Ottessa Moshfegh, author of several audiobooks, one of which she narrates, steps in to deliver this new production of the late Leonard Cohen's early fiction, written in the 1950s. The 16 short stories and a novella are a snapshot of the period and the artist's development of his voice. Cohen focuses on themes of violence, deeply intimate sex, rejection, the betrayals of old age, and more violence. Moshfegh's voice may be unexpected, given Cohen's many first-person male characters, but, curiously, it works. Moshfegh meets the moments of sexual intimacy, and of shocking violence, straight on, conveying a reverence for these early works.
Pub Date: 2022
Duration: 7 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781696609784
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
American colleges are favorable locales for ghastly event and hair-tearing circumstance. There is, for instance, a good deal of pleasure to be had out of professor and past-prodigy Grady Tripp's awful life, as portrayed by Michael Chabon in WONDER BOYS. There is a certain amount of slapstick here, but it's balanced by Chabon's superb portrait of a gale-force mid-life crisis, a soul-destroying albatross of an unfinished novel and the mind-numbing inconsequence of writers' conferences. David Colacci sounds a little starved for oxygen in his reading, but that's not exactly out of keeping with Grady Tripp's personal gestalt.
Pub Date:
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
As a group of men bring their own emotional baggage to their football-obsessed reunion, R.C. Bray delivers his usual solid narration. He shifts his tones slightly but enough to put the listener in the motel with the men, revealing their foibles as the story progresses. The narrator's role in this book is a descriptive one, and Bray is a good guide. His narration becomes extra important because this is a rare instance when there almost isn't a protagonist. The author's well-written story--which alternates between serious and laugh-out-loud funny--uses quarterback Joe Theismann's 1985 injury, a broken leg, as a McGuffin.
Pub Date:
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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