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Some Luck
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award
From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize: a powerful, engrossing new novel - the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America.
On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different children: from Frank, the handsome, willful first born, and Joe, whose love of animals and the land sustains him, to Claire, who earns a special place in her father’s heart.
Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and going up through the early 1950s, with the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change. As the Langdons branch out from Iowa to both coasts of America, the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: One moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis; later still, a girl you’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own, and you discover that your laughter and your admiration for all these lives are mixing with tears.
Some Luck delivers on everything we look for in a work of fiction. Taking us through cycles of births and deaths, passions and betrayals, among characters we come to know inside and out, it is a tour de force that stands wholly on its own. But it is also the first part of a dazzling epic trilogy - a literary adventure that will span a century in America: an astonishing feat of storytelling by a beloved writer at the height of her powers.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: Best Book Trilogies to Listen to Right Now
Here's why good things come in threes! Everyone knows the famous expression "Three's a crowd!"—but that sentiment doesn't ring true when it comes to books. But what are the best trilogies of all time? With thousands of amazing trilogies out there, it's hard to narrow it down. We’ve compiled some book trilogies that represent the best of the best—and don’t worry about spoilers; we’ve only described the first book of the series in each entry.
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Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
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Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17
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Fallen Angels
- By: Patricia Hickman
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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During the Great Depression, Jeb Nubey is running from the law when he meets three abandoned children. With nowhere else to go the group passes a stormy night in a comforting church. When they are discovered, a case of mistaken identity ensues. It seems the congregation has been waiting for their new pastor, a widower with three kids. Looks like more trouble for Jeb. Yet the chance for a steady job and three squares a day is too good to turn down.
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Touching
- By Christina on 11-11-04
By: Patricia Hickman
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The Jew Store
- A Family Memoir
- By: Stella Suberman
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store". That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches.
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Wonderful
- By Katie Simpson on 09-04-21
By: Stella Suberman
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Hannah's Dream
- By: Diane Hammond
- Narrated by: Laura Flanagan
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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For 41 years, Samson Brown has been caring for Hannah, the lone elephant at the down-at-the-heels Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Having vowed not to retire until an equally loving and devoted caretaker is found to replace him, Sam rejoices when smart, compassionate Neva Wilson is hired as the new elephant keeper. But Neva quickly discovers what Sam already knows: that despite their loving care, Hannah is isolated from other elephants and her feet are nearly ruined from standing on hard concrete all day.
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excellent narration, enjoyable story
- By Elizabeth on 05-11-13
By: Diane Hammond
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
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Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Magic of Ordinary Days
- A Novel
- By: Ann Howard Creel
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Olivia Dunne, a studious minister's daughter who dreams of being an archaeologist, never thought that the drama of World War II would affect her quiet life in Denver. An exhilarating flirtation reshapes her life, though, and she finds herself banished to a rural Colorado outpost, married to a man she hardly knows. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Olivia tentatively tries to establish a new life, finding much-needed friendship and solace in two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp.
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I purchased this audio book not 15 minutes ago...
- By Kim on 09-15-16
By: Ann Howard Creel
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Maude
- By: Donna Mabry
- Narrated by: Shana Gagnon
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1906 I was barely over 14 years old, and it was my wedding day. My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She said, "You've always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I told you. Now you're going to be a married woman, and he will be the head of the house. When you go home tonight after your party, no matter what he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it. Do you understand?"
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Narration made listening almost unbearable
- By Sandra on 01-07-16
By: Donna Mabry
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She Got Up Off the Couch
- By: Haven Kimmel
- Narrated by: Haven Kimmel
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or "working." And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana.
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Great fun !!
- By Kim on 04-20-11
By: Haven Kimmel
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Homesick
- My Own Story
- By: Jean Fritz
- Narrated by: Jean Fritz
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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This heartwarming fictionalized autobiography tells the story of what it is like for a little girl to be growing up in an unfamiliar place. While other girls her age were enjoying childhood in America, Jean Fritz was in China in the midst of political unrest. During this time, foreigners were becoming more and more unpopular, and evacuation at a moment’s notice was imminent. Although Jean appreciated the beauty of China - the mountains, the countryside, the sea - she knew she belonged in America and longed to make her home there.
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Great book!
- By R. SEVERSON on 10-19-18
By: Jean Fritz
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Wolf Hollow
- By: Lauren Wolk
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Despite growing up in the shadows cast by two world wars, Annabelle has lived a mostly quiet, steady life in her small Pennsylvania town. Until the day new student Betty Glengarry walks into her class. Betty quickly reveals herself to be cruel and manipulative, and though her bullying seems isolated at first, it quickly escalate. Toby, a reclusive World War I veteran, soon becomes the target of her attacks. While others have always seen Toby’s strangeness, Annabelle knows only kindness.
