Debriefing
Collected Stories
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Debriefing
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Narrated by:
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Coleen Marlo
About this listen
Debriefing collects all of Susan Sontag's shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life. The book ranges from allegory to parable to autobiography and shows her wrestling with problems not assimilable to the essay, her more customary mode. Here she catches fragments of life on the fly, dramatizes her private griefs and fears, lets characters take her where they will. The result is a collection of remarkable brilliance, versatility, and charm. Sontag's work has typically required time for people to catch up to it. These challenging works of literary art - made more urgent by the passage of years - await a new generation of listeners. This is an invaluable record of the creative output of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the 20th century at the height of her power.
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-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 293
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 242
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 241
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unabridged?
- By K. Stiffler on 02-11-22
By: John Irving
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An Available Man
- A Novel
- By: Hilma Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
When Edward Schuyler - a modest and bookish 62-year-old science teacher - is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely book, easy read, wonderful characters
- By Molly-o on 02-17-12
By: Hilma Wolitzer
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A Fraction of the Whole
- By: Steve Toltz
- Narrated by: Colin McPhillamy, Craig Baldwin
- Length: 25 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 143
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 145
Stewing in an Australian prison, Jasper Dean reflects on his relationship with his dead father and recounts the many zany adventures they shared together.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Funny and Thought-provoking Tale of Human Nature
- By Asha Ember on 01-27-10
By: Steve Toltz
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 387
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4 out of 5 stars 300
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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Humboldt's Gift
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 236
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 162
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Story4 out of 5 stars 161
For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 94
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Maya's Notebook
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Maria Cabezas
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 412
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 361
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 363
Neglected by her parents, 19-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in Berkeley with her grandparents. Her grandmother Nini is a force of nature, a woman whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973. Popo, Maya's grandfather, is a gentle man whose solid, comforting presence helps calm the turbulence of Maya's adolescence. When Popo dies of cancer, Maya goes completely off the rails, turning to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime in a downward spiral that eventually bottoms out in Las Vegas.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Narrator ruins this book
- By R.J. Mulder on 05-13-14
By: Isabel Allende
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Sophie's Choice
- By: William Styron
- Narrated by: Norman Snow
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 248
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 210
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Story4 out of 5 stars 210
In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman. She has a terrible wound in her past, one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
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1 out of 5 stars
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THIS IS ABRIDGED
- By J. Flynn on 07-25-16
By: William Styron
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4 out of 5 stars 100
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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The Schooldays of Jesus
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 31
David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simon and Ines take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog, Bolivar, to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon, and he should be at school. And so, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simon and Ines work, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky.
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2 out of 5 stars
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SEXUAL PERVERSION PRESENTED AS BRILLIANT
- By Amazon Customer on 09-29-18
By: J. M. Coetzee
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 790
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 723
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Story4 out of 5 stars 726
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 207
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Story4 out of 5 stars 208
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak