Download Best Sellers Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

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Title: The Human Comedy

Author: William Saroyan

Narrator: Meg Ryan

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-16-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 106 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The story of The Human Comedy, poignant and richly autobiographical, is based both on author Saroyans fatherless life and the Greek classic Homers Odyssey. Beloved actress Meg Ryan shows us the boy becoming the man in a world that, even in the midst of war, appears sweeter, safer, and more livable than our own.

In World War II-era California, Homer Macauley and his mother, sister, and three brothers live out struggles and dreams that reflect those of Americas second-generation immigrants. Homer, determined to become one of the fastest telegraph messengers in the West, finds himself caught between reality and illusion as delivering his messages of wartime brings him face-to-face with human emotion at its most naked and raw.

Members Reviews:

Poignant, inspiring, a worthy choice

Any additional comments?

I was unfamiliar with this book, gave it a try because Ms. Ryan narrated. What a moving, surprising story and I really enjoyed Ms. Ryan's sublime performance. I'm so glad I bought this audio book!!!

What A Delight!

This was such a wonderful book. Having seen the movie years ago I didn't know what to expect. The movie kept to the book very closely and even though I saw the movie first it didn't ruin the audio presentation. It is a gentle story of a family living in a small town in California during WW2. The writing captured the flavor of the era amazingly well.

It was a little hard to get used to Meg Ryan as narrator but after a while I got used to her style. I am so glad I decided to select this book .Its a Classic.

Captivating

Meg Ryan did a phenomenal job of narrating, pausing in just the fight spots and her inflection and nuances added to this wonderful story. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Nice narration

Not much of a story, but there is a certain sweetness to the characters that move through the slight narrative. Simple prose and a lovely message of goodwill and acceptance. Meg Ryan read this beautifully.

A little preachy

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I'd say don't bother. The narration is great, the story doesn't go anywhere, and the characters give occasional long monologues on the nature of man.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No.

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Title: The Chemistry of Tears

Author: Peter Carey

Narrator: Jefferson Mays, Susan Lyons

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-19-12

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 26 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Critics have used every possible superlative to praise the works of two-time Man Booker Prize winner Peter Carey. In The Chemistry of Tears, Carey continues to astound with a story of love, death, and human invention. Museum curator Catherines affair comes to an abrupt end with her married lovers untimely death. Denied outward grief by the nature of their relationship, Catherine retreats into isolation. Delving into notebooks more than a century old, she feels a growing connection to Henry Brandling, who in 1854 gave life to a mechanical creature.

Members Reviews:

Not worth reading

Great! How exciting to write a negative review of a book others seem to love. And how annoying! The main character is someone I would never want to know. She is a woman who has been the lover of a man for thirteen years but thinks no one knew of their relationship. Catherine is egotistical and manic. For a "mature" woman to behave with the poor judgment she displays toward one who is kind, over and over again, is rephrehensible. Catherine acts like a baby. She drinks, snorts cocaine and feels sorry for herself. Frankly, as a woman, it was easy to tell that the author was a man. Catherine is a caricature of how a man might see a woman in such a position. And, if that is not bad enough, another woman is added to the plot and she is equally crazy and unlikeable. Follow that with a bizarre secondary story about a mechanical contraption and surely you will understand the title. No? Well, that's what is supposed to be so innocuous, right? Hardly. Avoid at all costs or prepare to be irritated.

Museum conservator investigates mysterious object

Beautifully written, the author introduces us to the world of an expert museum conservator who becomes intrigued by a mysterious artwork that she figures out how to put together. Museum politics and office rivalries interfere with her quest, but more disabling, she grieves the loss of her secret, longterm lover. She cannot share her grief, but begins to find some distraction in discovering how to repair the mechanism of the object and in trying to get along with her new young assistant. The heroine discovers notebooks written by the nineteenth-century maker of the object, adding other layers of history and cultural contexts; there is a lot going on! Carey's book deserves to be read, as well as heard, to really savor his use of language, but the narrators make it a great listen as well. I needed to listen to "The Chemistry of Tears" more than once because the characters, especially the heroine and her relationships interested me and because the history of the object was so surprising. It is a book that has stayed with me.

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Title: True Believers

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Kurt Andersen

Narrator: Vanessa Hart

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-10-12

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 90 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In True Believers. Kurt Andersen - the New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Century - delivers his most powerful and moving novel yet. Dazzling in its wit and effervescent insight, this kaleidoscopic tour de force of cultural observation and seductive storytelling alternates between the present and the 1960s - and indelibly captures the enduring impact of that time on the ways we live now.

