A Guide to Being Born

Name: A Guide to Being Born
Brand: Dreamscape Media
Availability: InStock
Author: Ramona Ausubel
ISBN: 9781624065163

Author: Ramona Ausubel

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell and Kirby Heyborne

Unabridged: 6 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Published: 05/02/2013

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories

Synopsis

A Guide to Being Born is organized around the stages of life - love, conception, gestation, birth - and the transformations that happen as people experience deeply altering life events, falling in love, becoming parents, looking toward the end of life. In each of these eleven stories Ausubel's stunning imagination and humor are moving, entertaining, and provocative, leading readers to see the familiar world in a new way. In 'Atria' a pregnant teenager believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; in 'Catch and Release' a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; and in 'Tributaries' people grow a new arm each time they fall in love.

About Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where she won the Glenn Schaeffer Award in Fiction. Her work was included in a list of '100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2008' in the Best American Short Stories and thrice as a 'Notable' story in the Best American Non-Required Reading. She was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Maya on December 03, 2014

Beautifully written, lush stories that are sobering, heart-breaking, mesmerizing, shocking. Two of my favorite things: 1) I was full of admiration for the author's ability to connect micro and macro. A small detail lingers and becomes its own moment, but without being overdone. (Often, the sentences......more

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau on May 10, 2013

I am not a huge fan of short stories but I actually enjoyed these. The one that really hooked me was Poppyseed, it touched my heart. It was written in such a way that readers can feel empathy for the parents, such a sad sad story but heartwarming too, which is odd. Atria was disturbing, and I don't......more

Goodreads review by April on August 06, 2015

4.5 stars. A bizarre, magical twist on stories about life, family and love. All but two stories had my full attention. The two that didn't just fell flat for me, they were not bad, just couldn't hold my attention. I highly recommend if your looking for stories on life issues you can connect with, eve......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on August 04, 2014

At the flick of a page these stories can morph from the weird and wondrous to truths, raw and unflinching. I was moved to near tears more than once. Ausubel's prose is beautifully balanced as drops of magical realism are distilled into emotionally gripping tales. I readily suspended disbelief at the......more