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The Sellout
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
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Publisher's summary
Audie Award Finalist, Fiction, 2016
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since the '68 quake."
Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.
Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident - the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins - he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.
Critic reviews
- Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2016
- 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Fiction
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The spirited (but friendly) debate over these titles could have gone on indefinitely. With years of listening, countless customer reviews, and a catalog of seemingly infinite great listens, 100 suddenly felt like a very small number. What we know for sure—each title that made it to this collection is elevated and made special in some way by audio, whether by a layered performance from a single narrator, a brilliantly cohesive full cast, original music, or immersive sound effects. Discover an audio experience for the ages.
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Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
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A Thinking Man's Novel
- By L. Berlyne on 01-12-09
By: John Updike
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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The Death of Cool
- From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood
- By: Gavin McInnes
- Narrated by: Gavin McInnes
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
This is his story, or, rather, stories - lots of them, and all gut-punchingly hilarious, from that first far reach into a girl's tight jeans to turning forty with a cataclysmic party. In between you’ll hear about acid trips, threesomes, Nazi skinheads, his band Anal Chinook (Inuit for “warm wind”), Martians in northern Canada, throwing pedophiles in jail, dinner with the Clash, what happens when you crash Bill Maher's show wasted, and the true story of Vice magazine.
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if you don't buy this book, the terrorists win
- By Kelsey Gholi on 04-03-17
By: Gavin McInnes
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The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
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Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
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Double Feature
- A Novel
- By: Owen King
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Unraveling the tumultuous, decades-spanning story of the Dolan family’s friends, lovers, and adversaries, Double Feature is about letting go of everything - regret, resentment, ambition, dignity, moving pictures, the dead - and taking it again from the top. Combining propulsive storytelling and mordant wit against the backdrop of indie filmmaking, Double Feature brims with a deep understanding of the trials of ambition and art, of relationships and life, and of our attempts to survive it all.
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Worst book ever! Well maybe.
- By Randall on 08-11-17
By: Owen King
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A Good Country
- A Novel
- By: Laleh Khadivi
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California - about where identity truly lies, and how we find it. Laguna Beach, California, 2010. Reza Courdee, a 14-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner.
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A very important contribution
- By Mia on 05-29-17
By: Laleh Khadivi
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Illegal
- A Novel
- By: Paul Levine
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Trial lawyer Jimmy “Royal” Payne was his own worst enemy - until now. Haunted by personal tragedy and wanted by the cops, Payne needs to skip town. What he doesn’t need is Tino Perez, a gutsy twelve-year-old Mexican boy in search of his missing - and undocumented - mother. But Payne’s ex-wife, an L.A.P.D. detective he still loves, makes him a deal: help the boy or go to jail. Soon Payne is following Tino into the darker side of the American dream.
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Great opening chapters; very vivid characters!
- By Wayne on 01-31-16
By: Paul Levine
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The Taqwacores
- By: Michael Muhammad Knight
- Narrated by: Shahjehan Khan
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straight-edge Sunnis, Shi'a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists. Their living room hosts parties and prayers, with a hole smashed in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca. Their life together mixes sex, dope, and religion in roughly equal amounts, expressed in devotion to an Islamo-punk subculture, "taqwacore".
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Quick, fun, interesting listen
- By Mark on 05-03-11
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Tuff
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston "Tuffy" Foshay, is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of millions from his idea, Cap'n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and his wife, Yolanda, he married from jail over the phone. Shrewdly comical as this dazzling novel is, it turns acerbically sublime when the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council.
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High Larry Us!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-24-23
By: Paul Beatty
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Coyote Blue
- By: Christopher Moore
- Narrated by: James Jenner
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With New York Times best-sellers like Bloodsucking Fiends to his credit, Christopher Moore has developed a devoted cult following. Coyote Blue introduces Samuel Hunter, a young man who's running from his past while being tormented by an ancient Crow God with a talent for mischief.
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ehhhh...