Karen Hollander is a celebrated attorney who recently removed herself from consideration for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her reasons have their roots in 1968 - an episode shes managed to keep secret for more than 40 years. Now, with the imminent publication of her memoir, shes about to let the world in on that shocking secret - as soon as she can track down the answers to a few crucial last questions.

As junior-high-school kids back in the early '60s, Karen and her two best friends, Chuck and Alex, roamed suburban Chicago on their bikes looking for intrigue and excitement. Inspired by the exotic romance of Ian Flemings James Bond novels, they acted out elaborate spy missions pitting themselves against imaginary Cold War villains. As friendship carries them through childhood and on to college - in a polarized late-sixties America riven by war and race as well as sex, drugs, and rock and roll - the bad guys cease to be the creatures of make-believe. Caught up in the fervor of that extraordinary and uncanny time, they find themselves swept into a dangerous new game with the highest possible stakes.

Today, only a handful of people are left who know what happened. As Karen reconstructs the past and reconciles the girl she was then with the woman she is now, finally sharing pieces of her secret past with her national-security-cowboy boyfriend and Occupy-activist granddaughter, the power of memory and history and luck become clear.

A resonant coming-of-age story and a thrilling political mystery, True Believers is Kurt Andersens most ambitious novel to date, introducing a brilliant, funny, and irresistible new heroine to contemporary fiction.

Members Reviews:

very listenable political mystery/ romance

This is romance in the people-in-love sense but more a romance of the 60s. With a 2013 setting, the action revolves around research into the past, so it???s a tale told through filtered memory and research - just like history. The 64 yr old law prof main character writes a memoir to set the record straight on her 60s activism before she starts to lose her memory, and knowing "how memory and history are sugar coated," she tries to arrive at the truth. The mystery is secondary to the social history and coming of age detail.

In places the main storyline was weak and implausible - but I was too busy enjoying the descriptions of the 60s to notice most of the time. The novel tries too hard to make witty observations on culture then and now, but I enjoyed that part too - can't have an easy read and perfect philosophy in the same novel. There is reflection on the evolution of the left and on big brother technology.

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Title: The Joke

Author: Milan Kundera

Narrator: Richmond Hoxie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-19-12

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 49 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.

The present audio edition provides English-language listeners an important further means toward revaluation of The Joke. For reasons he describes in his Author's Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating (with the assistance of his American publisher-editor) a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel's narrators. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.

Members Reviews:

Adder Sowing Thorns in the Garden of the Soul

I was impressed, surprisingly so, with the depth, accessibility and enjoyability of this novel, which Kundera wrote in 1965 and it was published in 1967 (and apparently played a role in the Prague Spring that year).

In the early 1950s Czechoslovakia, Ludvik Jahn, a university student with a great sense of humor, was a strong supporter of the Communist regime after World War II. Attempting to show his girlfriend a bit of charm and a sense of humor over the summer when they are on break from classes, he wrote in a postcard to her: "Optimism is the opium of mankind! A healthy spirit stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!" The commies had zero sense of humor, expelled him from the "party," kicked him out of the university and forced him, as a dissident, to do two years of hard labor in the mines.

Although he eventually gains decent success in his scientific profession, he harbors a grudge against party members who were responsible for his fall from grace. When he sees an opportunity to exact revenge on Zemanik who led the charge against him, Ludvik seduces Zemanik's wife and the joke may be on him, with the wife a "civilian" casualty.

I love the structure of this, Kundera's first novel, with three narrators. I'm not a big fan of, as in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, his carrying the reader through his writing thought processes about the possibilities as he becomes a part of the novel as "author," not just narrator, which ruins my ability to temporarily suspend disbelief.

For me, this novel was outstanding at revealing the truth of the human condition that "redressibility" of wrongs against us is just not possible, and others, including the perpetrator of the wrong, will have forgotten the misdeed anyway by the time you think you've gotten to the point of revenge. Thus one carries the poison of resentment around, as Oscar Wilde put it, as an "adder in one's breast" to "rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul."

For this and other reasons, forgiveness is one major key in life's symphony of peace and joy.

