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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
- Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
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Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation.
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Probably buy the book too.
- By Soupergirl on 09-14-15
By: Marina Keegan
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After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
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Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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I'll Be There
- By: Holly Goldberg Sloan
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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Emily Bell believes in destiny. To her, being forced to sing a solo in the church choir - despite her average voice - is fate: because it's while she's singing that she first sees Sam. At first sight they are connected. Sam Border wishes he could escape, but there's nowhere for him to run. He and his little brother, Riddle, have spent their entire lives constantly uprooted by their unstable father. As Sam and Riddle are welcomed into the Bells' lives, they witness the warmth and protection of a family for the first time.
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Needs to be a film!
- By TreasureHunter on 06-25-16
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Labor Day
- By: Joyce Maynard
- Narrated by: Wilson Bethel
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In a manner evoking Ian McEwan's Atonement and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, acclaimed author Joyce Maynard weaves a beautiful, poignant tale of love, sex, adolescence, and devastating treachery as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy - and the man he later becomes - looking back at an unexpected encounter that begins one single, long, hot, life-altering weekend.
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Good story but anti clamatic
- By Nana on 11-25-13
By: Joyce Maynard
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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 Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
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An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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Breaking Night
- A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
- By: Liz Murray
- Narrated by: Liz Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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Magic Lessons
- A Prequel to Practical Magic
- By: Alice Hoffman
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
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Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Nameless Arts". Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.
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Alice Hoffman Never Disappoints
- By Elle Estee on 10-07-20
By: Alice Hoffman
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The Lost Husband
- By: Katherine Center
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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"Dear Libby, It occurs to me that you and your two children have been living with your mother for - Dear Lord! - two whole years, and I'm writing to see if you'd like to be rescued." The letter comes out of the blue, and just in time for Libby Moran, who - after the sudden death of her husband, Danny - went to stay with her hypercritical mother. Now her crazy Aunt Jean has offered Libby an escape: a job and a place to live on her farm in the Texas Hill Country.
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wonderful story. narrator kind of a sad sack.
- By Susan Reynolds on 07-24-19
By: Katherine Center
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May We Be Forgiven
- By: A. M. Homes
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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May We Be Forgiven, a darkly comic novel of 21st-century domestic life, stars Harold Silver, a historian who's always been jealous of his successful brother, George. But when the hot-tempered George is institutionalized for committing a violent act, Harold finds himself comforting his brother's wife and children. What follows is a scathing examination of a family so fractured it may never be whole again.
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Give this one a try!
- By JWB on 02-13-13
By: A. M. Homes
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Fragile Beasts
- A Novel
- By: Tawni O'Dell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Laural Merlington
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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When their hard-drinking but loving father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town's matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys' story and takes them in.
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Tawni O'Dell Fan
- By bette on 09-20-10
By: Tawni O'Dell
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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well written; not well read
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The writing was unsatisfactory
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Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her finely sighted eye for the frailties of human behavior and her finely tuned ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.
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The writing was unsatisfactory
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Because we all love imperfectly.
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Enjoyable and interesting
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smart, compassionate, confronting and enjoyable
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Story mirrors our life -- to a point -- spoilers
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With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
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skip it
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Don’t read if you have a weak stomach
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The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity.
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Transformation of a bastered girl with Blue blood
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Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the castle's women's dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.
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A Novel in Stories
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What listeners say about We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amber
- 10-04-13
This was totally worth the credit.
The title, "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," sums the book up perfectly. This story is about a family being broken apart in the most unusual way. The story is narrated by Rosemary, and her view of how this tragedy affected herself and the other members of the family. Fowler is able to write this story as if the story had happened to her, as if she were Rosemary. I checked more than once to make sure that this wasn't a memoir because she made it seem so believable from the 1st person narrative. I don't want to reveal much more of the story because I think it might be more enjoyable the less the reader knows about it to begin with. This is a beautiful and sad story, one that pulled at my heartstrings. The book does start off in a strange place, in the middle of the story, but don't let that put you off because it doesn't take long for her to go back to the beginning of all that happened. I also really appreciated the ending. Book endings can be funny business sometimes and I feel that this one was just about right. This story resonated with me and is one of my better reads/listens of the year. I would have no problem recommending it to anyone.
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- Polyhymnia
- 09-09-13
Impressive
Not familiar with Karen Joy Fowler, I found the beginning to be unimpressive. There was something off about the central character and I couldn’t figure out what. It seemed unrealistic. Then when the narrator begins telling the missing parts from her early life I realized that the beginning was a brilliant portrait.
