Hope
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Rob Shapiro
-
By:
-
Andrew Ridker
About this listen
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Boston Globe, Forward, and Times of Israel Best Book of the Year
“Riotous. . . . Hilarious . . . impeccably written . . . . Intelligent, bighearted, spew-your-gefilte-fish-funny.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A writer with this much talent can take his readers anywhere.”—The Washington Post
“Painfully funny. . . . This rivals Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman is in Trouble in its pitch-perfect portrayal of Jewish American life.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A comedy of (bad) manners. . . . Engaging.”—The Boston Globe
A hilarious and heartfelt novel about a seemingly perfect family in an era of waning American optimism, from the acclaimed author of The Altruists
The year is 2013 and the Greenspans are the envy of Brookline, Massachusetts, an idyllic (and idealistic) suburb west of Boston. Scott Greenspan is a successful physician with his own cardiology practice. His wife, Deb, is a pillar of the community who spends her free time helping resettle refugees. Their daughter, Maya, works at a distinguished New York publishing house and their son, Gideon, is preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. They are an exceptional family from an exceptional place, living in exceptional times.
But when Scott is caught falsifying blood samples at work, he sets in motion a series of scandals that threatens to shatter his family. Deb leaves him for a female power broker; Maya rekindles a hazardous affair from her youth; and Gideon drops out of college to go on a dangerous journey that will put his principles to the test.
From Brookline to Berlin to the battlefields of Syria, Hope follows the Greenspans over the course of one tumultuous year as they question, and compromise, the values that have shaped their lives. But in the midst of their disillusionment, they’ll discover their own capacity for resilience, connection, and, ultimately, hope.
©2023 Andrew Ridker (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Bright Young Women
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Knoll
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster, Imani Jade Powers, Corey Brill, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Masterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—author of the bestselling novel Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaption starring Mila Kunis—delivers a new and exhilarating thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed.
-
-
Perfectly executed historical fiction
- By Louie Z on 12-03-23
By: Jessica Knoll
-
Absolution
- A Novel
- By: Alice McDermott
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
-
-
Hung in there for 2 1/2 hours but had to return it
- By Jackie in MI on 11-14-23
By: Alice McDermott
-
Nobody's Fool
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
-
-
Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
-
The Plinko Bounce
- By: Martin Clark
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker, Morgan Hallett
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For seventeen years, small-town public defender Andy Hughes has been underpaid to look after the poor, the addicted, and the unfortunate souls who constantly cycle through the courts, charged with petty crimes. Then, in the summer of 2020, he’s assigned to a grotesque murder case that brings national media focus to rural Patrick County, Virginia—Alicia Benson, the wife of a wealthy businessman, is murdered in her home. The accused killer, Damian Bullins, is a cunning felon with a long history of violence, and he confesses to the police.
-
-
Compelling read
- By Nikki Fortier on 01-17-24
By: Martin Clark
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Bright Young Women
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Knoll
- Narrated by: Sutton Foster, Imani Jade Powers, Corey Brill, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Masterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—author of the bestselling novel Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaption starring Mila Kunis—delivers a new and exhilarating thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed.
-
-
Perfectly executed historical fiction
- By Louie Z on 12-03-23
By: Jessica Knoll
-
Absolution
- A Novel
- By: Alice McDermott
- Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
-
-
Hung in there for 2 1/2 hours but had to return it
- By Jackie in MI on 11-14-23
By: Alice McDermott
-
Nobody's Fool
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
-
-
Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
-
The Plinko Bounce
- By: Martin Clark
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker, Morgan Hallett
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For seventeen years, small-town public defender Andy Hughes has been underpaid to look after the poor, the addicted, and the unfortunate souls who constantly cycle through the courts, charged with petty crimes. Then, in the summer of 2020, he’s assigned to a grotesque murder case that brings national media focus to rural Patrick County, Virginia—Alicia Benson, the wife of a wealthy businessman, is murdered in her home. The accused killer, Damian Bullins, is a cunning felon with a long history of violence, and he confesses to the police.
-
-
Compelling read
- By Nikki Fortier on 01-17-24
By: Martin Clark
-
This Time Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Emma Straub
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday.
-
-
Loved!
- By AE on 05-25-22
By: Emma Straub
-
All My Mother's Lovers
- A Novel
- By: Ilana Masad
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Ilana Masad
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Intimacy has always eluded 27-year-old Maggie Krause - despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss - until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris' will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of. In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris - who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality - Maggie embarks on a road trip.