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Titel: Heute wäre ich mir lieber nicht begegnet

Autor:: Herta Müller

Erzähler: Marlen Diekhoff

Format: Unabridged

Spieldauer: 6 hrs and 36 mins

Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 06-13-12

Herausgeber: HörbucHHamburg HHV GmbH

Bewertung: 5 von 5 von 1 Stimmen

Kategorien: Fiction, Literary

Zusammenfassung des Herausgebers:

"Ich bin bestellt. Donnerstag Punkt zehn." Eine junge Frau in einer Großstadt in Rumänien auf dem Weg zum Verhör beim Geheimdienst. Sie hat diese Fahrt mit der Straßenbahn schon oft machen müssen, doch diesmal hat sie aus einer Vorahnung heraus Handtuch, Zahnpasta und Zahnbürste eingepackt. Unterwegs lässt sie ihr Leben an sich vorüberziehen: die Kindheit in der Provinz, die Deportation der Großeltern, das sporadische Glück, das ihr mit Paul gelingt. Außen: Haltestellen, ein- und aussteigende Personen, vorbeiziehende Straßen. All dies führt doch immer wieder zurück zu: "Ich bin bestellt." Doch an diesem Tag hält der Fahrer an der Station, an der sie aussteigen muss, nicht an. Und sie beschließt zum ersten Mal, nicht zum Verhör zu gehen.

©2010 Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH (P)2010 Hörbuch Hamburg HHV GmbH

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Title: Girlchild

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Tupelo Hassman

Narrator: Tupelo Hassman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-28-12

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 41 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Rory Hendrix is the least likely of Girl Scouts. She hasn't got a troop or even a badge to call her own. But she's checked the Handbook out from the elementary school library so many times that her name fills all the lines on the card, and she pores over its surreal advice ("Uniforms, disposing of outgrown"; "The Right Use of Your Body"; "Finding Your Way When Lost") for tips to get off the Calle: that is, the Calle de las Flores, the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.

Rory's been told that she is one of the "third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom". But she's determined to prove the county and her own family wrong. Brash, sassy, vulnerable, wise, and terrified, she struggles with her mother's habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good. From diary entries, social workers' reports, half-recalled memories, arrest records, family lore, Supreme Court opinions, and her grandmother's letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world, even as she searches for the way out of it.

Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild is a heart-stopping and original debut.

Critic Reviews:

"This debut possesses powerful writing and unflinching clarity." (

Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO LIVE.

The subject is repugnant. Just to know that children are subjected to such depths of physical and emotional pain and turmoil creates a lethal level of anger and fury within us. However, the descriptions of the inner life of this girlchild can give us the impetus to confront this cycle of children giving birth to children.

At an individual level, from where comes the inner voice within some children that says there is a better way to live and drives the determination to pursue it. In Hassmans book, Rory Dawn Hendrix hears this voice. She is the child of an unknown father and her 15 year-old mother, who was the child of a 13 year-old mother by an unknown father. In too many cases, the father and/or lover of the mother is the father of the new girlchild.

Rorys inner voice comes from an old, tattered Girl Scout Manual. She knows that other girls do not live like she does. Books impact lives. There are other factors that reinforce her resolve. She has three older brothers who broke away from the life of booze, gambling and petty crime. She has a librarian and a couple of teachers who recognize her high level of intelligence. She has a grandmother who protects and cares for her during her early childhood. The owner of the bar where her mother works is a decent guy who tries to protect her.

As a retired university professor, I came to know some of these young people who were survivors who heard this inner voice and succeeded. This is an interesting book. I recommend it.

A Talented Author

Any additional comments?

I was attracted to this book thinking it would be funny but I assure you it is not. I also admit that I didn't finish the book, but I didn't because it just got too depressing for me to listen to anymore, not because it wasn't well written or a great story.

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Title: A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Suzanne Joinson

Narrator: Susan Duerden

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-22-12

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 25 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

It is 1923. Evangeline (Eva) English and her sister Lizzie are missionaries heading for the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar. Though Lizzie is on fire with her religious calling, Eva's motives are not quite as noble, but with her green bicycle and a commission from a publisher to write A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, she is ready for adventure.

In present day London, a young woman, Frieda, returns from a long trip abroad to find a man sleeping outside her front door. She gives him a blanket and a pillow, and in the morning finds the bedding neatly folded and an exquisite drawing of a bird with a long feathery tail, some delicate Arabic writing, and a boat made out of a flock of seagulls on her wall. Tayeb, in flight from his Yemeni homeland, befriends Frieda and, when she learns she has inherited the contents of an apartment belonging to a dead woman she has never heard of, they embark on an unexpected journey together.

