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Sing, Unburied, Sing
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chris Chalk, Rutina Wesley
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
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Publisher's summary
WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize
Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal
Publishers Weekly Top 10 of 2017
"The heart of Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing is story - the yearning for a narrative to help us understand ourselves, the pain of the gaps we'll never fill, the truths that are failed by words and must be translated through ritual and song...Ward's writing throbs with life, grief, and love, and this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it." (Buzzfeed)
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural 21st-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi's past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power - and limitations - of family bonds.
Jojo is 13 years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn't lack in fathers to study, chief among them his black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent white father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent white grandfather, Big Joseph, who won't acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.
His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister's lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is black, and her children's father is white. She wants to be a better mother but can't put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.
When the children's father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another 13-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He, too, has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.
Rich with Ward's distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an unforgettable family story.
A 2018 RUSA “Listen-Alike” for LINCOLN IN THE BARDO
Critic reviews
"There is a truth and grittiness here that narrators Kelvin Harrison, Rutina Wesley, and Chris Chalk enhance significantly with their powerful talents.... All in all, this excellent novel makes for exceptional listening." (AudioFile)
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Bone Gap is the story of Roza, a beautiful girl who is taken from a quiet Midwestern town and imprisoned by a mysterious man, and Finn, the only witness, who cannot forgive himself for being unable to identify her kidnapper. As we follow them through their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, and their uncertain futures, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness.
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Beauty is In the Eye of the Beholder
- By FanB14 on 11-23-15
By: Laura Ruby
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The Necromancer's House
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- Narrated by: Todd Haberkorn
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago.
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Finally - Magic / Fantasy Novel for adults.
- By David on 04-23-14
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Hour of the Bees
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- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
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While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina - Carol - is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she's never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge.
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Love it!
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By: Lindsay Eagar
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The Beans of Egypt, Maine
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The Beans of Egypt, Maine introduced the world to the notorious, unforgettable Bean clan of small town Egypt, Maine. Through her story of the Beans's struggle with their inner demons to survive against hardship and societal ignorance, Chute emerged as a writer of immense humanity and unparalleled insight into a world most of us knew little of - if we'd recognized it at all.
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1985-2018
- By Raelyn M Viti on 08-21-18
By: Carolyn Chute
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Blackbirds
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- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Emily Beresford
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.
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Not for the faint of heart or kids but exciting
- By Steph on 04-07-14
By: Chuck Wendig
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
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- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
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Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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I Will Send Rain
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- Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith
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Annie Bell can't escape the dust. It's in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, and in the corners of her children's dry, cracked lips. It's 1934, and the Bell farm in Mulehead, Oklahoma, is struggling as the earliest storms of the Dust Bowl descend. The wheat harvests are drying out, and people are packing up their belongings as storms lay waste to the Great Plains.
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We've seen pictures of the Dust Bowl
- By Henwhisperer on 10-12-16
By: Rae Meadows
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
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Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.
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An African Childhood of Harrowing Proportions
- By Sara on 10-12-15
By: Alexandra Fuller
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Bleeding Violet
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With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home. But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. She discovers secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen, and no one is safe.
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Didn't like it. Sorry, not sorry
- By Cii'Em on 02-15-16
By: Dia Reeves
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Southern Gods
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Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio statio - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.
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Big, Bold and Bright
- By John on 08-23-11
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The New Moon's Arms
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Overall
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Calamity is confronting two big transitions: the death of her beloved father and the beginning of menopause, a physical shift that has rekindled her gift for finding lost things. Suddenly, she is getting hot flashes that seem to forge objects out of thin air, most notably a four-year old boy. As Calamity takes the child into her care, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Then, Calamity must reawaken to the mysteries surrounding her own childhood and the early disappearance of her mother.
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What a joy
- By newmoon on 07-05-19
By: Nalo Hopkinson
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Battleborn
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Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.
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Wonderful magnificent stories beautifully told
- By Pedro Ramirez on 12-03-15
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The Hollow Ground
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The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.
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What listeners say about Sing, Unburied, Sing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Margaret
- 11-13-17
Lyric & sensual writing, devastating story
I would not have appreciated spoilers for this novel, and I've seen plenty in other reviews of Ward's book. So I'll keep it short. This has the lyric power and the historic and literary importance of Toni Morrison's Beloved, but unlike in Beloved, the reader knows what the hell is going on. The setting and themes are contemporary, but you will never look at rural drug abuse or the racist injustices of the Old South in the same way after living life in JoJo's skin. Ward is particularly powerful when describing sensory perceptions. She's won one National Book Award; with Sing, Unburied, Sing, she deserves a second.
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- Mel
- 01-07-18
Gritty and Poetic
How can such pain and ugliness of the human condition cut its way into your head and leave you with an impression of something beautiful? Jesmyn Ward is a southern author that writes about the dark realities of racism, social injustice, poverty, and the rough lives in those fringes. Her writing is so poetic, so lyrical and powerful that it almost backs down the ugliness. She lights it up and shakes how you conceive such things -- it's upsetting, it's inspirational; it's that one pinpoint of light in the darkness. Books like this are hard to read without feeling a degree of discomfort. I feel her writing is reminiscent of Faulkner, Morrison, O'Connor, amazingly on par with the greats -- I thought so when I read Salvage the Bones when it was published, but wondered if this new author could sustain the level of writing. Her storytelling is brave and focused; her characters feel exposed and lean, and I think this is an author that will continue to give us incredible novels.
