The Topeka School
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Nancy Linari
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Peter Berkrot
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Tristan Wright
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By:
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Ben Lerner
About this listen
2019 New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
2019 NPR Best Book of the Year
2019 National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee
2019 Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year
2019 Time Magazine Top 10 Books of the Year
2019 NYT Outstanding Books of the Year
2019 The Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
2020 Folio Prize Shortlist
2019 Washington Post Best Books of the Year
2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year
2019 New York Magazine Best Books of the Year
2020 Pulitzer Prize - Finalist
2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
2019 Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year
2019 NYPL Book for Reading and Sharing
Named one of the most anticipated fall books by Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Vogue, Vulture, The Observer, Kirkus, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Week, Oprah Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Nylon, Pacific Standard, Publishers Weekly, Slate, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Guardian
From the award-winning author of 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station, a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century: a tale of adolescence, transgression, and the conditions that have given rise to the trolls and tyrants of the New Right.
Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting "lost boys" to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak. Adam is also one of the seniors who bring the loner Darren Eberheart - who is, unbeknownst to Adam, his father’s patient - into the social scene, to disastrous effect.
Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, The Topeka School is the story of a family, its struggles and its strengths: Jane’s reckoning with the legacy of an abusive father, Jonathan’s marital transgressions, the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the trolls and tyrants of the New Right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men.
Cover photograph from The Wichita Eagle. © 1990 McClatchy. All rights reserved. Used under license. Kansas.com
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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.
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Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
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Growing Things and Other Stories
- By: Paul Tremblay
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden, Graham Halstead, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national best seller The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts. A masterful anthology featuring 19 pieces of short fiction, Growing Things and Other Stories is an exciting glimpse into Paul Tremblay’s fantastically fertile imagination.
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Paul Tremblay is totally nuts.
- By Gary & Jay on 07-07-19
By: Paul Tremblay
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As I Knew Him
- My Dad, Rod Serling
- By: Anne Serling
- Narrated by: Anne Serling
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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To Anne Serling, the imposing figure the public saw hosting The Twilight Zone each week, intoning cautionary observations about fate, chance, and humanity, was not the father she knew. Her fun-loving dad would play on the floor with the dogs, had nicknames for everyone in the family, and was apt to put a lampshade on his head and break out in song. He was her best friend, her playmate, and her confidant. After his unexpected death at 50, Anne, just 20, was left stunned.
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A Beautiful Tribute to a Wonderful Man
- By Becky on 04-12-20
By: Anne Serling
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With or Without You
- By: Caroline Leavitt
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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After almost 20 years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind.
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not my cup of tea
- By Grekis on 12-23-20
By: Caroline Leavitt
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If You See Her
- By: Ania Ahlborn
- Narrated by: Brian Holden
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The house on Old Mill Road has stood in an open field for longer than Jesse Wells has been alive, its crooked windows and jutting turret tormenting the kids of Warsaw, Michigan the way only a haunted house knows how. Everyone imagines that something terrible lurks within the house’s abandoned rooms - especially Jesse and his two closest friends, Casey and Reed. But when Reed chooses the house as a backdrop for his own suicide, childhood ghost stories are transformed into a nightmare that sends Jesse into a downward spiral of grief.
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DNF. Quit halfway through. A slog.
- By Smart, AZ on 07-10-22
By: Ania Ahlborn
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Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
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A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
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The Creepypasta Collection
- Modern Urban Legends You Can’t Unread
- By: MrCreepyPasta - editor
- Narrated by: Heather Costa, Jeffrey Kafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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A terrifying, thrilling collection of must-listen horror stories chock-full of nightmarish supernatural beings and the murderously disturbed that are sure to keep you up all night long.
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creepy definitely
- By Danh on 01-16-22
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Funny, moving, glad to have read it
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In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
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A novel worth reading
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it didn't have a resolution.
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Meh
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This is one convoluted storyline with dragging narration.