-
-
Best love story wver
- By Kimberly M. on 06-20-20
By: Ilana Masad
-
Friends and Strangers
- A novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly 20 years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit.
-
-
thought provoking story
- By Barbara S on 07-26-20
-
White Ivy
- A Novel
- By: Susie Yang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised outside of Boston, Ivy’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen - and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, and her dream instantly evaporates.
-
-
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
- By KayMac on 11-06-20
By: Susie Yang
-
How to Bury Your Brother
- A Novel
- By: Lindsey Rogers Cook
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice always thought she'd see her brother again. Rob ran away when he was 15, with so many years left to find his way home. But his funeral happened first. Now that she has to clear out her childhood home in Georgia, the memories come flooding in, bringing with them an autopsy report showing her family's lies - and sealed, addressed letters from Rob.
-
-
Had me from the first page-
- By Lauren Sanchez on 08-17-20
-
The Forgotten Daughter
- The Triumphant Story of Two Women Divided by Their Past, but United by Friendship - Inspired by True Events
- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Esther Thibault
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1992: French Canadian factions renew Quebec’s fight to gain independence, and wild, beautiful Véronique Fortin, daughter of a radical separatist convicted of kidnapping and murdering a prominent politician in 1970, has embraced her father’s cause. So it is a surprise when she falls for James Phénix, a journalist of French Canadian heritage who opposes Quebec separatism.
-
-
Love it!
- By Rita Sittig on 07-21-23
By: Joanna Goodman
-
Little Threats
- By: Emily Schultz
- Narrated by: Dylan Moore, Ariadne Meyers
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1993, twin sisters Kennedy and Carter Wynn are embracing the grunge era and testing every limit in their privileged Richmond suburb. But after a night of partying in the woods, Kennedy's best friend, Haley, is murdered, and suspicion quickly falls upon Kennedy. She can't remember anything about the night in question, and this, along with the damning testimony from a college boy who both Kennedy and Haley loved, is enough to force Kennedy to enter a guilty plea. In 2008, Kennedy is released into a world that has moved on without her.
-
-
Just..no
- By LynLivesHerBestLife on 01-02-21
By: Emily Schultz
-
The Fifth Avenue Story Society
- By: Rachel Hauck
- Narrated by: Lisa Larsen
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When five New Yorkers receive an anonymous, mysterious invitation to the Fifth Avenue Story Society, they suspect they’re victims of a practical joke. No one knows who sent the invitations or why. No one has heard of the literary society. And no one is prepared to reveal their deepest secrets to a roomful of strangers. Yet curiosity and loneliness bring them back week after week to the old library. And it’s there they discover the stories of their hearts, and the kind of friendship and love that heals their souls.
-
-
A Christian centered theme
- By Pamela on 10-10-20
By: Rachel Hauck
-
The Fixed Stars
- By: Molly Wizenberg
- Narrated by: Erin Mallon
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we'd like to believe.
-
-
Narration is so bad
- By JBird78 on 08-05-20
By: Molly Wizenberg
-
Bad Habits
- By: Amy Gentry
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Claire "Mac" Woods—a professor enjoying her newfound hotshot status at an academic conference—finally has the acceptance and admiration she has long craved. But at the conference's hotel bar, Mac is surprised to run into a face from a past she'd rather forget: the moneyed, effortlessly perfect Gwendolyn Whitney, Mac's foil, rival, and former best friend.
-
-
Outstanding!
- By SLuzaz on 02-15-21
By: Amy Gentry
-
Ghosts of Harvard
- A Novel
- By: Francesca Serritella
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions, and illusory enemies - but what tipped him over the edge? Voices fill her head, seemingly belonging to three ghosts who passed through the university in life, or death, and whose voices, dreams, and terrors still echo the halls. Among them is a person whose name has been buried for centuries, and another whose name mankind will never forget.
-
-
narration is perfect
- By Barbara S on 06-06-20
-
A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall
- By: Andy Abramowitz
- Narrated by: Andy Abramowitz
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Davis Winger has it all. A respected engineer who designs roller coasters in theme parks across the country, he is deeply in love with his wife and has a beautiful young daughter and a happy home. Until an accident strikes on one of his rides. Nothing fatal - except to his career. And to his marriage, when a betrayal from his past inadvertently comes to light. In one cosmically bad day, Davis loses it all.