From the beginning, the story is a tragedy with little hope of good fortune. Jojo is a thirteen-year-old boy, conflicted more than the average 13 yr.old mixed-race teen being raised by his black mother's parents. His mother Leonie is an addict; his white father is in prison on drug charges -- he also killed Leonies' brother but wasn't charged. The white grandparents are more than bitter and refuse to have anything to do with their grandchildren. Leonie's parents have raised Jojo and his 3 yr.old sister Kayla, Leonie in and out of their lives as to her convenience. Kayla clings to Jojo, and this closeness is a glaring confirmation of Leonie's deficits as a mother. Any love or good in these children has come from the structure of the grandparents and their love, but the grandmother is slowly dying of cancer. The opening sequence of the book seems like a warning...the grandfather unceremoniously butchers a goat with Jojo looking on. It's bloody and blunt, an automatic ritual for survival. It hints at what is to come, a warning of sorts.
Michael is being released from prison and Leonie packs up the car with the kids and a friend. The day starts out on a hectic high point and takes a quick header into disaster. The feeling of the road trip is so clear it feels nightmarish and claustrophobic. Ward doesn't make it easy for the reader to pass judgments though. Leonie's has ghosts...conscience is only silent when she's high. When sober, she regrets her lifestyle, pains to see her little girl pull away from her and reach for Jojo, she even sees the spirit of her brother, murdered by her lover's own hands. Her children also have *the sight.* They see the spirit of a slave boy who tells them about the abuse of the past; they see their uncle and his disapproval of his sister Leonie's choices. This ability to see spirits adds a bit of magical realism and also some insight as to what Jojo learns about himself and his legacy.
The power of this book blew me away. Overall, this is a masterpiece, but it pummels your conscience...I wanted to take away a star just because it was so hard to read that it hurt.
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32 people found this helpful
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- ibillinsly@gmail
- 01-09-18
4.16 Stars
The book is really good at times, and it trails off in others. The ending (the last hour or so) is where it lost some steam for me, but some people I've discussed the book with loved the ending. I think it was supposed to be dramatic, but it didn't come off that way to me. Jesmyn Ward obviously has talent, and a lot of it. Salvage the Bones was a great read/listen and my favorite work by Ward. Overall, I would classify Sing, Unburied, Sing as good but not great.
The narrators handle this novel about as well as one can expect. I've noticed that other reviewers did not like Rutina Wesley's performance, but I thought she did a nice job. I've heard better books on Audible, and if I were to recommend a book to friend, it probably wouldn't be this one. Still, it was worth the time I spent on it. It's not long, and it kept my attention. I like it more looking back on it than I did while listening to it....it stays with you after you've finished it.
Overall rating: 4.16 stars
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- Jacqueline Buckles
- 09-23-17
Very good read, but way too short
The story itself was wonderful, but it seems like it was too short and I still have many questions. Hopefully there will be a sequel to this book.
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- cecile dixon
- 10-15-17
One fatal flaw
Rolling Rs and trilling Ing endings does not make one a great and dramatic reader. Retina Wesley's performance took away from this audio. Otherwise I would have given it an all over four stars.
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- Darcy Pennell
- 10-03-17
Interesting story with mostly good performances
I enjoyed the story and liked that it was told from different perspectives. The different takes on what was happening between JoJo and Leoni were thought provoking. I did not care for the performance for Leoni, though. The way the narrator were out her words was irritating. JoJo and Richie had great performances, though.
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- Kindle Customer
- 11-10-17
Wonderful story; subpar performance by Wesley
Riveting story by my favorite author. Rutina Wesley’s performance was terrible, however. During her portions of the story, it was all I could do to continue listening. I eventually opted to skip her chapters on audio and read them from the copy of the book that I purchased instead. Awful! Fortunately, the other performances offset hers.
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- Justin
- 09-19-17
Very somber read
Jesmyn crafts a beautifully poetic story that puts you directly in her characters world. Although the only characters I was drawn to were Ma, and Pa. the story was intricate and was layered with complex issues which affected all the characters differently. I did find some parts of the story boring with really no forward momentum and I don't if that was because certain dialogue or certain events that unfolded. The biggest thing for me was the lack of growth/depth from Jojo. At no point in the story does it feel like he learns or discovers anything tangible; I just feel like he was uninteresting as a main. Overall the story was good.
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- Sheryl
- 09-16-17
Obnoxiously abstract
It was all I could do to get through it. The nonstop abstract descriptions are never ended. And there's actually no plot. Hated it!
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- Devdac
- 01-13-18
Wonderful story, annoying narrator
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this story. Although I can’t say that I completely understood all of the symbolism it didn’t matter to me because the story was so good. The only downside to the overall performance was the style of the female narrator. I found the way she exaggerated her words to be incredibly annoying. This didn’t add to the story in any way for me. And in fact it took away from it. I will avoid this narrator like the plague since I prefer normal speech when listening to a book. Kudos to the author for another great book!!
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