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Amazing Book...not just for YA
- By Raelene Vautrin on 11-29-17
By: Lauren Wolk
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good book bad reader
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C’est Si Bon
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I wish I could review book and narrator separately
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First-rate! You will be transported
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Totally hilarious and too true
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Just dumb
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good book bad reader
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C’est Si Bon
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I wish I could review book and narrator separately
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First-rate! You will be transported
- By Michon Matthiesen on 06-12-18
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Moo
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Totally hilarious and too true
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Not worth reading.
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Six months after Rupert Falkes dies, leaving a grieving widow and five adult sons, an unknown woman sues his estate, claiming she had two sons by him. The Falkes brothers are pitched into turmoil, at once missing their father and feeling betrayed by him. In disconcerting contrast, their mother, Eleanor, is cool and calm, showing preternatural composure. Eleanor and Rupert had made an admirable life together - Eleanor with her sly wit and generosity, Rupert with his ambition and English charm.
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Rich, complex, and charming
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After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion - a strange, intolerant woman - has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites.
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IMPERIALISM
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Lucky
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Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky—and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then—through a combination of hard work and serendipity—she started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York City, from the English countryside to the tropical beaches of St. Thomas, from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and back again.
By: Jane Smiley
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L.E.L.
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The life of Letitita Elizabeth Landon - pen name L.E.L. - was one lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London's 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron's came to an end. Lucasta Miller tells the full story and recreates the literary London of her time.
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Infuriating, informative deep dive into the pre-Victorian literary scene
- By Kristen on 12-08-19
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Thorn
- Dauntless Path, Book 1
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Princess Alyrra has always longed to escape the confines of her royal life, but when her mother betroths her to a powerful prince in a distant kingdom, she has little hope for a better future. Until Alyrra arrives at her new kingdom, where a mysterious sorceress robs her of both her identity and her role as princess - and Alyrra seizes on the opportunity to start a new life for herself as a goose girl. But as Alyrra uncovers dangerous secrets about her new world, including a threat to the prince himself, she knows she can’t remain silent forever.
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Immensely Satisfying Retelling
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Ordinary Love and Good Will
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman's infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will describes a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
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Superb Novellas
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By: Jane Smiley
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The Man Who Laughs
- Oasis Classics
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Man Who Laughs (“L’Homme qui Rit”) was called by its author “A Romance of English History,” and was written during the period Hugo spent in exile in Guernsey. Like The Toilers of the Sea, its immediate predecessor, the main theme of the story is human heroism, confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind chance. As a passionate cry on behalf of the tortured and deformed, and the despised and oppressed of the world, The Man Who Laughs is irresistible.
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Great performance, dreadful book
- By Salwesab on 06-16-23
By: Victor Hugo
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The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive - a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at 20, making a good marriage - to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.
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Couldn't put it down, didn't want to finish
- By Barbara Nash on 05-08-22
By: Jane Smiley
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After the Fire
- By: Henning Mankell, Marlaine Delargy - translator
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Fredrik Welin is a former surgeon who retired in disgrace decades earlier to a tiny island on which he is the only resident. He has a daughter he rarely sees, and his mailman, Jansson, is the closest thing he has to a friend and to an adversary. He is perfectly content to live out his days in quiet solitude. One autumn evening, he is startled awake by a blinding light - only to discover that his house is on fire. With the help of Jansson, he escapes the flames just in time wearing two left boots.
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An interesting view of life, aging and death
- By Barbara Dumas on 12-01-17
By: Henning Mankell, and others
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Cinnamon and Gunpowder
- A Novel
- By: Eli Brown
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail. To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he's making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.
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Not bad-Not terrrific
- By colleen on 06-12-13
By: Eli Brown
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The Great Mistake
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing - on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the 13th - shook the city. Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.
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Complete misfire of a biography.
- By Smith's Rock on 06-20-21
By: Jonathan Lee
What listeners say about Some Luck
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Sara
- 10-12-14
Takes Times To Develop But Is Really Worth The Effort
I loved Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres and had very high hopes that this family saga set in Iowa would be something along that line. Some Luck is a different book. It takes patience. The beauty of this first entry in a planned trilogy is slow to evolve. I was almost half way through the listen before the characters had captured me. Before I really cared about any of them. I almost gave up-- but I am really glad I kept listening.
The writing was spare and at first almost one dimensional. Smiley had the story drop in on the family and witness slices of life sequentially as the years progressed. To me these paper doll characters of the first chapters grew into whole, living, breathing and complex people gradually with each year and each new chapter.