-
-
"I like roller coasters ..."
- By Stephen on 01-17-20
By: Andy Abramowitz
Critic reviews
“Riotous. . . . Franzen-esque. . . . Hilarious . . . impeccably written. . . . His comic assurance . . . is reminiscent of Meg Wolitzer. . . . Ridker[’s] characters make mistakes, but they pay the price, recover and grow. . . . [T]hey soldier on and try not to lose hope. Just as we hold ours that this talented writer will keep gifting us with his intelligent, bighearted, spew-your-gefilte-fish-funny novels."—Cathi Hanauer, The New York Times Book Review
“Absorbing . . . a vivid depiction of modern American life. . . . The novel is at once propulsive and immersive, powered by one tragicomic episode after another, right up until its final tension-filled paragraph. . . . A writer with this much talent can take his readers anywhere.”—Malcolm Forbes, The Washington Post
“A comedy of (bad) manners—the tale of a secular Jewish family in Brookline who undermine their own prosperity and happiness with a slew of bad decisions. . . . Engaging reading. . . . As these characters struggle over money and love—what other plots are there? — they stumble, fall, and gradually, tentatively, begin to right themselves.”—The Boston Globe
“This comic novel, about a year of crisis for an affluent Jewish family, opens with a dinner party at which each guest is served a meal representing a different socioeconomic background. According to the hostess, Deborah, the matriarch, the purpose of this exercise is ‘to replicate, in a controlled environment, the lottery of birth.’ Yet the control of the family’s own environment becomes a problem after Deborah’s husband, Scott, is caught falsifying data in a clinical trial. . . . Ridker’s tone remains light even as his characters struggle to correct course. Writing about psychiatry’s new interest in the ‘transgenerational transmission of trauma’ in his medical-school application, the son wonders, ‘Who knows what else our parents have unwittingly passed on?’”—The New Yorker
Related to this topic
-
Bad Habits
- By: Amy Gentry
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Claire "Mac" Woods—a professor enjoying her newfound hotshot status at an academic conference—finally has the acceptance and admiration she has long craved. But at the conference's hotel bar, Mac is surprised to run into a face from a past she'd rather forget: the moneyed, effortlessly perfect Gwendolyn Whitney, Mac's foil, rival, and former best friend.
-
-
Outstanding!
- By SLuzaz on 02-15-21
By: Amy Gentry
-
Reprieve
- A Novel
- By: James Han Mattson
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize - a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.
-
-
creepy escape room story
- By Barbara S on 11-18-21
-
Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
-
-
Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
-
He Came in with It
- A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.
-
-
So Beautifully Written
- By Michael on 08-01-22
By: Miriam Feldman
-
Members Only
- By: Sameer Pandya
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raj Bhatt is often unsure of where he belongs. Having moved to America from Bombay as a child, he knew few Indian kids. Now middle-aged, he lives mostly happily in California with a job at a university. Still, his white wife seems to fit in better than he does at times, especially at their tennis club, a place he's cautiously come to love. But it's there that, in one week, his life unravels. It begins at a meeting for potential new members: Raj thrills to find an African American couple on the list; he dreams of a more diverse club. But in an effort to connect, he makes a racist joke.
-
-
Stick with it... so worth it!
- By Andrea R Martinez on 09-02-20
By: Sameer Pandya
-
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
- By: Danielle Evans
- Narrated by: Daniel Deadwyler, Jeanette Illidge, Je Nie Fleming, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
-
-
things we do to oursekves
- By Jamintel on 02-06-23
By: Danielle Evans
-
Bad Habits
- By: Amy Gentry
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Claire "Mac" Woods—a professor enjoying her newfound hotshot status at an academic conference—finally has the acceptance and admiration she has long craved. But at the conference's hotel bar, Mac is surprised to run into a face from a past she'd rather forget: the moneyed, effortlessly perfect Gwendolyn Whitney, Mac's foil, rival, and former best friend.
-
-
Outstanding!
- By SLuzaz on 02-15-21
By: Amy Gentry
-
Reprieve
- A Novel
- By: James Han Mattson
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize - a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.
-
-
creepy escape room story
- By Barbara S on 11-18-21
-
Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
-
-
Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
-
He Came in with It
- A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.
