The Shortest Day
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The Shortest Day
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Narrated by:
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Tim Gerard Reynolds
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By:
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Colm Tóibín
About this listen
In Ireland, a man of reason is drawn to a true mystery older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge in this enthralling story about ethereal secrets by New York Times best-selling author Colm Tóibín.
During the winter solstice, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, the ancient burial chamber at Newgrange is empowered. Its mystifying source is a haunting tale told by locals.
Professor O’Kelly believes an archaeologist’s job is to make known only what can be proved. He is undeterred by ghost stories, idle speculation, and caution. Much to the chagrin of the living souls in County Meath. As well as those entombed in the sacred darkness of Newgrange itself. They’re determined to protect the secret of the light, guarded for more than 5,000 years. And they know O’Kelly is coming for it.
©2020 Colm Tóibín (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,075
Meryl Streep’s performance of Colm Tóibín's acclaimed portrait of Mary is hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “an ideal audiobook,” presenting the three-time Academy Award-winner in “yet another great role.” Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary presents Mary as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel. They are her keepers, providing her with food and shelter and visiting her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was "worth it"; nor that the "group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye," were holy disciples. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone, in a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.
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1 out of 5 stars
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hated it
- By bibliophile on 06-14-14
By: Colm Toibin
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Nora Webster: A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Fiona Shaw
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 563
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 494
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Story4 out of 5 stars 494
Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Contrived & Overreaching
- By Sara on 12-13-15
By: Colm Toibin
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House of Names
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Charlie Anson, Pippa Nixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 671
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 615
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Story4 out of 5 stars 616
"I have been acquainted with the smell of death." So begins Clytemnestra's tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband, King Agamemnon, left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover, Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Power. Control. Restraint.
- By David on 06-27-17
By: Colm Tóibín
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The Heather Blazing
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 77
Eamon Redmond is a judge in Ireland’s high court, a completely legal creature who is just beginning to discover how painfully unconnected he is from other human beings. With effortless fluency, Colm Tóibín reconstructs the history of Eamon’s relationships - with his father, his first "girl", his wife, and the children who barely know him - and he writes about Eamon’s affection for the Irish coast with such painterly skill that the land itself becomes a character. The result is a novel of stunning power.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Quiet but Lovely Story
- By Cariola on 03-29-13
By: Colm Toibin
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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The Master
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of Henry James, a man born into one of America’s first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late 19th century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers. With stunningly resonant prose, “The Master is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist: artful, moving, and very beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review). The emotional intensity of this portrait is riveting.
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2 out of 5 stars
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What a Terrible Disappointment!
- By Sherry M. Rogers on 08-20-21
By: Colm Toibin
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The South
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Terry Donnelly
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 24
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 23
In 1950, Katherine Proctor leaves Ireland for Barcelona, determined to escape her family and become a painter. There she meets Miguel, an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and begins to build a life with him. But Katherine cannot escape her past, as Michael Graves, a fellow Irish émigré in Spain, forces her to reexamine all her relationships: to her lover, her art, and the homeland she only thought she knew. The South is a novel of classic themes - of art and exile, and of the seemingly irreconcilable yearnings for love and freedom - to which Colm Tóibín brings a new, passionate sensitivity.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Waste of time
- By K on 10-11-19
By: Colm Toibin
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Brooklyn
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Saoirse Ronan
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
“One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Slow moving
- By colleen jones on 05-11-25
By: Colm Toibin
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The Magician
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 963
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 835
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 829
The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Terrific listening experience
- By M. Mead on 09-17-21
By: Colm Toibin
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The Empty Family
- Stories
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin, Jeff Woodman, Alma Cuervo, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 25
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 27
In the captivating stories that make up The Empty Family, Colm Tibn delineates with a tender and unique sensibility, lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals often willingly cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town, to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence, each of Tibn's stories manage to contain whole worlds.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Love, Loss, and Longing
- By Cariola on 01-02-12
By: Colm Toibin
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On the Couch
- Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud
- By: Siri Hustvedt, Andre Aciman, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and others
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman, Perry Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 2
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 2
The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today's great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever. The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud's continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more.
By: Siri Hustvedt, and others
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Long Island
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: Katja Danowski
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
Erste Liebe, zweite Chancen: Ein Mann und eine Frau treffen sich nach fast zwanzig Jahren wieder - und stehen noch einmal vor der Entscheidung ihres Lebens. Eilis lebt in Long Island mit ihren Kindern und Tony, für den sie ihre Jugendliebe Jim in Irland zurückließ. Als sie erfährt, dass Tony sein uneheliches Kind in der gemeinsamen Familie aufziehen will, bricht sie in ihre Heimat auf.
By: Colm Tóibín
Beautifully written story and Great Narration
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Mystical realism
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other than knowledge
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A Lesson
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Some things should remain a Mystery!
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Shortest Day , and book
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Too many. Was left wholly unsatisfied, resolved or even really edified. It was rich yet unrolling and therefore unsatisfying.
The writer should put this through one more edit and tie a few things up.
A beautiful story that goes nowhere
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Past and present day intertwining
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A lovely Christmas ghost story
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Beautiful
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