The Easy Life
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The Easy Life
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Narrated by:
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Caroline Hewitt
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras, read by Caroline Hewitt.
'One of the 20th century's greatest thinkers and prose stylists' New York Times
'A novel of the disquieting contours of family, and of the mind, and of life unceasing even in the midst of death by one of the most important, visionary writers of all time' Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy
WITH A FOREWORD BY KATE ZAMBRENO
There’s nothing to do about boredom, I’m bored, but one day I won’t be bored anymore. Soon I’ll know that it’s not even worth the trouble. We’ll have the easy life.
Twenty-five-year-old Francine Veyrenattes, confined to the family farm, already feels that life is passing her by. But after Francine lets slip a terrible secret, culminating in the violent deaths of her brother and uncle, her world is shattered.
Fleeing the farm for the seaside, Francine finds herself disintegrating. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand, she restlessly wishes for things to be somehow easier, to have a life worth living.
But then the calm and quiet is broken yet again – by another tragedy and a senseless death, in which Francine finds herself implicated. Cast out of paradise, and stranded between her home and the rest of the world, she must confront her rapidly dissolving sense of self if she is to find a way to survive.
'It’s a masterpiece, and a little known, if not unknown, masterpiece … Any serious reader of this author’s work must begin with this novel' YVES BERGER
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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Welcome to Night Vale
- A Novel
- By: Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
- Narrated by: Cecil Baldwin, Dylan Marron, Retta, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6,837
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,349
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,341
Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.
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4 out of 5 stars
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This is so good, but
- By Christopher on 04-30-16
By: Joseph Fink, and others
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Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4 out of 5 stars 132
This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
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The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
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The Gilda Stories
- By: Jewelle Gomez
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next 200 years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Critical and Timely Classic
- By Qasima Wideman on 08-09-19
By: Jewelle Gomez
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The Voyage Out
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 96
The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely
- By Edith on 05-24-19
By: Virginia Woolf
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In Calabria
- By: Peter S. Beagle
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 582
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 519
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 518
Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy's scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming and writing poetry. But one chilly morning, as though from a dream, an impossible visitor appears at the farm. When Claudio comes to her aid, an act of kindness throws his world into chaos. Suddenly he must stave off inquisitive onlookers, invasive media, and even more sinister influences.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Wonderful Short Story!
- By Memeke on 02-21-20
By: Peter S. Beagle
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Galilee
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 23 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 277
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Story4 out of 5 stars 250
The Barbarossa family’s roots are far more ancient and ethereal, but they are bound to the Gearys by a shared history of murder, insanity, and adultery. When Rachel Geary and Galilee, the seductive prince of the Barbarossa clan, fall in love, they unleash powerful enmities that could destroy both dynasties. Shorter and more conventional than some of Barker’s other work, this novel is especially rich with complex, passionate, three-dimensional characters, lush settings, and elegant language.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Audiophile's Dream
- By Joseph on 09-01-11
By: Clive Barker
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The Dream House
- By: Craig Higginson
- Narrated by: Terry Lloyd-Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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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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Letter from an Unknown Woman
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Heather Wood, K. Anderson Yancy
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Immediately following the death of her young son, distraught and heartbroken, a woman sends a heart-wrenching letter to the only man she has ever loved, chronicling their love affair, opening with, "To you, who have never known me."
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tough 2 Hear With Background Music & Sound Effects
- By DK on 09-19-15
By: Stefan Zweig
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Jenny
- By: Sigrid Undset
- Narrated by: K. G. Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Jenny is the story of Jenny Winge, a talented Norwegian painter who lives a free and independent life in Rome. Betraying her own ideals, she has an affair, resulting in a child out of wedlock, and decides to raise the child on her own. Undset gives a gripping portrayal of a woman struggling towards fulfillment and independence, who at the same time wrestles with mental problems. It is written with unflinching honesty, which makes her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Undset is an Astute Observer of Human Nature
- By Amazon Customer on 08-05-17
By: Sigrid Undset
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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 Sea, the Sea
- By: Iris Murdoch, Mary Kinzie - introduction
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 346
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 294
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 295
Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Murdoch Amazes
- By Sara on 08-30-17
By: Iris Murdoch, and others
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What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
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5 out of 5 stars
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We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
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The Tiger Catcher
- The End of Forever Saga, Book 1
- By: Paullina Simons
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
Young and handsome, Julian lives a charmed life in Los Angeles. His world is turned upside down by a love affair with Josephine, a mysterious young woman who takes him by storm. But she is not what she seems, carrying secrets that tear them apart - perhaps forever. So begins Julian and Josephine’s extraordinary adventure of love, loss, and the mystical forces that bind people together across time and space. It is a journey that propels Julian toward either love fulfilled...or oblivion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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EPIC
- By Ellen on 06-07-19
By: Paullina Simons
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Elfland
- Aetherial Tales, Book 1
- By: Freda Warrington
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 204
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 186
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Story4 out of 5 stars 186
Elfland is an intimate, sensual novel of people—both human and Aetherial—caught between duty and desire. It is a story of families, and of Rose Fox, a woman born to magic but tormented by her place in her adopted world.Led by Auberon Fox, a group of Aetherials—call them the Fair Folk, if you will—live among us, indistinguishable from humans. Every seven years, on the Night of the Summer Stars, Lawrence Wilder, the Gatekeeper, throws open all gates to the Other World. But this time, something has gone wrong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Miscommunication is an obnoxious plot device
- By Robin on 05-26-16
By: Freda Warrington