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Needs a good editor
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Phillip Roth would certainly listen!
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Anticlimactic at every turn
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The new novel - a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan - from the internationally acclaimed author, his first since IQ84. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.
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Great book ruined by the narration
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Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.
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Masterpiece
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A high school history teacher in a small Colorado town, Guthrie is raising his two young sons alone. Thoughtful and honest, he is guiding them through a world that is not always kind. Victoria, one of his students, is pregnant, homeless, and vulnerable to the scorn of the town. When Guthrie helps two elderly ranchers take the young woman into their home, an unlikely extended family is born.
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Grim Living In A Small Town
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Beautiful World, Where Are You
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Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart.
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Must listen!
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Such a Fun Age
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Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young Black woman out late with a White child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.
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This is embarrassing!
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What listeners say about The Topeka School
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Housepants97
- 02-14-20
Great novel, narration flawed...
A beautiful novel, a beautiful writer. The story was graceful and quiet but moved swiftly, I couldn’t put it down. I felt like it was moving towards something major with the Darren character but it kind of didn’t— regardless of that I still thought it was great. One note is that one of the narrators should know how to pronounce popular musicians names/musical acts, such as Brian Eno (it’s pronounced “eee-no”) and for crying out loud, The Fugees are world famous and pronounced like slang for word “refugee” and not like “FOO-GEES.” How did no one notice this during editing? Embarrassing. It’s 2020 come on.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Gretchen
- 01-10-20
interesting, unique and compelling
A strong investigation of language, meaning and noise. Not as political as other reviewers complain.
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- Joanna
- 05-24-21
Droll
I listened to this book and still have no idea what it what’s about. There were several points of view...and I have no idea why. The ending was a bit baffling, seeming to come from nowhere, and the main point of the story is completely lost on me.
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- sean
- 01-07-20
Fugue Ease
One of the narrators pronounced the name of the Fugees incorrectly as "Fugue Ease" and I think the author would be ashamed, considering it is a coming of age tale set in the late nineties.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Gordy
- 01-22-20
Another amazing Lerner
Really loved it. Great narrators. Wildly complex and beautiful story. I say listen to it right now.
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1 person found this helpful
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- J. Sachs
- 11-25-20
The best book I’ve listened to in years.
This has been the most enjoyable book to listen to that I’ve heard in years.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 01-23-20
BULLY FOR YOU
Ben Lerner is a writer with academic and literary awards that attest to his intelligence and accomplishment.
“The Topeka School” makes one wonder what makes a child become a bully. Does affluence have anything to do with it? Is it because of superior intelligence? Is it because of genetic pre-disposition? Lerner creates a boy’s childhood that suggests some bullies do come from the aforementioned.
The structure of “The Topeka School” is disconcerting and may make some reader/listeners put the book down. The book will lose some who cannot identify with Lerner’s characters because of their social status and accomplishment in life. The struggles of the Gordon family seem distant from the lives of many people who do not come from families as smart or financially accomplished as those in Lerner's story.
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- Kathryn G
- 05-31-20
challenging
it took a long time (I was almost done) for this book to teach me how to read it. I found the application of multiple literary gimmicks disorienting, but by the time I got to the end, I suspected the author intended exactly that effect. When I got it, I was impressed by the depth and richness with which the story explores its themes.It is probably worth a second read,, but i doubt I will.. I felt like it was an overwhelming indictment of our expectations of modern masculinity with no glimmer of hope or path foward, which made me sad.
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- Golanka
- 08-05-20
Great Family Drama--And More!
A really fantastic story dealing with life in the latter part of the 20th century. I really liked the multiple perspectives (different characters POV and at different times). The "whole" story slowly comes into focus.
Lerner creates characters and settings that feel "real" to me.
I thought the narration was good albeit with a few pronunciation bloopers.
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- V.R.
- 08-09-20
Sooo gooooood
I loved this book. Almost everything about it except when the narrator said fuGees with a hard g- duuuude
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