-
-
So Beautifully Written
- By Michael on 08-01-22
By: Miriam Feldman
-
Members Only
- By: Sameer Pandya
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raj Bhatt is often unsure of where he belongs. Having moved to America from Bombay as a child, he knew few Indian kids. Now middle-aged, he lives mostly happily in California with a job at a university. Still, his white wife seems to fit in better than he does at times, especially at their tennis club, a place he's cautiously come to love. But it's there that, in one week, his life unravels. It begins at a meeting for potential new members: Raj thrills to find an African American couple on the list; he dreams of a more diverse club. But in an effort to connect, he makes a racist joke.
-
-
Stick with it... so worth it!
- By Andrea R Martinez on 09-02-20
By: Sameer Pandya
-
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
- By: Danielle Evans
- Narrated by: Daniel Deadwyler, Jeanette Illidge, Je Nie Fleming, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
-
-
things we do to oursekves
- By Jamintel on 02-06-23
By: Danielle Evans
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Sea Change
- A Novel
- By: Gina Chung
- Narrated by: Jeena Yi
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ro is stuck. She's just entered her thirties, she's estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at the aquarium, and her nights are spent drinking sharktinis (Mountain Dew and copious amounts of gin, plus a hint of jalapeño). With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro's only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be Ro's last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager.
-
-
Boring, slow
- By patricia burns on 09-01-24
By: Gina Chung
-
Behind You Is the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Susan Muaddi Darraj
- Narrated by: Rasha Zamamiri, Ali Nasser
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name.
-
-
Poignant vignettes
- By Steve on 12-02-24
-
You Were Always Mine
- A Novel
- By: Christine Pride, Jo Piazza
- Narrated by: Alexis Floyd, Jenni Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cinnamon Haynes has fought hard for a life she never thought was possible—a good man by her side, a steady job as a career counselor at a local community college, and a cozy house in a quaint little beach town. It may not look like much, but it’s more than she ever dreamed of or what her difficult childhood promised. Her life’s mantra is to be good, quiet, grateful. Until something shifts and Cinnamon is suddenly haunted by a terrifying question: “Is this all there is?”
-
-
These Authors have done it again!
- By Rachel P. on 09-16-23
By: Christine Pride, and others
-
My Last Innocent Year
- A Novel
- By: Daisy Alpert Florin
- Narrated by: Sarah Bierstock
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place—until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling.
-
-
Not plot based
- By CK on 02-16-23
-
The Chinese Groove
- A Novel
- By: Kathryn Ma
- Narrated by: James Chen
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.
-
-
A delightful surprise
- By R. Glynn on 02-01-23
By: Kathryn Ma
-
Blood Test
- A Comedy
- By: Charles Baxter
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable.
-
-
Creepy.. and also boring as hell
- By BallerinaAstronaut on 10-31-24
By: Charles Baxter
-
Sea Change
- A Novel
- By: Gina Chung
- Narrated by: Jeena Yi
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ro is stuck. She's just entered her thirties, she's estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at the aquarium, and her nights are spent drinking sharktinis (Mountain Dew and copious amounts of gin, plus a hint of jalapeño). With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro's only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be Ro's last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager.
-
-
Boring, slow
- By patricia burns on 09-01-24
By: Gina Chung
-
Behind You Is the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Susan Muaddi Darraj
- Narrated by: Rasha Zamamiri, Ali Nasser
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name.
-
-
Poignant vignettes
- By Steve on 12-02-24
-
You Were Always Mine
- A Novel
- By: Christine Pride, Jo Piazza
- Narrated by: Alexis Floyd, Jenni Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cinnamon Haynes has fought hard for a life she never thought was possible—a good man by her side, a steady job as a career counselor at a local community college, and a cozy house in a quaint little beach town. It may not look like much, but it’s more than she ever dreamed of or what her difficult childhood promised. Her life’s mantra is to be good, quiet, grateful. Until something shifts and Cinnamon is suddenly haunted by a terrifying question: “Is this all there is?”
-
-
These Authors have done it again!
- By Rachel P. on 09-16-23
By: Christine Pride, and others
-
My Last Innocent Year
- A Novel
- By: Daisy Alpert Florin
- Narrated by: Sarah Bierstock
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place—until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling.
-
-
Not plot based
- By CK on 02-16-23
-
The Chinese Groove
- A Novel
- By: Kathryn Ma
- Narrated by: James Chen
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.
-
-
A delightful surprise
- By R. Glynn on 02-01-23
By: Kathryn Ma
-
Blood Test
- A Comedy
- By: Charles Baxter
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable.
