Staring at the Sun
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Staring at the Sun
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Narrated by:
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Polly Lee
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By:
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Julian Barnes
About this listen
Jean Serjeant, the heroine of Julian Barnes’ wonderfully provocative novel, seems ordinary but has an extraordinary disdain for wisdom. And as Barnes - winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending - follows her from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, he confronts his audience with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalogue of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the 21st century (when the absolute truth can be universally accessed).
Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original.
©1986 Julian Barnes (P)2020 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
A farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman – called ‘the barren one’ behind her back – dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant Dream House Narration
- By Simon Griffiths on 05-05-21
By: Craig Higginson
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Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers
- By: Tessa Arlen
- Narrated by: Madeleine Leslay
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story5 out of 5 stars 25
Scriptwriter Poppy Redfern is thrilled to receive her first solo script project: a 15-minute film about the Air Transport Auxiliary, known as Attagirls, a group of female civilians who have been trained to pilot planes from factories to military airfields all over Britain. Poppy could not be more excited to spend time with these amazing ladies, but she never expects to see one of the best pilots die in what is being labeled an accident. When another Attagirl meets a similar fate, Poppy and her American fighter-pilot boyfriend, Griff, believe foul play may be at work.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Still good, but...
- By DCowan on 04-11-21
By: Tessa Arlen
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Burr
- A Novel (Narratives of Empire, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 939
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 804
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 804
Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally! Vidal's Great Take on the Life of Burr
- By John Norton on 06-12-19
By: Gore Vidal
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The Golden Notebook
- By: Doris Lessing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 526
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 436
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Story4 out of 5 stars 433
Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
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Fire and Hemlock
- By: Diana Wynne Jones
- Narrated by: Gemma Dawson
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
Polly has two sets of memories.... One is normal: school, home, friends. The other, stranger memories begin nine years ago, when she was 10 and gate-crashed an odd funeral in the mansion near her grandmother's house. Polly's just beginning to recall the sometimes marvelous, sometimes frightening adventures she embarked on with Tom Lynn after that. And then she did something terrible, and everything changed. But what did she do? Why can't she remember? Polly must uncover the secret, or her true love - and perhaps Polly herself - will be lost.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally!!!
- By Jamie D. on 07-10-21
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Spring Magic
- By: D. E. Stevenson
- Narrated by: Lesley Mackie
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Young Frances Field arrives in a scenic coastal village in Scotland, having escaped her dreary life as an orphan, treated as little more than a servant by an uncle and aunt. Once there, she encounters an array of eccentric locals, the occasional roar of enemy planes overhead and three army wives - Elise, Tommy and Tillie - who become fast friends. Elise warns Frances of the discomforts of military life, but she’s inclined to disregard the advice when she meets the dashing and charming Captain Guy Tarlatan.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WWII Home Front
- By Jerri C on 06-05-19
By: D. E. Stevenson
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 224
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Story4 out of 5 stars 179
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,064
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 943
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Story4 out of 5 stars 936
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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The Brimstone Wedding
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 160
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Story4 out of 5 stars 125
Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is elegant, smart and in control. Only Jenny, her care assistant, knows that she harbours a painful secret, and only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. As the women talk, Jenny pieces together the answers to many questions that arise: Why has she kept possession of a house that her family don’t know about? What happened there that holds the key to a distant tragedy?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Amazing reader elevates book to a higher level
- By Doggy Bird on 10-04-14
By: Barbara Vine
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The War Nurses: A Moving Wartime Romance Saga Full of Heart
- The War Nurses Series
- By: Lizzie Page
- Narrated by: Marian Hussey
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
You will love every moment of this absolutely brilliant wartime saga, perfect for fans of Diney Costeloe, Soraya M. Lane, and Nadine Dorries. As war takes its toll, the love and care of two brave young nurses become everything to the wounded soldiers they tend... 1914. Two plucky young nurses pledge to help the war effort: Mairi, a wholesome idealist hoping to leave behind her past and Elsie, a glamorous single mother with a weakness for handsome soldiers. Despite their differences, the pair become firm friends.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I really really wanted to like this book...
- By Teresa M. Thornborough on 09-26-19
By: Lizzie Page
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City of Jasmine
- By: Deanna Raybourn
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4 out of 5 stars 95
Famed aviatrix Evangeline Starke never expected to see her husband, adventurer Gabriel Starke, ever again. They had been a golden couple, enjoying a whirlwind courtship amid the backdrop of a glittering social set in prewar London until his sudden death with the sinking of the Lusitania. Five years later, beginning to embrace life again, Evie embarks upon a flight around the world, collecting fame and admirers along the way. In the midst of her triumphant tour, she is shocked to receive a mysterious - and recent - photograph of Gabriel.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Lackluster narative
- By Anna on 08-03-14
By: Deanna Raybourn
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Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Shadow Lines
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Raj Varma
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Ghosh’s radiant second novel follows two families - one English, one Bengali - as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian-born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
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The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 617
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 535
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Story4 out of 5 stars 530
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut