The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, ..., Gabriel Brownstein
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, ..., Gabriel Brownstein
List: $16.95 | Sale: $11.87
Club: $8.47

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W

Author: Gabriel Brownstein, Stefan Rudnicki

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki, Scott Brick, John Rubinstein, Harlan Ellison, a full cast, Arte Johnson

Unabridged: 7 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2007

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories

Synopsis

These nine brilliantly inventive stories capture the eccentricities of the residents of Manhattan’s West 89th Street. Five stories are set in one apartment building, where young Davie Birnbaum watches his neighbors’ lives unfold. The title story reworks F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” with the hero fading away toward infancy on the third floor. In apartment 7E, a lawyer named Zauberman reenacts the life of Hawthorne’s Wakefield, abandoning his family so that he can spy on them. And the proctologist in the penthouse plays Icarus and Daedalus with his misfit son.These are tales of literary voyeurism, as the narrators look in on other people’s everyday victories and misfortunes—marriages, car accidents, love affairs, and adoptions—and make sense of it all by thinking about the stories they know best.

About Gabriel Brownstein

Gabriel Brownstein’s stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, Northwest Review, the Literary Review, and the Hawaii Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. A longtime fan of Weird fiction, and of Robert W. Chambers in particular, Stefan’s dramatic adaptation of The King in Yellow received the Madolin Cervantes Award from the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers and was staged by him at the Donnell Library Center in New York City.

About Scott Brick

Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.

About John Rubinstein

John Rubinstein is an actor, composer, and director who won a Tony Award for his starring role in Broadway’s Children of a Lesser God. He has narrated dozens of audiobooks, earning several AudioFile Earphones Awards and being named a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2013.

About Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo Award nine times, the Nebula Award four times, the Bram Stoker Award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.

About Arte Johnson

Arte Johnson is an award-winning narrator and an American comic actor who won an Emmy Award for his role in the television series Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. His audiobook narations have won two AudioFile Earphones Awards, and he placed as a finalist for the Audie Award for best narration in 2003 and 2007.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Joshua

Some great writing here. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.......more

Goodreads review by Brenda

I agree that this book is well written. It also solidifies my belief that I would not enjoy living in New York...too many people and not enough space creates a weirdness, I fear, that only natives can truly enjoy. But that's probably what New Yorkers say about people who live with too few people and......more

Goodreads review by maney man

yea i just didn’t like it fr all the stories did not keep my attention. wanted to do 2 1/2 but it wouldn’t let me but yea, wow. the last story? not sure what to make of that one part but it was by far the most entertaining.......more

Goodreads review by Patty

I can't believe I never wrote this book down. It was so odd. Good, but odd. Why would someone chose to rewrite a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald? I believe that some of the other stories were also "take-offs" from other famous writers, but I don't remember enough to know which stories. I am not sorry th......more

Quotes

“A breathing monument to childhood, to Manhattan, and in its good-natured way, to literature itself.” Los Angeles Times

“Marvelously smooth hybrid tales that prompt readers to think twice about the intersection of life and fiction.” Publishers Weekly

“Brownstein combines humor, absurdity, and elegy to create linked stories that are strong enough to stand on their own…Sympathetic and perceptive, unpretentious yet engaging, these stories are infused with a genuine sense of place; Brownstein’s New York is a home for memories, a refuge for eccentrics. Highly recommended.” Library Journal

“Mysterious, resonant, haunting; their echoes will stay with you long after you've finished his lovely, lovely book.”
Dale Peck, author of Now It's Time to Say Goodbye

“Scott Brick’s performance is up to his usual high standards…The different actors work well together and strengthen the sometimes loose ties that bind the stories. The actors, especially old pro Scott Brick, bring the characters to life…[A] fascinating quilt of tales.” AudioFile

Awards

  • PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award
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