-
-
Creepy.. and also boring as hell
- By BallerinaAstronaut on 10-31-24
By: Charles Baxter
-
The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
-
-
Couldn’t stick with - just too annoying
- By elizabeth on 11-22-24
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
-
-
Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
The Act of Disappearing
- A Novel
- By: Nathan Gower
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Ashley Klanac
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Julia White is struggling: her bartending job isn’t cutting it, and her first book has sold hardly any copies. She’s broke, barely able to make ends meet while drowning in her late mother’s medical bills and reeling after a one-night stand with her ex-boyfriend, who’s now completely ghosted her. Enter Johnathan Aster, world-renowned photographer, with a proposal: he has a never-before-seen photograph of a woman falling from a train bridge, clutching what appears to be a baby. And he wants Julia to research the story.
-
-
Powerful Storytelling! Engaging characters!
- By Renee Miller on 06-01-24
By: Nathan Gower
-
A Talent for Murder
- A Novel
- By: Peter Swanson
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss, Stephen Graybill, Saskia Maarleveld, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martha Ratliff conceded long ago that she’d likely spend her life alone. She was fine with it, happy with her solo existence, stimulated by her work as a librarian in Maine. But then she met Alan, a charming and sweet-natured salesman whose job took him on the road for half the year. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes, even though he still felt a little bit like a stranger.
-
-
Easy read,
- By Charles Johnson on 08-02-24
By: Peter Swanson
-
You Are Here
- A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: Lee Ingleby, Lydia Leonard
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his wife's departure, he has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Becoming ever more reclusive, he’ll do anything to avoid his empty house. Marnie, on the other hand, is stuck. Hiding alone in her London flat, she avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.
-
-
Slow build
- By V. B.A. on 06-08-24
By: David Nicholls
-
Same as It Ever Was
- A Novel
- By: Claire Lombardo
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things. She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next.
-
-
Long winded
- By Brooke on 09-17-24
By: Claire Lombardo
What listeners say about Hope
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 01-05-24
A modern story of privilege
Andrew Ridker elegantly exposes the modern family for their privilege. The idiosyncrasies of the Greenspan family and their community are highlighted in subtle but powerful contrast to their “charitable works” as well as their searches for meaning in a fast-paced world.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 08-11-23
A compelling read that leaves you rooting for hope
In "Hope," we traverse the perilous fall from grace of a Jewish family, enthralling readers with tales both somber and hopeful. Given the uncanny parallels to the author's own life — a Jewish family of four hailing from the same town, with a patriarch practicing cardiology — it's hard to dismiss the whisper of autobiographical undertones. One can only wish that in the realm of reality, the author's real-life counterparts, particularly the cardiologist father, possess a more commendable heartbeat of trustworthiness and charisma. A compelling read that leaves you rooting for hope, even in the darkest of times.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dorothy
- 08-29-23
Loved every minute of it!
Such a fabulous story about an ostensibly perfect family. Everyone is actually a mess but they’re all pretty decent people. The mother in law alone is worth the listen.
The narrator is excellent,
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dinorah Spalding
- 07-14-23
Very good
This was touted as a very funny book.
I found parts of it humorous but not laugh out loud funny, maybe because I listened to it as opposed to reading it.
Still I enjoyed it very much.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazoncustomer
- 09-08-23
Family evolution
Seemingly perfect family is riddled with dysfunction. Each family member eventually finds a path to self actualization. I got it. This book is engaging and well written, but travels a path to nowhere. When it ended, it left me with a very heartfelt so what.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 01-17-24
A well written, rich, modern novel.
Andrew Ridker has written an intelligent, timely, well-plotted novel with characters I wanted to discover. I took one star away from the story as the themes here are fairly quotidian, and a little more drama wouldn’t have hurt. Despite that, I really enjoyed the writing, and admired his ability to capture dialogue from different points of view, no mean feat.
The audio was impeccably done.
Pacing, intonation and inflection spot on.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- barbara
- 03-21-24
Slice of life--upper middle class northeast family
Intimate view into a successful family's internal wranglings with one another and themselves. It is filled with first-world problems.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jess
- 09-14-23
Not long enough
I simply loved this and craved more. It reminded me of Franzen’s “Freedom” which I also could read or listen to forever. I’ll be tuned in to whatever this author writes.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Beth
- 08-25-23
All over the map
Good writing but I had difficulty staying focused on the story. Appreciate the topics introduced but too many! Also back and forth in time added to the confusion. I was left hanging.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!