The Odd Woman and the City
A Memoir
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The Odd Woman and the City
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Narrated by:
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Vivian Gornick
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By:
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Vivian Gornick
About this listen
A contentious, deeply moving ode to friendship, love, and urban life in the spirit of Fierce Attachments
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
Running steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick’s exchange of more than 20 years with Leonard, a gay man who is sophisticated about his own unhappiness, whose friendship has “shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than has any other intimacy” she has known. The exchange between Gornick and Leonard acts as a Greek chorus to the main action of the narrator’s continual engagement on the street with grocers, derelicts, and doormen; people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful. In Leonard, she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street, she makes sense of what she sees.
Written as a narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the making of a modern feminist, the role of the flaneur in urban literature, and the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries, The Odd Woman and the City beautifully bookends Gornick’s acclaimed Fierce Attachments, in which we first encountered her rich relationship with the ultimate metropolis.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,894
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
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Martin Eden
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 189
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 191
Martin Eden, Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel, is about a struggling young writer. It is considered by many to be the author’s most mature work. Personifying London’s own dreams of education and literary fame as a young man in San Francisco, Martin Eden’s impassioned but ultimately ineffective battle to overcome his bleak circumstances makes him one of the most memorable and poignant characters Jack London ever created.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My favorite Jack London book.
- By j daly on 11-26-14
By: Jack London
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Passing
- By: Nella Larsen
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 489
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 417
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 420
First published in 1929, Passing is a remarkable exploration of the shifting racial and sexual boundaries in America. Larsen, a premier writer of the Harlem Renaissance, captures the rewards and dangers faced by two Negro women who pass for White in a deeply segregated world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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If not for the Ending
- By William M Storm on 04-23-12
By: Nella Larsen
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The Beautiful and Damned
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 925
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 753
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Story4 out of 5 stars 758
Published in 1922, Fitzgerald's second novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."
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5 out of 5 stars
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i loved it
- By Emily on 01-20-05
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Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story5 out of 5 stars 76
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful memoir
- By Gabriel Smith on 07-25-22
By: Jan Morris
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 1 hr and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,227
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,069
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,069
Benjamin Button was literally born an old man. He lived a backwards life, for his body grew younger as the years passed him by. Come and listen to the original, unabridged story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which inspired the movie.
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5 out of 5 stars
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LOL Funny
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 07-08-16
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The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 186
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
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The Custom of the Country
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 375
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 335
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 330
Edith Wharton stands among the finest writers of early 20th-century America. In The Custom of the Country, Wharton’s scathing social commentary is on full display through the beautiful and manipulative Undine Spragg. When Undine convinces her nouveau riche parents to move to New York, she quickly injects herself into high society. But even a well-to-do husband isn’t enough for Undine, whose overwhelming lust for wealth proves to be her undoing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Cannot recommend a better narrator!
- By Esther on 07-29-12
By: Edith Wharton
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Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,909
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,683
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,688
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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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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City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24,737
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 22,141
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22,037
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
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Siddhartha
- Booktrack Edition
- By: Hermann Hesse
- Narrated by: Paul Ansdell
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
Siddhartha, the ninth book written by Hermann Hesse, is about a young Indian boy who leaves his home in hopes of finding enlightenment with the wise "Goutama", which in this story is the Buddha. After learning what he can from Goutama, he decides to go off into the busy city and leads a life of greed and lust. When he realizes that the lifestyle is not fulfilling, and he reflects on his life, he goes to a river and contemplates suicide. However, it is here that Siddhartha meets a man who will change his life and help lead him to enlightenment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of a Kind
- By Anonymous User on 04-04-20
By: Hermann Hesse
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Fault Lines
- A Novel
- By: Emily Itami
- Narrated by: Lydia Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4 out of 5 stars 118
Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children, and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Confused by the choice of narrator
- By Bri T. on 02-13-22
By: Emily Itami
What listeners say about The Odd Woman and the City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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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
- bestir
- 06-04-20
Wise
Loved it! Amazing, deep and at times just common sense perspectives on life and the things most just don't see or can't express. Enjoyed it immensely!
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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
- Judith
- 04-16-21
Thank you for bringing me back home
Dear Ms Gornik,
As an expat of 40 years I was transported back to the city that molded me that I continue to call home.
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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
- Lo
- 01-14-23
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
As an aspiring flâneuse living in New York City, I can’t get enough of Vivian’s work.
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