
Wild Houses
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Narrated by:
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Damian Gildea
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By:
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Colin Barrett
About this listen
The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
With his acclaimed and award-winning collections Young Skins and Homesickness Colin Barrett cemented his reputation as one of contemporary Irish literature’s most daring stylists. Praised by the Oprah Daily as “a doyen of the sentence”, and by the Los Angeles Times as a writer of “unique genius”, Barrett now expands his canvas with a debut novel that contains as much grit, plot, and linguistic energy as any of his celebrated short stories.
As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, introspective loner Dev answers his door on Friday night to find Doll English—younger brother of small-time local dealer Cillian English—bruised and in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers and Dev’s cousins. Dev’s quiet homelife is upturned as he is quickly and unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' frenetic revenge plot against Cillian. Meanwhile, Doll’s girlfriend, 17-year-old Nicky, reeling from a fractious Friday and plagued by ghosts and tragedy of her own, sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.
Set against Barrett’s trademark depictions of small town Irish life, Wild Houses is the thrillingly told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence.
©2024 Colin Barrett. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.
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Incomprehensible biologically-essentialist nonsense
- By Lu Clark on 03-15-25
By: Rachel Cusk
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salt slow
- By: Julia Armfield
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In her electrifying debut, Julia Armfield explores women’s experiences in contemporary society, mapped through their bodies. As urban dwellers’ sleeps become disassociated from them, like Peter Pan’s shadow, a city turns insomniac. A teenager entering puberty finds her body transforming in ways very different than her classmates’. As a popular band gathers momentum, the fangirls following their tour turn into something monstrous. After their parents remarry, two step-sisters, one a girl and one a wolf, develop a dangerously close bond.
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spooky and fantastic
- By Hallie on 11-13-22
By: Julia Armfield
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Harold
- By: Steven Wright
- Narrated by: Steven Wright
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From the outside, Harold is an average seven-year-old third grader growing up in the 1960s. Bored by school. Crushing on a girl. Likes movies and baseball—especially the hometown Boston Red Sox. Enjoys spending time with his grandfather. But inside Harold’s mind, things are a lot more complex and unusual. His thoughts come to him as birds flying through a small rectangle in the middle of his brain. He visits an outdoor cafe on the moon and is invited aboard a spaceship by famed astronomer Carl Sagan.
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Yes, Harold?
- By DC333 on 06-27-23
By: Steven Wright
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Praiseworthy
- By: Alexis Wright
- Narrated by: Jacqui Katona
- Length: 36 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors. A crazed visionary looks to donkeys to solve the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife, seeking solace from his madness, follows the dance of butterflies and scours the internet to find out how her Aboriginal/Chinese family could be repatriated to China. One of their sons, named Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide.
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Beautiful, powerful book full of poetry
- By Guy on 11-11-24
By: Alexis Wright
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Birding
- By: Rose Ruane
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In the nineties, Lydia was one half of a teen pop group. Their image was sexy, edgy, girly yet 'in control.' The reality was very different. Now, thirty years later, with #MeToo revelations a daily reality, a famous ex-lover resurfaces with a slick, self-serving apology, demanding forgiveness. Suddenly, Lydia is overwhelmed with memories of a harmful time in her life that refuses to leave her in peace.
By: Rose Ruane
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Wolf at the Table
- By: Adam Rapp
- Narrated by: Paul Sparks
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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As late summer 1951 descends on Elmira, New York, Myra Larkin, thirteen, the oldest child of a large Catholic family, meets a young man she believes to be Mickey Mantle. He chats her up at a local diner and gives her a ride home. The matter consumes her until later that night, when a triple homicide occurs just down the street, opening a specter of violence that will haunt the Larkins for half a century.
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extraordinary writing.
- By michelle martinez on 05-23-24
By: Adam Rapp
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Two-Step Devil
- By: Jamie Quatro
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House.
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Surreal
- By Nan on 01-20-25
By: Jamie Quatro
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The Unquiet Bones
- By: Mel Starr
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.
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Wonderful!!!
- By AKowalczyk on 01-05-20
By: Mel Starr
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The Topeka School
- A Novel
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari, Peter Berkrot, Tristan Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting "lost boys" to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak.
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Strong novel about 1990s
- By citizen, jazzmania on 01-11-20
By: Ben Lerner
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An Unnecessary Woman
- By: Rabih Alameddine
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's "unnecessary appendage." Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut.
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Tales of a Literary Snob
- By Ilana on 02-14-14
By: Rabih Alameddine
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When We Were Silent
- A Novel
- By: Fiona McPhillips
- Narrated by: India Mullen
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Louise Manson is the newest student at Highfield Manor, Dublin’s most exclusive private school. It seems nearly perfect: the high arched window alcoves and tall granite pillars, the overspill of lilac at the front gate and the immaculate playing fields, the giggling students, the dusty, oak-lined library, and the dark, festering secret she has come to expose. At first, Lou’s working-class status makes her the consummate outsider, though all that changes when she is befriended by the beautiful and wealthy Shauna Power.
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Loved!
- By Jenni on 10-22-24
By: Fiona McPhillips
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The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even
- Stories
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In this dual collection of short stories, Alexander McCall Smith brings his trademark humor and warmth to inventive tales of spying and vengeance. In one story, a spy dropped deep into enemy territory manages to disguise himself—quite convincingly—as a nun. In another, an invitation to join the Vatican Secret Service sends a prospective operative down a rabbit hole of controversy and confusion. A third story finds an author, on the brink of public ruin, seeing the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day.
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Brilliant
- By C. Gall on 12-12-23
The narrator was superb.
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Complex characters
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Engaging and beautiful story, excellent narration
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This novel was spectacular--suspenseful, nuanced, humane, and beautiful. Mr. Barrett has a tremendous future ahead of him.
Sentences to make a body swoon.....
Holy Moly! What a ride!
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A beautifully told story connecting a most unfortunate series of circumstances.
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I loved that the author used a small bit of crime to look at the interactions between individuals, the formation and maintenance of relationships, and their internal struggles. Although at first, some of the dialogue can seem mundane, it is what was important to these characters at the time. Many times common dialogue is used to convey messages with greater weight.
In the first hour of reading, I found the heavy accent of the reader a bit thick. But, it was no problem as I became used to it. And it is thick; as thick and meaningful as the rain, threats, anger, shame, smells, and confusion.
(SMALL PLOT REVEAL) The story doesn't end with some giant twist. I actually enjoyed that. I had guessed that one character might do this, or another character might do that...but they didn't. No one became a superhero or a super-villain. They just stayed in character. That was a twist that I couldn't have anticipated.
So, yes, I very much recommend this book. It lets you into the lives of a small group who are more or less the same as everyone else. It was interesting to me to discover which (more OR less). The people are real...so, my conclusion was more.
Insider look at a small crime
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Not worth my time
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What happened?
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Not worth my time or money
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