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar explores the fault lines that appear when traditions from different parts of an increasingly globalized world crash into one other. Beautifully written and peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, the novel interweaves the stories of Frieda and Eva, gradually revealing the links between them and the ways in which they each challenge and negotiate the restrictions of their societies as they make their hard-won way toward home.

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar marks the debut of Suzanne Joinson, a wonderfully talented new writer.

Critic Reviews:

"Beautifully written in language too taut, piercing, and smartly observed to be called lyrical, this atmospheric first novel immediately engages, nicely reminding us that odd twists of fate sometimes aren't that odd." (Library Journal)

Members Reviews:

Terrible Narration

I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this book. I guess it was because I like riding a bicycle and I've actually been to Kashgar. So I had interests in common with the book--right? My own stupid fault. There are many terrible warning reviews here and I took a chance anyway. I thought--really how bad can it be??

This is without a doubt the weirdest and most extreme narration that I have ever experienced in a recorded book. I am not just talking about digital downloads from Audible since 2005--I am including my entire history of listening to recorded books on CDs and cassette tapes. That is quite a feat--literally thousands of books and this takes the cake. Just plain terrible.

It really is a shame because the story itself has some potential in a quirky way. Not enough however to keep me listening past chapter 12 (I can't believe I made it that far) out of 40(!!!). What I would like to know is what were these production people thinking??? Mind boggling.

Great story, terrible narration

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

yes, great story

How could the performance have been better?

terrible monotone performance, the worst narrator I have heard on audible

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes, despite the terrible narration

Any additional comments?

definitely worth listening too, despite the narration

Step Away From the Bike!

Normally I am the guy who writes a review defending a book that other people gave a poor review, but this time the shoe is on the other foot.

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Title: Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

Subtitle: Stories

Author: Etgar Keret, Miriam Shlesinger (translator), Nathan Englander (translator), Sondra Silverston (translator)

Narrator: Michael Chabon, Ben Marcus, Gary Shteyngart, Neal Stephenson, Ira Glass, Josh Radnor, Willem Dafoe, Nicole Krauss

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-16-12

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 116 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Audie Award Nominee, Multi-voiced Performance, 2013

Read by an all-star cast and featuring a bonus story special to the audio edition, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is a one-of-a-kind audiobook.

Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Kerets new collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of yearning. In his most playful and most mature work yet, the living and the dead, silent children and talking animals, dreams and waking life coexist in an uneasy world. Overflowing with absurdity, humor, sadness, and compassion, the tales in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door establish Etgar Keretdeclared a "genius" by The New York Timesas one of the most original writers of his generation.

Audio Track listing: "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door", read by Ira Glass; "Lieland", read by Adam Thirlwell; "Cheesus Christ", read by Dave Eggers; "Simyon", read by Nicole Krauss; "Shut", read by George Saunders; "Healthy Start"; read by Ben Foster; "Teamwork", read by Mathieu Amalric; "Pudding", read by Aimee Bender; "Unzipping", read by Miranda July; "The Polite Little Boy", read by Ben Marcus; "Mystique", read by Willem Dafoe; "Creative Writing", read by Stanley Tucci; "Snot", read by John Sayles; "Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail", read by Gary Shteyngart; "Pick a Color", read by Robert Wisdom; "Black and Blue", read by Stella Schnabel; "What Do We Have in Our Pockets?" read by Michael Chabon; "Bad Karma", read by Lorin Stein; "Ari", read by Rick Moody; "Bitch", read by Nathan Englander; "The Story, Victorious", read by Scott Shepherd; "A Good One", read by David Rakoff; "What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?" read by Gary Shteyngart; "Not Completely Alone", read by Michael Chernus; "One Step Beyond", read by Shea Wigham; "Big Blue Bus", read by Josh Charles; "Hemorrhoid", read by Michael Buscemi; "September All Year Long", read by Neal Stephenson; "Joseph", read by Mark Duplass; "Mourners Meal", read by Shalom Auslander; "Parallel Universes", read by Todd Hasak-Lowy; "Upgrade", read by Josh Radnor; "Guava", read by Ira Glass; "Surprise Party", read by Scott Shepherd; "What Animal Are You?" read by Jonathan Safran Foer; and "Asthma Attack", read by Etgar Keret.

Members Reviews:

Spices of imagination behind the door...

If you could sum up Suddenly, a Knock on the Door in three words, what would they be?

Imagination, idealistic, wonderland.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door?

