Desolation Angels
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Desolation Angels
Buy for $21.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Andrew Eiden
-
By:
-
Jack Kerouac
About this listen
Originally published in 1965, this autobiographical novel covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957.
After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac’s fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London.
Duluoz attempts to extricate himself from the world but fails, for one must “live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.” Desolation Angels is quintessential Kerouac.
©1965 Jack Kerouac (P)2025 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
Desolation Peak
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Kerouac at his most honest
- By MckyD’z on 12-01-22
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Subterraneans
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 4
Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac’s early classics, On the Road. Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox—two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground—The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America’s field of vision.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 234
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 195
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 195
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Tristessa
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Mike Dennis
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In 1955, novelist Jack Kerouac detoured from his cross-country American travels to Mexico City, where a group of junkie expatriates he had known from the New York City post-war scene had gone for the cheap and plentiful supply of heroin and morphine. Fellow beat writer William S. Burroughs, who had been a part of the Mexican expatriate community, had introduced Kerouac to Bill Garver (named Old Bull Gaines in the novel), a much-older, long-term addict who had in turn introduced Kerouac to Esperanza Villanueva, whom Kerouac named Tristessa in the novel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Gritty
- By William on 06-09-18
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 806
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 694
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 689
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,468
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,811
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 3,805
Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
My Favorite Narration and a Wonderful Book
- By Guillermo on 09-17-09
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Desolation Peak
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Kerouac at his most honest
- By MckyD’z on 12-01-22
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Subterraneans
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 4
Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac’s early classics, On the Road. Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox—two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground—The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America’s field of vision.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 234
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 195
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 195
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Tristessa
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Mike Dennis
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In 1955, novelist Jack Kerouac detoured from his cross-country American travels to Mexico City, where a group of junkie expatriates he had known from the New York City post-war scene had gone for the cheap and plentiful supply of heroin and morphine. Fellow beat writer William S. Burroughs, who had been a part of the Mexican expatriate community, had introduced Kerouac to Bill Garver (named Old Bull Gaines in the novel), a much-older, long-term addict who had in turn introduced Kerouac to Esperanza Villanueva, whom Kerouac named Tristessa in the novel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Gritty
- By William on 06-09-18
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 806
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 694
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 689
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,468
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,811
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 3,805
Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
My Favorite Narration and a Wonderful Book
- By Guillermo on 09-17-09
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Vanity of Duluoz
- An Adventurous Education, 1935-46
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 5
This book presents the formative years in the life of Jack Duluoz—Kerouac’s alter ego—beginning with his high school experiences as a sporting jock in small-town New England and his time at Columbia University on a football scholarship. Just as Jack’s glamorous new adult life begins, so does World War II, and he joins the US Navy to travel the world. The more he experiences, the more he realizes the limits of his former plans and decides to and return to New York, where he collides with the start of the Beat movement—and a riot of drugs, sex, and writing.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A brilliant read.
- By James DeYoung on 12-24-24
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Doctor Sax
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up in Kerouac’s own birthplace, the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. There, Doctor Sax, with his flowing cape, slouched hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack’s fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and textures of his boyhood in Lowell in this novel of a cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The narrator knows rhythm.
- By john in RI on 09-28-24
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Mexico City Blues
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Length: 2 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
A long poem in Kerouac’s freewheeling and spontaneous improvisational style, Mexico City Blues is a unique epic of sound, rhythm, and religion. Called superb sensory meditations, the poetry takes in life, death, and spirituality but roams widely across continents and cultures. Memories, fantasies, dreams, and surrealistic free association are all lyrically combined in the loose format inspired by jazz and the blues.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Visions of Gerard
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
The first book in Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend, a novella detailing the writer’s early life as refracted through the prism of the untimely loss of his brother.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Travels with Charley in Search of America
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Gary Sinise
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,587
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4,901
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,900
In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Gary Sinise is fantastic!
