State of Paradise
A Novel
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State of Paradise
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Narrated by:
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Megan Tusing
About this listen
Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister, who lives next door, spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA, a tech company in South Florida, during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town, and it probably has to do with the posters of missing citizens spread throughout the streets.
During a violent rainstorm, the writer’s sister goes missing for several days. When she returns, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension, the writer is forced to investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author, and reality itself.
A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s Florida Diary is an interlocking and gripping whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, she reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.
"State of Paradise is a weird, wild, thrilling journey through cults, addiction, messed-up families, the pandemic, the weather, and the strangeness and beauty of the great state of Florida. Laura van den Berg's writing is razor sharp and full of depth and humor, and she has an incredible imagination. This book is freaking brilliant."
—Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 9,389
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 9,388
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
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The Grandmother
- By: Jane E. James
- Narrated by: Anna Cordell, Max Dinnen
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,159
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,119
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,119
Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Not too outlandish
- By Jackie H on 12-14-24
By: Jane E. James
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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 803
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 758
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 758
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.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
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Say No More
- By: Caroline Overington
- Narrated by: Anna Skellern
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 957
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 941
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 941
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.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good read with a not so good ending.
- By Katie A Scribner on 12-26-24
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The Art of War
- By: Sun Tzu
- Narrated by: Aidan Gillen
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41,793
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34,625
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34,206
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The actual book The Art of War, not a commentary
- By Nemo71 on 12-31-19
By: Sun Tzu
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32,833
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29,217
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29,172
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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The Mistake
- By: K. L. Slater
- Narrated by: Lucy Price-Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 15,457
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14,081
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14,021
You think you know the truth about the people you love. But one discovery can change everything.... Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later he is found dead. Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy's death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother? Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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How much do we really know about the ones we love?
- By T. West on 12-03-17
By: K. L. Slater
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Starship Troopers
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,583
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,482
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,482
Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
The definitive version!
- By Kristopher G. Hesson on 10-03-24
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Brain Damage
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,276
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,154
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,153
As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
-
Slayers: A Buffyverse Story
- By: Christopher Golden, Amber Benson
- Narrated by: Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter, James Charles Leary, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,879
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 2,659
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,658
Original cast members from the beloved TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reunite for an all-new adventure about connections that never die—even if you bury them. A decade has passed since the epic final battle that concluded Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV). The game-changing spell that gave power to all potential Slayers persists. With new Slayers constantly emerging, things are looking grim for the bad guys.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A dream come true
- By Anonymous User on 10-12-23
By: Christopher Golden, and others
-
Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection
- By: Stephen Fry, Washington Irving, M.R. James, and others
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 701
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 604
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 604
As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
- By Michael Fuchs on 11-07-23
By: Stephen Fry, and others
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1 out of 5 stars
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August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia’s play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them.
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That’s what the tour guide promises Dr. Linda Farmer and her family when they move to Plymouth Valley. Sure, the locals are privileged hot house flowers who observe a weird religion Hollow, but the schools are blue ribbon, the air’s clean, the food’s fantastic, and Linda’s out of options. With the outside world in shambles, this move is her family’s last chance.
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Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
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Wonderful
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Henry Henry
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It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone. Everything is as it should be and yet nothing is right. Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. The House of Lancaster will never be the same.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Well written -Dissapointing
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Jane Vandermaker-Cook would like her mother back. As Jane's mother tours the world to support the family, Jane lives and goes to school in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their mendacious father who confines Jane’s mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she’s at home. And then there's weirdly ever-present Aunt Finch, Milorad the gardener, and his rat, Brutus. For Jane, this all seems normal until she suddenly gains access to the files for a lifetime of security-camera videos—her lifetime.
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Excellent!!! Author is incredibly creative and talented!!
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From the outside, Isabel doesn’t seem to have much going on. It’s the summer after college graduation, and she’s moved back to her hometown, where she spends her days house-sitting, babysitting, working the front desk at a yoga studio, and hanging out with her friend Ellie. But on the inside, Isabel’s mind is always running, always analyzing, and right now, she’s trying hard to not let her thoughts give weight to boys. So when Isabel spots three baby skunks in the yard, their presence is not only a strangely thrilling break from the expected, it feels like a fortuitous sign from the universe.
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A sweet, aimless story
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The Extinction of Irena Rey
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Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unique plot
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Your Utopia
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4 out of 5 stars 11
In “The Center for Immortality Research,” a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors, only to be blamed for a crime she witnessed during the event, under the noses of the mysterious celebrity benefactors hoping to live forever. But she can’t be fired—no one can. In “One More Kiss, Dear,” a tender, one-sided love blooms in the AI-elevator of an apartment complex; as in, the elevator develops a profound affection for one of the residents.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Innovative and imaginative short stories
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By: Bora Chung, and others
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The Book of Love
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- By: Kelly Link
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 128
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Held me hostage for way too long without payoff
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We Were the Universe
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4 out of 5 stars 11
The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The author’s use of detail is exceptional
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A Map of Future Ruins
- On Borders and Belonging
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story5 out of 5 stars 5
In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece, in search of her own Greek heritage and to cover the aftermath of a fire that burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp—not activists, not the country’s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government. But almost immediately, on scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime.
By: Lauren Markham
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Broiler
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Eli does it again
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The Mesmerist
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Before hypnotism, there was Mesmerism. And in 1894 Minneapolis, in the wake of a national financial crisis, spiritualism of every stripe is all the rage, and women are dying under mysterious circumstances. But until a new guest lands at the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers, refusing to speak or explain her arrival, the sordid stories of unexplained deaths seem unconnected. Faith’s reticence is quickly interpreted as malevolence, setting the house abuzz with whispers of dark magic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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More excellent characters from Caroline Woods!
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By: Caroline Woods
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Swift River
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- Narrated by: Shayna Small, Janina Edwards, Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Such promise!
- By Cate on 01-23-25
By: Essie Chambers
What listeners say about State of Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- unco
- 09-30-24
A quirky gem
I love the premise of this book. It is so wonderfully absurd. Was Laura van den Berg tripping as she wrote it? I feel less grounded in reality reading it. Given all that enjoyment I do find myself a bit lost here and there. I found myself drifting from the story as I listened causing me to have to rewind and begin again. I don't know if I would have fared better reading it as opposed to listening.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Julie McAdon
- 07-19-24
So confused
I couldn’t keep track of the rambling narrative and I never got close to any of the characters. Just really confusing.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Laurel Waterson
- 11-01-24
Fantastic, philosophical, reflects the times
I really enjoyed this absurd/magical adventure. The craftsmanship of words is excellent. I find a kinship between this novel and Duplex by Kathryn Davis. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. I feel like I’ve struck a vein of literary gold.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joe Wilson
- 09-12-24
A constant surprise
The story of this novel creeps up on you, as though all of the sudden you’re sprinting in what you’d expected to be an easy stroll. It’s like Katherine Mansfield had written “Sea of Tranquility,” and set it in Florida.
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1 person found this helpful