I was really surprised by the Ari story. I loved the details and the crazy turn that the story took. Really Really loved it!

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

I loved the different variations of tones and the accents that each narrator brought to each story.

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Title: The Sisters Brothers

Author: Patrick deWitt

Narrator: John Pruden

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-09-12

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 90 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a livingand whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characterslosers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of lifeand told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

Members Reviews:

A trip in to the Wild West

Would you consider the audio edition of The Sisters Brothers to be better than the print version?

Funny, and witty and wonderfully insightful. The story line was entertaining and left you guessing right to the very end. I've never rooted so hard for a bad guy.

Quite macabre

I enjoyed the narrator, I felt he added to the story but it was a strange unsatisfactory tale. Quote blood curdling in parts but also quite funny.

Very peculiar story performed exceedingly well

I had previously read this book while on a trip through thailand, which as one might imagine provided for a thoroughly interesting atmosphere. Nonetheless I thought I would give it a listen, see what kind of narrative another took. I really must say the performance far exceeded my expectations and to an almost obscurely coincidental note matched the narrative I had developed in my mind while reading the book. Very interesting story and an even better performance.

unexpected but enjoyable.

If you could sum up The Sisters Brothers in three words, what would they be?

Unexpected. Surprising. Fascinating.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The narrator is my obvious choice. He is the younger brother, and a bit of a sheep sometimes, but the story told from his perspective is effective.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

This is an interesting question, because as I read this book, I had the thought that it felt like it could be a Quentin Tarantino film.

Any additional comments?

Western genres are not typically my genre, and it's only because the reviews that stated it 'was not your typical western' intrigued me. The characters were memorable for sure, and I did enjoy the book, although I'm not sure I'd read any more of this genre again.

I just don't get it.

I kept waiting to have a eureka moment while reading this book - wondering if, like when I read Lord of the Flies in high school, I had missed an underlying message.

After much book club discussion, I've decided I didn't miss anything - the book was just a miss for me - I still am not sure what I was meant to get out of it.

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Title: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Author: Joan Lindsay

Narrator: Jacqueline McKenzie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 02-03-12

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 38 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling...

St Valentines Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return.

An Australian classic, the disappearance of three girls and a schoolteacher at Hanging Rock has captivated and intrigued audiences for generations. Jacqueline McKenzies interpretation of the best-selling novel captures all of the beauty of the Rock and illustrates the eerie sense of the unknown for which the story is legendary.

Members Reviews:

NOT UNabridged!

I rate the book itself 5 stars and the performance itself is quite good, deserving of 4-5 stars. The narrator's voice and accent and her narration are perfect for the setting of the story, an upper class girls' Australian boarding school in 1900. I quite enjoyed it.

I'd be happy to write a review of both the story and the performance for their own sake, but what I want most to call attention to in this review is that the audiobook is described as unabridged, and it is most definitely not. The novel itself is short to begin with, just under 200 pages. I estimate that an unabridged version would run an hour more at most.

If you listen to it without the book at hand or never having read the book, the abridgment is seamless enough that I doubt you'll be aware of it, and you'll come away believing you've heard the whole story. It does work, but I believe you'll be deprived of the richness of the whole work.

Given the nature of the story, the unsolved disappearance of three girls and one of their teachers on an afternoon's holiday from the boarding school at the famous Hanging Rock, and the rippling effect the tragedy has on other characters, an abridgment deprives the listener of important nuances and clues. The book as I've said is a short piece to begin with, and unabridged it's more satisfying, feels more complete, and given the ambiguous ending, the reader needs it!

NOT Unabridged!

The story is excellent and the narrator is superb however I was extremely disappointed when I realised that it is abridged, and not unabridged as shown.

Good Classic

What did you love best about Picnic at Hanging Rock?

I hadn't read this story for many many years. To listen to it on audible was a pleasure - i had forgotten so much of the story.

Classic Australian novel

What made the experience of listening to Picnic at Hanging Rock the most enjoyable?

The reader evoked many wonderful scenes to the point I could almost feel the heat and smell the trees.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Picnic at Hanging Rock?

Where the ladies removed their gloves and hats (strnage I know but it was a portens of things to come)

Which scene was your favorite?

The ladies crossing the creek

Who was the most memorable character of Picnic at Hanging Rock and why?

The French Teacher

Any additional comments?

Well worth listnening to this recording

Excellent Abridged Version

This is an excellent story with an intriguing plot that will keep you wanting to hear more.