- By C. Wilson on 01-11-17
By: John Steinbeck
-
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,174
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,004
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,004
Tom Wolfe - one of the 20th century’s foremost voices in cultural criticism - went from local news reporter to international icon in 1968, with the publication of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Now voiced with vivacity and vigor by Audible Hall of Fame narrator Luke Daniels, the non-fiction swan-dive delves into the world of hippies, hedonism, and everything in between.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Maybe it resonated with a different time and place
- By S. Phillips on 04-11-19
By: Tom Wolfe
Related to this topic
-
The Honeymoon
- By: Jane E. James
- Narrated by: Rose Robinson, Sean Burke, Leena Makoff, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 197
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 196
Timothy and Jonah, wealthy entrepreneurs with a spoiled son, hide sins from their past—one involving a death on a cruise, the other a crime in Bali. Nathan and Samantha, the hot ex-nanny turned trophy wife, grapple with infertility and a shocking paternity secret. Bartosz and Angelika (he’s a chef, she’s a former sex worker) carry debts to the other couples they don’t even realize they owe. Over fourteen days, the couples bond—but their pasts are too deeply intertwined to stay hidden. The sly concierge, Putu, knows more than he lets on.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great storytelling!
- By Ashley R on 03-31-25
By: Jane E. James
-
Hitchhikers
- By: Ben H. Winters
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,293
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,276
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,276
Annie has always had high hopes for her future. But the reality of her life just isn’t measuring up. She loves her fiancé, Greg–doesn’t she? She’s going to get her degree and open her own business–won’t she? Then, a strange old woman shows up outside her house, and she seems to know a lot about Annie. An awful lot. Annie could tell the old woman to get lost. Yet there’s something about her Annie just can’t shake. And what she learns could change her life forever–but is it the life she envisioned?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The ever present battle between past and future.
- By Kindle Customer on 03-14-25
By: Ben H. Winters
-
George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10,953
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 10,376
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10,375
It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
-
The Art of War
- By: Sun Tzu
- Narrated by: Aidan Gillen
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42,035
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34,837
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34,418
The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The actual book The Art of War, not a commentary
- By Nemo71 on 12-31-19
By: Sun Tzu
-
The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,141
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,075
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,075
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
-
Say No More
- By: Caroline Overington
- Narrated by: Anna Skellern
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,684
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,649
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,649
Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
-
The Honeymoon
- By: Jane E. James
- Narrated by: Rose Robinson, Sean Burke, Leena Makoff, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 197
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 196
Timothy and Jonah, wealthy entrepreneurs with a spoiled son, hide sins from their past—one involving a death on a cruise, the other a crime in Bali. Nathan and Samantha, the hot ex-nanny turned trophy wife, grapple with infertility and a shocking paternity secret. Bartosz and Angelika (he’s a chef, she’s a former sex worker) carry debts to the other couples they don’t even realize they owe. Over fourteen days, the couples bond—but their pasts are too deeply intertwined to stay hidden. The sly concierge, Putu, knows more than he lets on.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great storytelling!
- By Ashley R on 03-31-25
By: Jane E. James
-
Hitchhikers
- By: Ben H. Winters
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,293
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,276
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,276
Annie has always had high hopes for her future. But the reality of her life just isn’t measuring up. She loves her fiancé, Greg–doesn’t she? She’s going to get her degree and open her own business–won’t she? Then, a strange old woman shows up outside her house, and she seems to know a lot about Annie. An awful lot. Annie could tell the old woman to get lost. Yet there’s something about her Annie just can’t shake. And what she learns could change her life forever–but is it the life she envisioned?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The ever present battle between past and future.
