Evening

By: Susan Minot

Narrated by: Kathryn Walker

July 1954. An island off the coast of Maine. Ann Grant, a 25-year-old New York career girl, is a bridesmaid at her best friend's lavish wedding. Also present is a man named Harris Arden, whom Ann has never met.

After three marriages and five children, Ann Lord lies dying in an upstairs bedroom of a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What comes to her, eclipsing a stream of doctor's visits and friends stopping by and grown children overheard whispering from the next room, is a rush of memories from a weekend 40 years ago in Maine, when she fell in love with a passion that even now throws a shadow onto the rest of her life. In Evening, Susan Minot gives us a novel of spellbinding power on the nature of memory and love.

©1998 Susan Minot (P)1998 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A brilliant lyric performance." (John Casey)
"Her best work yet, assured, supple, exhilarating in its nerve and cool momentum." (Joan Didion)
"In spare and lovely language, Susan Minot has set forth a real life, in all its particularity and splendor and pain. This is the task of the novelist, and in Evening Minot has succeeded admirably." (The New York Times Book Review)

Beautiful, artfully presented, we are more than me

we are capable of great love, all kinds of love, labels dont tell our whole story (wife, mother, daughter)

Excellent! Five Stars all the way

A stunning short story written in beautiful lush prose and superbly narrated. Probably the most powerful audiobook I’ve listened to since I don’t know when. So glad I own this. Would like a second and even a third listen.

Surprise Find

Found this book while on vacation in the library at an Airbnb in Owls Head, Maine. Susan Minot’s writing style really engaged me. So I left the hard copy there and when I returned home purchased through Audible. Read 1/2 and listened to 1/2. Excellent.

Deeply Moving Story of a Woman’s Final Memories

Susan Minot shows her remarkable gift of lyrical, spare writing in this small book depicting the last days of a woman’s life. The story moves back and forth in time from Ann Lord’s death bed to the weekend when she meets the man she will remember as the love of her life. When she first meets Harris Arden, she “felt as if she’d been struck on the forehead with a brick.” The way Minot leads the reader from that fateful weekend when Ann gains and loses Harris Arden, and also one of her best friends, through her marriages and the birth of her children is smooth and effortless. The writing offers an almost uncomfortably intimate look into the memories of a dying women. At times it is hard to read, but always respectful, deeply poignant and full of compassion and understanding. Like all her writing, I will be thinking about this story far into the future.

Beautiful

This book is a treasure. Beautifully written, the author allows you to witness a life relived in snapshots before it ends. It's a book I will not forget.