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The Vulnerables
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, HARPER'S BAZAAR, VOGUE, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICE, THE IRISH TIMES, NEW REPUBLIC AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
The New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through brings her singular voice to a story about modern life and connection
“I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez’s novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny — good and strong company.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“With the intimacy and humor of a great conversation, this novel makes you feel smarter and more alive.” —People Magazine
“An ode to our basic need to connect with other beings, be they human or animal, even in a global crisis that told us to stay apart.” —NPR
Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.
Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.
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Critic reviews
"Hillary Huber's warm, expressive tones engage listeners with this contemplative novel set in New York City in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.... Huber skillfully channels Nunez's musings on loneliness, class inequities, and the animal world. Her thoughtful and poignant performance helps listeners appreciate the humanity and common human experiences at the heart of this story. Huber delights in this thought-provoking exploration of the need for human connection at a time of enforced isolation." (AudioFile)
"Hilarious and deeply reflective." —TIME
“I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez’s novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny — good and strong company.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“With the intimacy and humor of a great conversation, this novel makes you feel smarter and more alive.” —People
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By: Deborah Levy
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The Swimmers
- A Novel
- By: Julie Otsuka
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief.
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Life before and during dementia
- By L. S. on 05-26-23
By: Julie Otsuka
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The Queen of Dirt Island
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Emma Lowe
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn’t always think it. You’d have to know them to know that—in spite of what the neighbors might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes—their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world. Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It involves wives and widows, gunrunners and gougers, sinners and saints. It’s a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love.
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Donal Ryan never disappoints
- By Pat Murray on 03-17-23
By: Donal Ryan
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The Wren, the Wren
- By: Anne Enright
- Narrated by: Anne Enright, Aoife Duffin, Owen Roe, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence, in Dublin and beyond, her grandfather’s poetry seems to guide her home.
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I couldn’t get past the first hour.
- By Ruth Glass on 12-07-23
By: Anne Enright
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Elena Knows
- By: Claudia Piñeiro, Frances Riddle - translator
- Narrated by: Sally Masterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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After Rita is found dead in a church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.
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Super depressing but extremely well written and narrated
- By Lenny C. Husen on 03-07-24
By: Claudia Piñeiro, and others
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Beware the Woman
- By: Megan Abbott
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Honey, I just want you to have everything you ever wanted. That’s what Jacy’s mom always told her. And Jacy felt like she finally did. Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy and her new husband, Jed, embark on their first road trip together to visit his father, Dr. Ash, in Michigan’s far-flung Upper Peninsula. The moment they arrive at the cottage snug within the lush woods, Jacy feels bathed in love by the warm and hospitable Dr. Ash, if less so by his house manager, the enigmatic Mrs. Brandt. But their Edenic first days take a turn when Jacy has a health scare.
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Completely unbelievable
- By Sydmace on 06-12-23
By: Megan Abbott
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The Copenhagen Trilogy
- Childhood; Youth; Dependency
- By: Tove Ditlevsen, Tiina Nunnally - translator, Michael Favala Goldman - translator
- Narrated by: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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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
- By David Batcher on 03-21-21
By: Tove Ditlevsen, and others
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So Late in the Day
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Claire Keegan
- Length: 50 mins
- Unabridged
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After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude - and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.
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This Audible is not the full Kindle/Book version.
- By Mary F. on 11-26-23
By: Claire Keegan
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Cahokia Jazz
- By: Francis Spufford
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Like his earlier novel Golden Hill, Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world filled with fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. In the main character of hard-boiled detective Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly epic proportions, a troubled soul to fall in love with as you are swept along by a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot.
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There’s a third alt-hist noir thriller!
- By Rebbe Don Justino on 03-12-24
By: Francis Spufford
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Matrix
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.
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Wonderful story well written and narratives
- By ReallyNelie on 09-25-21
By: Lauren Groff
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My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change.
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A beautiful book
- By Vly Summit on 05-19-24
By: Hisham Matar
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Old God's Time
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a white Victorian Castle in Dalkey overlooking the sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, but his peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask questions about a decades-old case. A traumatic case which Tom never quite came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother and family who move in next door, a woman on the run from her own troubles. And what of Tom’s family, his wife June, and their two children?
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Boring and self conscious
- By Leah on 06-25-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
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Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
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North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
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An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
What listeners say about The Vulnerables
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chloe Gray
- 12-05-23
Engaging and genuine ♥️
The author is very relatable and honest. The pandemic as a background was realistic to her lived experience without being dramatized.
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- florida mom
- 11-08-23
This is not the description
I listened to an interview with this author and the book sounded fascinating. It was supposed to be about a young person being evicted from his parents house and going to the only place he knew, an apartment where he pet sat for a woman’s parrot, for which he had a key.
An hour in I thought I had the wrong book. It was very rambling. There wasn’t even the smallest breadcrumb to lead me to believe it was going to be what I thought I purchased. So much so I sought to return it.
Do not buy based on the description or the interview. There’s another book she wrote about a dog that left readers feeling the same way. I like dialogue heavy, intellectual, dry fiction. However, the start was so misleading my interest couldn’t latch on.
One bright spot: The narrator was quite good.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Maureen A. Maguire
- 11-22-23
Thoughtful
Insightful review of the times for a certain generation from the perspective of a thoughtful writer.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-22-23
A novel?
I would have given it a higher rating if it were not called “A Novel”. What is the story line, except that the bird was gone with the housemate? The book should best be described as a collection of personal anecdotes interspersed with some boring imaginary tales. The author may be a good observer and a diligent student who knows how to put her acquired knowledge in eloquent words and in a seemingly ‘interesting’ time of human history. But no, being disguised as a writer to tell the story with details that surprise nobody does not make it a novel.
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- Amy Siegel
- 04-14-24
Unusual combination of perceptions
Moving from a simple story of a female writer holed up in a friends apartment with a beloved parrot and a handsome young man (also temporarily borrowing the apt, ) to a compendium of reflections on writers and writing this is a satisfying read of understated reflections
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- Unknown
- 01-23-24
No likeable people in this book, only the parrot is likeable.
Way too many quotes, very disjointed, more stream of consciousness, a thesis with no point. Elitist pessimism.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ralph
- 05-09-24
Don’t waste your time
Why should I care what she thinks? She didn’t grab our trust before she started to pontificate and quote poets. She must have slept with the Barrett’s quotation dictionary
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- Deborah Weir
- 12-12-23
Flimsy at Best
Sort of a list of quotes from famous writers, There was too little content for me to have much of any opinion at all. I guess the point was that the author was bored and lost and lonely during the pandemic; this doesn’t make for much of a read. I hope she feels better now.
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1 person found this helpful
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- A W A
- 06-01-24
The Snide Narrator and the Smug Writing
I tried to ignore the off-putting narration because I read that it was a worthwhile conjuring of life during the pandemic. Maybe the writer’s point is that the pandemic ruined everything: imagination, outlook on life, a writer’s ability to create a work that is not self-centered and deadly dull. If that was the point, the author achieved her goal. The protagonist is a superficial, name-dropping, lifeless character with zero appeal. And, again if that was the point, a short story would have sufficed and have been less agonizing.
Do not bother to read this book — even if someone recommended it to you because you are a writer. I am not sure why I finished it. It never becomes interesting. The characters are flat and the narration makes them irritating and deadly! Was THiS the point???
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- Jennifer H.
- 11-20-23
I'm confused.
The description said it was a story, funny, edgy. There was no storyline. Musings by the author thinly held together. No humor. I kept listening, hoping, but was disappointed.
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2 people found this helpful