- By Kindle Customer on 03-14-25
By: Ben H. Winters
-
George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10,953
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 10,376
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10,375
It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
-
The Art of War
- By: Sun Tzu
- Narrated by: Aidan Gillen
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42,035
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34,837
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34,418
The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The actual book The Art of War, not a commentary
- By Nemo71 on 12-31-19
By: Sun Tzu
-
The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,141
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,075
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,075
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
-
Say No More
- By: Caroline Overington
- Narrated by: Anna Skellern
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,684
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,649
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,649
Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 234
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 195
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 195
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Subterraneans
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 4
Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac’s early classics, On the Road. Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox—two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground—The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America’s field of vision.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 761
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 654
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 653
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Lonesome Traveler
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In his first autobiographical work, Jack Kerouac reveals exhilarating stories of the years he spent traveling, while writing his acclaimed novels. His journeys took him from California deserts crisscrossed by train tracks to the bullfights of Mexico to the Beat nightlife of New York City and across the Atlantic to Paris, Morocco, and London. He also writes about relationship, jobs, and the nature of life on the road. Here are echoes of landscapes that appear in some of his novels, including The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Look Homeward, Angel
- A Story of the Buried Life
- By: Thomas Wolfe
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 25 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, is at once a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story and a dark novel depicting a cynical post-war world view. The book follows the life of Eugene Gant, a young man driven by passion, intellect, and a search for something greater than himself. His earliest years in rural North Carolina include a wonderful education in poetry and literature against the backdrop of a loving, but tumultuous family life.
By: Thomas Wolfe
-
Doctor Sax
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up in Kerouac’s own birthplace, the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. There, Doctor Sax, with his flowing cape, slouched hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack’s fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and textures of his boyhood in Lowell in this novel of a cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The narrator knows rhythm.
- By john in RI on 09-28-24
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 234
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 195
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 195
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Subterraneans
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 4
Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac’s early classics, On the Road. Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox—two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground—The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America’s field of vision.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 761
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 654
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 653
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Lonesome Traveler
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In his first autobiographical work, Jack Kerouac reveals exhilarating stories of the years he spent traveling, while writing his acclaimed novels. His journeys took him from California deserts crisscrossed by train tracks to the bullfights of Mexico to the Beat nightlife of New York City and across the Atlantic to Paris, Morocco, and London. He also writes about relationship, jobs, and the nature of life on the road. Here are echoes of landscapes that appear in some of his novels, including The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Look Homeward, Angel
- A Story of the Buried Life
- By: Thomas Wolfe
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 25 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, is at once a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story and a dark novel depicting a cynical post-war world view. The book follows the life of Eugene Gant, a young man driven by passion, intellect, and a search for something greater than himself. His earliest years in rural North Carolina include a wonderful education in poetry and literature against the backdrop of a loving, but tumultuous family life.
By: Thomas Wolfe
-
Doctor Sax
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up in Kerouac’s own birthplace, the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. There, Doctor Sax, with his flowing cape, slouched hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack’s fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and textures of his boyhood in Lowell in this novel of a cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The narrator knows rhythm.
- By john in RI on 09-28-24
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,468
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,811
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 3,805
Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
My Favorite Narration and a Wonderful Book
- By Guillermo on 09-17-09
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 806
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 694
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 689
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: David Carradine
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 265
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 218
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 218
On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
not the full book
- By Hannah on 12-11-17
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Desolation Peak
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Kerouac at his most honest
- By MckyD’z on 12-01-22
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Visions of Cody
- Selections from the Novel
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Graham Parker
- Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 47
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Kerouac examines his own New York life in a collection of colorful essays. Always transfixed by Neal Cassady—here named Cody Pomeray—along with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Kerouac also explores the feelings he had for a man who inspired much of his work. Transcribing taped conversations between members of their group as they took drugs and drank, Visions of Cody reveals an intimate portrait of people caught up in destructive relationships with substances, and one another, capturing the members of the Beat Generation in the years before any label had been affixed to them.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Annoying
- By A. Yerkes on 07-20-09
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Buddhist Years
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
From a young age Kerouac was a spiritual thinker and questioner, and he always considered himself a spiritual writer. Buddhism gave more meaning to Jack’s work as a writer: he was working not for personal accomplishment and glory but for human betterment. And Buddhism justified his lifestyle: with its vision of the material world as empty and illusory, he was free to do what he wanted.
By: Jack Kerouac, and others