Upper Bohemia
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Cynthia Farrell
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By:
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Hayden Herrera
About this listen
A New Yorker Best Book of 2021
A “touching, heartbreaking, and exceptional” (Town & Country) coming-of-age memoir by the daughter of artistic, bohemian parents set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, Cape Cod, and Mexico.
Hayden Herrera’s parents each married five times; following their desires was more important to them than looking after their children. When Herrera was only three years old, her parents separated, and she and her sister moved from Cape Cod to New York City to live with their mother and their new hard-drinking stepfather. They saw their father only during the summers on the Cape, when they and the other neighborhood children would be left to their own devices by parents who were busy painting, writing, or composing music. These adults inhabited a world that Herrera’s mother called “upper bohemia”, a milieu of people born to privilege who chose to focus on the life of the mind. Her parents’ friends included such literary and artistic heavyweights as artist Max Ernst, writers Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, architect Marcel Breuer, and collector Peggy Guggenheim.
On the surface, Herrera’s childhood was idyllic and surreal. But underneath, the pain of being a parent’s afterthought was acute. Upper Bohemia captures the tension between a child’s excitement at every new thing and her sadness at losing the comfort of a reliable family. For her parents, both painters, the thing that mattered most was beauty - and so her childhood was expanded by art and by a reverence for nature. But her early years were also marred by abuse and by absent, irresponsible adults. As a result, Herrera would move from place to place, parent to parent, relative to family friend, and school to school - eventually following her mother to Mexico. The stepparents and stepsiblings kept changing, too.
Intimate and honest, Upper Bohemia “captures an enchanted but erratic childhood in a rarefied milieu with the critical but appreciative eye of a seasoned art historian” (The Wall Street Journal). It is a celebration of a wild and pleasure-filled way of living - and a poignant reminder of the toll such narcissism takes on the children raised in its grip.
©2020 Hayden Herrera. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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"With a wistful intonation and an unhurried pace, Farrell expresses what Herrera chooses to leave unsaid or understated, illuminating the lasting impact that parental neglect has had on Herrera." (AudioFile Magazine)
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Story
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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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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Miracle Country
- A Memoir
- By: Kendra Atleework
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.
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The best memoir I've read
- By Patricia on 08-15-20
By: Kendra Atleework
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The Folded Leaf
- By: William Maxwell
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is a classic novel from one of our most honored writers - the author of such acclaimed works as So Long, See You Tomorrow and All the Days and Nights. The Folded Leaf is the serenely observed yet deeply moving story of two boys finding one another in the Midwest of the 1920s, when childhood lasted longer than it does today and even adults were more innocent of what life could bring.
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Midwestern Misfits
- By David on 03-17-15
By: William Maxwell
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The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
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Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
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Married to a Bedouin
- By: Marguerite van Geldermalsen
- Narrated by: Cat Gould
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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"Where you staying?" the Bedouin asked. "Why you not stay with me tonight - in my cave?" Thus begins Marguerite van Geldermalsen's story of how a New Zealand-born nurse came to be married to Mohammad Abdallah Othman, a Bedouin souvenir-seller from the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. It was 1978, and she and a friend were travelling through the Middle East when Marguerite met the charismatic Mohammad who convinced her that he was the man for her.
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Disappointing
- By Ellen on 12-03-23
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The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
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I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
What listeners say about Upper Bohemia
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jill Keefe
- 09-06-21
Limited audience
This memoir will be marginally interesting to anyone who has some connection to the artists and locations featured in the book. The writing is tedious and the narrator mispronounces the names of many of the artists and places which is irritating.
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- Alexis N.
- 08-13-21
A detailed depiction of a unique childhood
This was a very tedious listen about a unique childhood. I think there is definitely value in this story, particularly for family or friends of the writer, but as an average reader it felt too detailed and slow moving for my taste.
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- SpeedRacer
- 10-23-21
Slow and painful.
this was such a struggle. It's a memoir and, without any prior knowledge of the author and knowing nothing of her parents, I found it to be unbearably boring. An unending rolodex of bad childhood memories.
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1 person found this helpful