This isn't a story that spoon feeds the listener. It is instead a book that the reader needs to work at and ponder. Subtle connections appear in a web like fashion and these webs connect the seemingly disconnected events into an amazing whole. Random flashes of insight flare like tiny sparks. Not the fireworks of A Thousand Acres--but beautiful all the same.
This book is a meditation on family, farming, hard work, individuality and traditions. Keep in mind that luck comes in many forms--good and bad. It also takes time to see which is which as life plays out. I loved the story and look forward to book two whenever it appears. Recommended if you are willing to take the time and let the story unfold. A wonderful listen.
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40 people found this helpful
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- Molly-o
- 11-11-14
Huh?
I have liked Jane Smiley in the past - A Thousand Acres was one of my all time favorites. This story is SO slow, so cumbersome and so full of unnecessary detail that I want to scream from the sidelines - "Jane, get on with it!" The premise that she would think her characterization of a child's view of the world would sustain us for a very long time was, in my mind, not a good calculation. I didn't even want to finish this. That doesn't happen very often with me.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Frank Salomon
- 11-12-14
generations of diapers
Jane Smiley's many big, meaty novels each have a very definite topic: Vikings, farming, horses, real estate, sex, campus life. Here, the topic is motherhood. If you're a recent mom or grandmother and very interested in maternal talk, you might like it. For a reader with different orientations, it's frustrating. Every time something interesting gets started -- a son becomes a sniper in the WWII army, a daughter marries a Chicago Communist -- more babies plop into the plot and you get booted back to the nursery for many, many repetitive pages. Well, one might answer, why shouldn't moms have their say? OK, no beef about that. But I see this as a special-interest novel. Perhaps the two coming volumes of Smiley's Iowan epic will be less sluggish.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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- eigram
- 11-21-14
dull and very slow - couldn't slog through it
What would have made Some Luck better?
the pace is old fashioned - needs to pick up and dance
Would you ever listen to anything by Jane Smiley again?
no
Would you listen to another book narrated by Lorelei King?
nice voice - sure would give something else a try
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
boredom
Any additional comments?
no
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- judy robinson
- 09-29-15
Like listening to Dick and Jane from way back when-
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Better reader, better written.
What could Jane Smiley have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Pick up the pace! Way too much detail. And, who wants to be in baby state of mind, anyway.
What didn’t you like about Lorelei King’s performance?
I think she tried, just too boring.
What character would you cut from Some Luck?
If only I cared-
Any additional comments?
I couldn't finish it, and thats unusual for me. Don't buy it, unless you want to be bored to tears.I 've read other Jane Smiley books and liked them. This just didn't cut it-
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Overall
- Annette Wooden
- 05-06-15
Some Luck - Somewhat enjoyable
Nothing happens except their lives. Farm life described in detail - almost daily but still an enjoyable book once you understand nothing is going to happen.
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- Debbie
- 11-18-14
slow start, but interesting history sweep
Would you consider the audio edition of Some Luck to be better than the print version?
I did not read the print version, so I cannot related the two, but generally I think audio books are better than print versions!
What did you like best about this story?
Well told story of middle America during the depression and WWII
Which character – as performed by Lorelei King – was your favorite?
No favorite. Most all of the characters were likable.
Any additional comments?
This story started out very slow - I felt like I was listening to a children's book! Having read other Jane Smiley books, I held on and am glad I did. I'm happy to hear this is a trilogy and am looking forward to the next installment!
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- Joe Kraus
- 12-12-15
More Effort than Inspiration
How could the performance have been better?
Lorelei King had a tendency here really to inhabit the children she was voicing. This takes far too long to develop characters who feel as if they have history and substance in any case, and that move exacerbated the novel's flaws.
Any additional comments?
I like to think of narrative as a technology, or a series of technologies. Part of what makes something like The Iliad so compelling is that, in addition to the power (and strangeness) of the story, we get it in so formal and archaic a way. Something like that is true as we move through the early novels, whether it’s Sterne (whose sometimes brilliant ‘technologies’ of inverted chronology get left behind for more than a century) or Scott and Austen, who set much of the pattern that others will follow. Then we start to get psychological novels, Realistic ones, and Naturalistic ones, before we move into stream-of-consciousness and other Modern technologies.
Anyway, that unintelligible prologue aside, what strikes me about Some Luck is that it’s a novel written in a now long-discarded technology. The gimmick here is that each chapter of the novel tells a different year in the life of a large (and ever-growing) family from Iowa. They grow through the different economic times, waxing and waning in fortune along with the country at large.