- By Michelle on 08-17-09
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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AIDAN is the AI you'll love to hate. The advanced AI system was supposed to protect a fleet of survivors who'd escaped the deadly attack on Kerenza IV. AIDAN was supposed to be infallible. But in the chaotic weeks and months that followed, it became clear that something was terribly, terribly wrong with AIDAN....
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Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
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What listeners say about The Sellout
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Eugenia
- 04-14-16
Appreciated it, but didn't like it
I really appreciated the humor, the cultural references, the satire, the cleverness and the reality of what this author wrote. But the stream-of-consciousness style became so repetitive and so mind-numbing that I stopped hearing what the author was saying.
I wanted to experience this book as some other reviewers and some critics have as a brilliant tour-de-force, but instead I found it self-indulgent and desperately in need of a storyline.
I tried to follow what was being said with the small portions of plot thrown in, but the listening task of keeping up with the constant and overwhelming satire made the task impossible for me.
I even hesitated to write this negative review considering the importance of the subject matter, but this book lost me after struggling to listen barely halfway through. Besides, the people who should be reading or listening to this book, won't be reading or listening to it.
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- AuntGert
- 11-16-16
Do Yourself a Favor - Listen to Another Book
What would have made The Sellout better?
There is no attempt at character development in this novel. There is, ironically, no soul in this novel. There is no real goal our first person narrator seeks that the reader can wrap their minds around and either root for or against his achieving. No matter what the wordsmithing skills of an author are, and Beatty is obviously gifted, crafting many a clever turn-of-phrase, if a novel lacks all three of the criteria mentioned, it's not a satisfying read. Many passages come off like something you might hear at a hip poetry slam. Whooee! Fast, furious, and fleeting, and not particularly meaningful even though the subject matter is profound. Racism is profound but Beatty's approach is flip. He employs hundreds of literary and historical references which are impressive but do not especially illuminate a point as much as distract from it. In other words, it's a superficially devised work that falls short as a novel for me.
Has The Sellout turned you off from other books in this genre?
If the genre is African American literature - then yes it pales in comparison to Ellison, Baldwin, Walker, Houston because these authors wrote great pieces illuminating racism within the framework of a novel.
If the genre is satire - then it's missing the mark that say Orwell, Heller, Vonnegut did. There's no humor. There's a lot of absurdity and exaggerated outlandish circumstances, but nothing is familiarly pointed to make you laugh and squirm at the same time. It's all squirm all the time.
Have you listened to any of Prentice Onayemi’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I am not familiar with this narrator's work, I thought he did a fine job. His narration was actually the only good thing about it. I honestly couldn't wait for it to end and am surprised it won the Booker Prize as I generally love the winners.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
I'm going to admit that because I'm not living a life where I have to deal daily with America's inherent racism (which our 2016 election demonstrates convincingly is horrendously prevalent), then I just might be lacking the context to appreciate this novel. I really just didn't get it. The author is knowledgeable and ambitious but this didn't work for me.
Any additional comments?
I really do not enjoy writing negative reviews. I know the author has achieved what I could not. I read one negative review of this book before buying but dismissed it because of the Booker Prize. I realized very quickly I should have paid attention to it because they were spot on. Negative reviews can help you save time and money if the review touches your own sensibilities.
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107 people found this helpful
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- Wood Hayman
- 02-10-16
uncomfortablely comfortable
As a highly educated Black man living in the United States, I feel as if this book was written to me. The illustrative depiction of the duality of ignorant intelligence was so incredibly elegant that the things I disliked about the book - the loquaciousness, the temporally difficult to follow diatribes - were the things I actually found most endearing. For, if these previously-mentioned aspects were not rampantly displayed throughout the book, I would doubt the sincerity of the book's meesage. My only wish, at this point, is to be able to talk to someone else who's read the book. I am grateful to the skilled author for having written this book!
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107 people found this helpful
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- B.J.
- 04-02-16
Clever and original. Brilliant work.
You really need to listen to this book with notepaper nearby. There are some incredibly witty lines that deserve way more attention than a quick listen.
