We Live in Water Audiobook By Jess Walter cover art

We Live in Water

Stories

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We Live in Water

By: Jess Walter
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jess Walter
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One of President Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019

From the New York Times best-selling author of Beautiful Ruins, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter - a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit, keen eye, and generosity of spirit that has made him a bookseller and favorite

These 12 stories - published over the last five years in Harper's, The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney's, Playboy, and other publications - veer from comic tales of love to social satire to suspenseful crime fiction, from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, from a condemned casino in Las Vegas to a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive conmen, of meth tweakers on desperate odysseys and men committing suicide by fishing.

We Live in Water is a darkly comic, heartfelt collection of stories from a "ridiculously talented writer" (New York Times), "one of the freshest voices in American literature" (Dallas Morning News).

©2013 Jess Walter (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories Heartfelt
Remarkable Range • Witty Humor • Insightful Stories • Creative Inventiveness • Engaging Characters
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I love Jess Walter but found most of these stories very dark and depressing. The last story about Spokane read by Jess pretty much explains where his thoughts are these days.

Very dark stories

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Jess Walter is an extremely talented author. This collection offers debut of the characters and insightful stories providing a slice of life that is new to me. The narration is impeccable.

Insightful stories

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Beautiful narration, humorous, but such wrenching reality about the poor, disenfranchised, hopelessly lost segment of society that everyone above that level try to forget.

Sad, funny, painfully reality

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Really drew me in and kept me interested in the characters... Specially cuz I lived in Spokane for a bout!

Great stories!

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If you love Jess, pick up this book. He is a word master! I look forward to his next book :)

Such a beautiful collection of short stories!

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The stories are engaging quickwitted and a joy to read. Each individual story draws you in quickly And keeps you interested throughout the entire process. Well written, i'll be very sorry when it's over. Overall a great read

Wonderful stories

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These stories portray unexpected protagonists and is very witty and clever. There where many unexpected twists which kept me engaged. I stumbled into the this book but it makes me want to read more from Jess Walter

I really enjoyed this book!

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This is Jess Walter's first story collection, and whether you're a fan of his novels, or coming to his work for the first time, this is a must read. The stories are generally sad, but leavened with humor, empathy-inducing characters, and universal truths. The first two stories, especially, broke my heart wide-open. Edoardo Ballerini's beautifully moderated narration adds immensely to the beauty of these stories. The final one, and autobiographical listing read by Walter himself, is the perfect finishing touch. An excellent collection that I know I will revisit.

Devastating and graceful stories

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The stories were a little depressing but real for our area. I’m still here too. The people are mostly good and hard working. It is a beautiful place to live if you like being outdoors. The reader using the New York accent whenever hie was the tough guy was weird. And he mispronounced some of the local area names.

Fellow Spokanites thoughts

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With this story collection, it's clear that we're no longer at the Hotel Adequate View with Jess Walter. I loved Beautiful Ruins and think it showed the incredible range of Walter's writing ability, but these stories show mainly gritty realism, those broken and dispossessed, maladjusted and malfunctional. Some of these stories are very short, too short for me to understand the characters in any depth. Some of them also end very abruptly, which left me with the feeling that they were more verbal "descriptions" than stories. With the last story, "Statistical Abstract For My Home Town, Spokane, Washington", Walter does a good job tying the collection together. While We Live in Water is perfectly adequate, it's just not my personal favorite from Jess Walter.

We Live in Gritty Realism...

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