It’s a hugely ambitious project, an attempt to tell more or less the history of the last century from a distinct what-became-of-the-farm-family perspective. I admire that ambition, and – after a long while – come to enjoy some of what it relates. Smiley is a strong historical fiction writer, and she weaves in all sorts of arcane information, whether the nature of commodity prices in the middle 1930s or the advances in the manufacture of gun powder on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1940s.
Such ambition is hard-wired into this narrative technology, though, and we know this because an entire generation of writers attempted experiments in it. John Dos Passos was doing something that I find more successful and compelling (read Manhattan Transfer if you aren’t familiar with it) but a host of people in his wake wrote more mainstream, less experimental work. I think in particular of James Farrell, Meyer Levin, and the later Theodore Dreiser, but I’m sure there were others in what I think of as a kind of “Soviet Realism” school of American literature.
One consequence of the form is that we never quite get central characters. The “hero” instead is “the people” in one form or another. It’s an interesting effect, but I find it limited and, in the end, fairly spent. Smiley has some good anecdotes here, and she has the outlines of characters who might be interesting if they were developed, but she never dwells on anyone or anything long enough for it to take on the substance I look for in literature. This is a theory of quantity over quality, and the result is a kind of layering; the novel works by accretion, by adding new characters all the time and by relying on the course of history to move action forward.
By the end, there are elements to admire, but I don’t see how this could ever have been taken seriously for the National Book Award. I’d have abandoned it after 50 pages (and likely would have if I weren’t listening to it as an audiobook) except for the fact that I know Smiley to be one of our serious writers and because it was so tedious in the early going that I figured I had to be missing something of her project.
What I was missing, I think, is precisely this idea of her experimenting with narrative technology. But I say as well that it’s been done before – just as well, if not better, in the 1920s and 1930s – and I’m much more interested in seeing how other people have moved forward with the narrative technological potential that Dos Passos showed: with the decentered but deeply drawn characters of some of our best contemporary novelists like Colum McCann, Jennifer Egan, Eleanor Catton, and Richard Flanagan. Those writers are doing some of the best work I know, exploring the way deeply developed characters comprise larger communities of people, become collective heroes in complicated contexts; this, instead, feels like nostalgia, like a kind of dead end.
Some of the sequences here are solid – and there’s something to be said for the way the entire apparatus keeps moving forward. I like a lot of the farm-centered narrative, and I like the World War II sequences, but the Cold War subplot seems amateurish at best, and there are long stretches interrupting some of the experiences of characters we were made to care about earlier. In the end, I’m afraid, this seems more notable for its effort than for either its craft or its insight.
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- SW
- 11-06-15
Painfully slow, but some interesting characters
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
You might like this if you are interested in the smallest details of life on a farm in the 20s and 30s, or if you are interested in the everyday occurrences in the life of a family.
Has Some Luck turned you off from other books in this genre?
I won't be listening to any more of the books in this series. I just don't care enough about the characters or what happens to them. There are also too many to keep track of!
What didn’t you like about Lorelei King’s performance?
No animation in her voice. Very heavy handed narration.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
I did enjoy a peek into domestic life in the 20s and 30s.
Any additional comments?
If you are looking for a book in which something exciting is happening, or a story that keeps you excited to hear what happens next, skip this one for sure. This is a very detailed portrait of a family, in all its mundanity and day to day happenings.
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- A. M. Hopkins
- 10-31-15
Big Disappointment!
Would you try another book from Jane Smiley and/or Lorelei King?
I loved "A Thousand Acres" and expected this to be as compelling. I was surprised at the lack of depth in the characters. They struck me as Paper Dolls, which I now see another reviewer mentioned. Very shallow, little development, boring people except for one who remains mysterious and out of reach throughout. The story had no tension or plot -- nothing to draw me in. It all felt like the kind of background exposition that should be kept to a minimum. I gave Smiley the benefit of the doubt and listened to the whole story, but it was not worth my time. I would be very reluctant to try another Smiley book, given the countless groans I emitted while listening. It felt like reading an amateurish attempt at a family history.
Has Some Luck turned you off from other books in this genre?
Not at all. I'll just be a lot more selective.
What didn’t you like about Lorelei King’s performance?
It came across like a kindergarten teacher carefully reading a children's book. Very annoying. I would cautiously preview her work on any other book before purchasing it.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
The details of farm life in the 20s & 30s were illuminating.
Any additional comments?
I am left feeling very distrustful of the critics' reviews included in Audible. For anyone to have found this novel lush & grounded, or to report that after a few slow chapters they felt the velocity, intensity and wonder of this story, I am simply dumbfounded.
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