For instance, when he's talking about giving a Paul Revere-type warning to the homies he muses, "One if by Land Cruiser. Two if by C Class Mercedes." I don't often laugh out loud during books, but I certainly did during this one. It's irreverent and wickedly funny.
This is some fine satire. If you like sincere books, perhaps a different selection would be a better choice. But if you appreciate some biting humor that leaves no stone unturned, this is a 5-star choice.
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66 people found this helpful
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- Bonnie B.
- 07-27-15
Brilliant book, fantastic narrator!
Ever since hearing the sample clip I've been listening to this book non-stop. It's so well-written, bold, profound, hilarious, and on-point. Paul Beatty has been compared to Vonnegut, Roth, and Heller, but he's got his own distinct voice that is beautifully captured by the narrator. I'm really sorry to have finished this book and enjoyed it so much that I may have to listen to it again, which I never do. Many are calling it the best book of 2015 and it's definitely got my vote!
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63 people found this helpful
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- Harriet
- 09-04-16
Didn't work for me, though at times amusing
Any additional comments?
Not sure what made me pick this one up - not so glad I did. On the positive side, the book offers humorous propositions for the revitalization of suppressed and impoverished minority communities, provides great period detail as well as vivid portrayal of the communities southeast of LA. What didn't really work for me was Beatty's attempt to wrap the plight of disenfranchised black people up in cynical humor. Hostility bleeds too transparently through the humor. His characters are interesting, but lack the honesty that it would take for me to connect with them. Beatty is obviously well-read, intelligent, and shows it, with many references to all things cultural, literary and obtuse. I personally found the literary name-dropping a bit excessive and a distraction from the story. The book is interesting from an east-LA and baby-boomer-generation historical perspective, and Beatty definitely has talent as a writer - this one just didn't work for me.
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- Calliope
- 03-01-17
Too clever by half.......
This book is just so packed full of satire and wit that it trips over itself and ends up a mess, like a joke that goes too far and one forgets the funny part at the beginning because now it's passed beyond that into ridiculousness (or, worse, into offensive). I thought it might just be the first part, to set up the message that the book is satire, but the hits just kept on coming and I quickly was knocked out into turning it off.
The narrator is terrific and the story looked like it might have gotten interesting, but the constant side-comments and satirical points were so frequent and numerous that I felt that "the [book] doth protests too much, methinks", That the author seemed so eager to make his point that he went overboard.
If I hadn't bought it at a 2-for-1 sale, I would have returned it.
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- ibillinsly@gmail
- 10-19-17
Just OK - a few funny sections
A friend told me about this novel and said it was funny. He recommended to me, and we normally like a lot of the same books. It's not like I hated the story, but it just didn't interest me all that much. It had a few funny sections and a few witty passages, but overall it's just not that great. The narrator is good, though he sounded really thirsty, lol. I could hear him constantly working his mouth. All in all, I wasn't that impressed. It was OK, but I wouldn't recommend it if someone was asking my opinion.
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- Gary
- 03-01-16
Outstanding, the NY Times was right when they put on their best of 2015 list.
I've read many books but this is by far the funniest most entertaining of the lot. The way he favors the truth is golden. Now I have to track down his other works. Make sure when you listen you have something to write with because you are going to want to note some of his quotes. How does he come up with some of this stuff. To write this his mind had to be thinking in some other level. I'm driving around laughing with folks thinking I'm crazy. They also picked the perfect performer to read it. Wow!
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- Kathryn
- 03-29-16
Just when I thought there was nothing more to say
This is a shockingly wonderful book that turns racism on its head. SPOILER ALERT (although I think this is in the promo) Imagine a African American man reinstating segregation of blacks and whites when we all thought it was done with and the way to end racism. The ramifications are hilarious and completely original, wrenching the mind around and into some very new and deeper ways of thinking. Someone said the mark of great art is to entertain and educate. In that way, this is a great work of art, yet so much fun.The language, plot and irony of this book are startling and fresh. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a very long time.
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24 people found this helpful