The Liars Wife, Mary Gordon
The Liars Wife, Mary Gordon
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The Liar's Wife
Four Novellas

Author: Mary Gordon

Narrator: Nick Podehl, Laural Merlington

Unabridged: 12 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/05/2014


Synopsis

The beloved author at her storytelling best: four wonderful novellas of Americans abroad and Europeans in America.In these absorbing and exquisitely made novellas of relationships at home and abroad, both historical and contemporary, we meet the ferocious Simone Weil during her final days as a transplant to New York City; a vulnerable American grad student who escapes to Italy after her first, compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of the title novella, who gets more out of life than most of us; and Thomas Mann, opening the heart of a high-school kid in America. These stories dazzle on the surface, with beautifully rendered settings and vistas, and dig deep psychologically. At every turn Gordon reveals in her characters' interactions those crucial flashes of understanding that change lives forever. So richly developed it is hard to believe they fit into novella-sized packages, these tales carry us away both as individual stories and as a larger, book-length experience of Gordon's mastery and human sympathy.

About Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Douglas on July 21, 2014

A collection of four novellas, Mary Gordon does something very tricky with two of them. In these two, the French philosopher, Simone Weil, and German literature great, Thomas Mann, both come to America around the time of WWII. To me, this is almost indulgent. Not that a little indulgence is wrong, b......more

Goodreads review by Jill on March 24, 2015

Connections are vital in the four novellas that comprise Mary Gordon’s latest work. One connection – a pathological liar and former husband, the famous eccentric French philosopher Simone Weil, the German novelist Thomas Mann, or a millionaire patron of the arts – enables the somewhat ordinary prota......more

Goodreads review by Terri on July 23, 2014

Review also found at [URL not allowed] I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. The expected publication date is August 5 2014. As this is four novella in one I will review each story separately The Liars Wife I......more

Goodreads review by Bonnie on August 26, 2014

Mary Gordon has written four novellas, all with the theme of self-awareness; finding who one's true self is and experiencing angst and turmoil in the process. The first novella, The Liar's Wife, is about 72 year old Jocelyn. She is spending the weekend at her family home in Connecticut while her husb......more

Goodreads review by Mary on August 19, 2014

"The Liar's Wife" is a collection of four novellas by the talented Mary Gordon. I have been a fan of Ms. Gordon's writing for many years so I was enthusiastic about this new offering, and I was not disappointed! In the first novella, "The Liar's Wife", we are treated to the internal emotional state 7......more