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote's never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote's ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his "swans."
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What listeners say about Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- priscilla franco
- 08-12-22
eye opening
without reading a thousand page biography for each author. you completely understand how and what and so many questions get answered. you understand how the pressure of society okaysd into there lives. i kove this audiobook.
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- KHK
- 02-03-23
they would not be silenced
I enjoyed learning more about these amazing female poets. I wish more changes have been realized in the world of publishing and recognition of women authors. I am grateful for these women for persevering to let their voices be heard and part of our culture. I know it made a difference.
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- D. Man
- 01-26-23
Love platt & sexton
A dog walking book filling me with love and admiration of 2 exceptional women with little support. Here in 2023, having lived a similar lifestyle it gave me validation for the same struggles these beautiful women traversed💕❤️🙈🙊🙉🌵✌️
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- Jana Johnson
- 11-12-23
New details kept my interest
Beautifully written and narrated, this book gave me more insight on what shaped these women as writers and the demons they struggled with.
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- hikingchick
- 07-19-24
Amazingly sad
This was such an interesting and insightful look at the lives of Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton. The writer really knows her stuff and it was arranged
interestingly, each chapter by subject. It just felt so overwhelmingly sad to me. The narrator did a really wonderful job with it.
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- Marisa Incelli
- 04-06-22
Great poets
An enjoyable book and men certainly deserve critique but to act as though male writers have not struggled with their career or that modern psychiatry has evolved to amazing solutions through medication is dishonest. Can you be a great poet in a harsh and compromised world without a touch of madness ? The individual and society must take responsibility for the soul of artists and poets.
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- Nakota
- 04-11-23
Wonderful
really loved this book, especially all the parts about Sylvia Plath. The narrator is great too.
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- J.
- 07-04-21
Good Dual Bio
The book itself was good. I have read a lot about Plath and a few books on Sexton, but as a dual biography, certain aspects of the shared, but different histories of both women were highlighted for me.
I was excited to start listening but the narration was consistently misguided. First off, it felt like every sentence was a performance, which did not fit the content. The good part of that was it was not monotone, so I continued listening. Mispronounced words and names were not frequent but the same ones were off each time. The most obvious was three pronunciation variations of Adrienne Rich’s first name.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Stephanie L Henning
- 01-23-23
Slow, text book style overview
I wasn’t expecting a contrast and comparison text book style story, so while this is full of interesting bits of information, it comes across incredibly dry. The narration sounds like its AI rather than actually voiced.
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- Nikki
- 12-13-23
Interesting but the narration...
If you love these two poets, it's definitely worth a listen. There were a couple of things I did not know, including that Ted Hughes was not just a womanizer but also just a generally horrible person who robbed us of some of Sylvia's greatest, most honest work in order to preserve his fragile ego. The narration is off-putting to me because it's so overly theatrical. Every single line is read as if she's on a stage or doing a commercial. Very strange and unnecessary. I had to speed it up just to get through it.
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