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Appointment in Samarra
- Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
- Narrated by: Christian Camargo
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's summary
One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O'Hara's crowning achievement.
In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream - and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American writer.
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Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.
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A book to wade in, submerge into.
- By Darwin8u on 10-25-15
By: Peter Carey
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The New York Stories
- By: John O'Hara, E. L. Doctorow - foreword, Steven Goldleaf - editor introduction
- Narrated by: Dallas Roberts, Dylan Baker, Bobby Cannavale, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Collected for the first time, here are the New York stories of one of the 20th century’s definitive chroniclers of the city - the speakeasies and highballs, social climbers and cinema stars, mistresses and powerbrokers, unsparingly observed by a popular American master of realism. Spanning his four-decade career, these more than 30 refreshingly frank, sparely written stories are among John O’Hara’s finest work, exploring the materialist aspirations and sexual exploits of flawed, prodigally human characters and showcasing the snappy dialogue.
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I read it because I paid for it.
- By MaryAnn on 10-01-19
By: John O'Hara, and others
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The Day of the Locust
- By: Nathanael West
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the best 100 English-language novels by Time magazine, The Day of the Locust continues to influence American writers, artists, and culture. Bob Dylan wrote the classic song "Day of the Locusts" in homage, and Matt Groening's Homer Simpson is named after one of its characters. No novel more perfectly captures the nuttier side of Hollywood. Here the lens is turned on its fringes-actors out of work, film extras with big dreams, and parents lining their children up for small roles.
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great writing, bleak story
- By Amazon Customer on 06-08-21
By: Nathanael West
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Under the Volcano
- A Novel
- By: Malcolm Lowry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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On the Day of the Dead, in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic and ruined man, is fatefully living out his last day, drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.
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Excellent...but not for everyone
- By Melinda on 12-07-10
By: Malcolm Lowry
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Ragtime
- By: E. L. Doctorow
- Narrated by: E. L. Doctorow
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears.
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too good for words
- By connie on 10-05-08
By: E. L. Doctorow
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A House for Mr. Biswas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
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Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
- By Christopher on 01-04-19
By: V. S. Naipaul
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A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
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Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
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A High Wind in Jamaica
- By: Richard Hughes
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the 19th century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn
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Prose that reads like a Child's Fever Dream
- By Darwin8u on 01-02-17
By: Richard Hughes
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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
- By: Carson McCullers
- Narrated by: Cherry Jones
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Carson McCullers was all of 23 when she published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She became an overnight literary sensation, and soon such authors as Tennessee Williams were calling her "the greatest prose writer that the South [has] produced." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in the 1930s.
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Do yourself a favor
- By Barbara on 06-08-05
By: Carson McCullers
What listeners say about Appointment in Samarra
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ebbes bruk
- 10-14-18
one of my favorite books from college
it's still a favorite. loved to listen to it, o'hara's ear into how people speak is such a pleasure to hear, Samarra lends itself well to reading aloud. and I loved this narrator, everything about his reading was just perfectly done. jazzy, yet not too much. Camarga is and will forever be Julian English.
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- A Carmack
- 07-27-18
Narrator is terrible
I guess I got so spoiled by (and/or used to) Scott Aiello's narration of O'Hara's 'Ten North Frederick' that when I listened to Camargo's hurried, uninterested narration of 'Appointment in Samarra' I couldn't stand in and didn't want to invest any time in it. He reads it too quickly, and sometimes slurs words together so that they are incomprehensible. I tried listening at a reduced speed on the Audible App but most the time I listen on PC, which doesn't offer reduced speeds. But the speed was not the only problem. The narrator also sounds uninterested in what's he reading so that not only does he want to finish as quickly as possible he shows no interest in what he's reading. I couldn't listen to much of this story: I have given the narrator a 1, the story a 4 (based on what I know of O'Hara from "Ten North" and "New York Stories'). I will limit myself to reading this work in print, where I can enjoy it.
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- Mike Henderson
- 11-21-16
Unexpected pleasure...
Reading 100 Modern Novels, so probably wouldn't have come across this otherwise...Although a dated setting, the characters pop off the page..Some storylines, especially Al Greco, were left hanging, but life doesn't always tie off neatly...
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- Darryl
- 12-29-13
excellent & a bit existentialist & Hemingway-esque
very nice writing. nice period detail. a bit Gatsby-ish but written with Hemingway-esque tone, and with the "lost generation" themes running through it, some aimless, drunken living, frank detail and again i think very existentialist feeling.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Stephen
- 06-29-14
Appointment in Samarra
Story: Not much of a story but it is interesting background and writing. It was slowed in the middle but then came to a quick ending.
Production: The reader was excellent and the effects were good.
Overall, I would recommend to buy but do not make it an urgent buy.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 04-25-15
Quite good, but not a classic
O’Hara thought he was better than Hemingway…he wasn’t. Yet this novel has its points, examining the power of society and belief. I did not find this one of the best novels of the twentieth century, but it is more than respectable. The power of the story is the all too obvious inability of humans to be themselves. Hemingway liked this novel, which makes sense. Hemingway and O’Hara examined the same issue (society vs. individuality) from utterly different perspectives and both valued truth. Both perspectives are interesting making this, for me, a good read, if not a must read. I did not find this a downer as the point is to avoid reaching your end without ever being your true self.
The narration is good, but not great, occasionally losing intensity necessary to the story.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Programmer
- 05-02-16
Not perfect, but very good
I suspect that this book is a wonderful read, but not as wonderful a listen
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- LizzyBethC
- 11-06-18
Not sure yet...
Just finished and I'm a little stunned. Felt like I was finally figuring it out and it ended. It starts with many character, introduced quickly, then narrows it down to a manageable few. Still, I wasn't prepared for the end at all.... Narration was excellent and the author captured the times and society so well, I always liked forward to my next listen.
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- green ice cream garden
- 04-07-17
Didn't think I'd like it
This was a surprise. Another one from the classic 100 a friend challenged me to read. It was fun to go back in this time and try to understand the hip lingo. More important though is the portryal of the wealthy, their vices, vanity, and shortcomings. Scary that I don't believe much has changed.
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- Autodidact
- 11-02-16
I adore John O Hara
Mr. O'Hate skewers all with his biting, funny, poignant, heartbreaking social observations
A-1 read. I am reading all of his writing. Brilliant
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