The Last Night at the Ritz
Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries
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The Last Night at the Ritz
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Narrated by:
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Janet Metzger
About this listen
The charming, and not entirely trustworthy, unnamed narrator of The Last Night at the Ritz invites three friends to join her for lunch at the elegant Ritz-Carlton in Boston to celebrate her birthday. Two of them, Gay and Len, are a long-married couple and her best friends from college. The third, Wes, was once her lover.
As the afternoon gives way to evening and as the drinks flow, the past and present intrude upon the festivities and the atmosphere turns somber. Before the night is through, truths and secrets slip out that will change their relationships forever.
Back in print for the first time in a generation, The Last Night at the Ritz, a masterfully written novel of friendship and love and the ways we deceive each other and ourselves, is quite simply unforgettable.
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- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 647
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 576
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 580
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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5 out of 5 stars
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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BUtterfield 8
- By: John O'Hara, Lorin Stein - introduction
- Narrated by: Gretchen Mol
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4 out of 5 stars 57
A masterpiece of American fiction and a best seller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wildly Uneven
- By David P on 08-27-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
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The Bad Seed
- By: William March
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 267
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 237
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 240
There's something special about eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. With her carefully plaited hair and her sweet cotton dresses, she's the very picture of old-fashioned innocence. But when their neighborhood suffers a series of terrible accidents, her mother begins to wonder: Why do bad things seem to happen when little Rhoda is around?
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5 out of 5 stars
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loved it
- By CoCo B.M.J on 07-23-19
By: William March
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 341
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Story4 out of 5 stars 283
The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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The Wife
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 643
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 571
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Story4 out of 5 stars 569
The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
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The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,840
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,874
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7,845
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 117
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 303
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 257
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 261
Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
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The Pull of the Moon
- By: Elizabeth Berg
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 94
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 95
In the middle of her life, Nan decides to leave her husband at home and begin an impromptu trek across the country, carrying with her a turquoise leather journal she intends to fill. The Pull of the Moon is a novel about a woman coming to terms with issues of importance to all women. In her journal, Nan addresses the thorniness - and the allure - of marriage, the sweet ties to children, and the gifts and lessons that come from random encounters.
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4 out of 5 stars
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For women over 50
- By Laura on 07-07-15
By: Elizabeth Berg
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Babbitt
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 111
In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Makes You Think
- By E. Pearson on 02-21-13
By: Sinclair Lewis
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 387
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4 out of 5 stars 300
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 733
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 643
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Story4 out of 5 stars 646
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 94
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
What listeners say about The Last Night at the Ritz
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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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Libby
- 06-06-13
Smart and sassy
Would you listen to The Last Night at the Ritz again? Why?
The reader, Janet Metzger, got just the right tone for the unnamed first person narrator, who has a witty, devil may care attitude even in the face of tragedy.
What does Janet Metzger bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The sassy, witty tone that permeates the narration. I don't think I would have gotten it in quite the same way if I had read the book instead of listening. She has a flip way of expressing herself like when her friend is talking about her grandparents' graves and the narrator says, "I thought we were here to have fun."
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
When the narrator gives advice to Charlie, her best friend's son. Also, when her friend says if she won't sleep with her boyfriend someone else will and we suspect that she knows that the narrator has done so.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Simone
- 03-10-13
I Feel Like Going to the Ritz For a Drink!
I have no idea how to explain this book. It’s about everything and nothing. A woman and her friends go out for drinks and dinner and through flashbacks we learn about her life.
Sounds boring put that way, but it wasn’t! I liked this woman very much and “enjoyed her company” so to speak. I also enjoyed the fact that it was set in Boston – I went for the first time last December and really enjoyed it; since it’s still fresh in my mind it was easy to picture the story… never mind that it’s set in the 60s.
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