The narrator of the book, Rosemarie, starts her book with the middle of her tale, then braids back and forth, threading episodes in her earlier years and later years. She explains each shift to the reader in a chatty conversational tone.
In a way the structure echoes the complexity of the story. It is both beautifully crafted and provocative. This is a story that is not about an ordinary family, yet it is about commonality.
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39 people found this helpful
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- Pattio
- 05-28-14
Animals unite!
This is one of the best books I've read/listened in the past year - which is more of a compliment than it might sound like because I read/listen to about 20 books a month. The story was gripping and the characters were sympathetic in both their strengths and failings. I know some people were bothered by the description of animal torture (blithely referred to in our culture as "research"). I was deeply affected myself but I do think it is something we all need to hear about. Like a character in the book says, we might vaguely know that this is going on but until we are made uncomfortable with it nothing will ever change. And really, it does need to change (IMHO).
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- 90909
- 11-18-13
Misleading & Manipulative
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Probably not. There are many needless descriptions of cruel experiments on animals. The flimsy "story" is an excuse for the author to rant about animal rights, and she undermines her cause by stacking the deck in her favor. There isn't much plot and the characters are thinly drawn. The nararrator is annoying and comes off like a lecturer rather than a storyteller.
What was most disappointing about Karen Joy Fowler’s story?
The author is kind of misleading. It starts off as a story about a troubled girl with family problems stemming from a missing sibling. None of the characters are very sympathetic and it was hard to care about anyone. The main character is abrasive and unreliable/deceptive. She makes a lot of academic references and name drops prominent scientists and researchers, so we know that she's supposed to be very very smart.
By the middle of the book the story falters and the book turns into a long lecture about experiments on animals. The details seemed gratuitous--she could have made her point citing a few cases, rather than going on and on. It seemed like a cheap shock tactic.
Any additional comments?
Please warn readers about the many graphic descriptions of animal cruelty. If I had known about that I wouldn't have bought the book.
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26 people found this helpful
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- Marjorie
- 04-28-15
I Just Don't Understand What's To Like Here...
I read the reviews of this novel and it sounded interesting. This novel won a Pen/Faulkner Award and, yet, I did not enjoy it at all and did not find the writing particularly compelling on any level. What's wrong with me? My opinion: the characters are shallow, the storyline is disjointed (jumping from one time period to another throughout), the graphic descriptions of animal cruelty are gratuitous and unnecessary. How did this novel win an award? I kept trying to get involved but to no avail; I found it boring, transparently political and an annoying waste of time.
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24 people found this helpful
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- Donna
- 08-17-13
This was a tough read for me.
I was way into the book before I realized that Fern was not a mentally handicapped child! Then when we get into the gore of how animals are treated and how disposable they are (not that I don't know this) I no longer wanted to continue. Good for some not for me!
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21 people found this helpful
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- Barbara
- 11-21-13
'Monkey-Girl' Finds Her Way Out of the Closet
I enjoyed this story of a woman who has had to come to terms with her very unusual upbringing; how it has affected her relationships with her parents and her brother, and her own ability to establish significant connections with other human beings. The author has managed to give each character depth, even the peripheral ones, and even the not-so-nice characters are sympathetic. Well-told.
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19 people found this helpful
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- Syd Young
- 08-04-13
Completely Beside Myself! Read This!
Wow. I'm completely beside myself. This book hooked me and delivered. It made me laugh, cry, and think. It taught me something new and changed my mind about some issues. It reminded me. It gave me hope.
Fern and Rosemary, are two sisters who are separated. As sister separations tend to do, this act unhinged the family, but there is hope for a brighter tomorrow. I can't say more without spoiling it for you, so just trust me on this one.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Lorrie K
- 10-25-14
Wonderful Book but Robotically Read
If you could sum up We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves in three words, what would they be?
Brilliant and funny
Any additional comments?
I ended up reading rather than listening to this book. I don't like to write negatively about anyone--or think I don't--but the way this is read somehow keeps you from hearing the very clever humor and style.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Gilda P
- 10-06-13
The mysteries of families
Where does We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Unfortunately, I had heard an interview with the author about the book which provided a significant plot spoiler, but even knowing what I knew, I found the novel psychologically intriguing and suspenseful, as well as thought provoking. It verged on the didactic at times, but only to the extent that a central concern of the novel required it because it was integral to the characters.
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11 people found this helpful