About Schmidt

Name: About Schmidt
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Louis Begley
ISBN: 9781456124021

Author: Louis Begley

Series: Warren Schmidt #1

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 8 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/21/2010

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Sagas

Synopsis

Louis Begley's perceptive novel hums with emotional energy and shimmers with haunting images. A National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist, About Schmidt is a powerful meditation on loneliness, desire, and transformation. Old-school lawyer Albert Schmidt has spent years carefully climbing the ladder of success. But now, at what should be the pinnacle of his career, his life is in chaos. Within months, he is widowed and forcibly retired from his firm. He harbors painfully mixed feelings about his ambitious daughter's impending marriage. Suddenly, in the midst of this turmoil, a seductive young woman asks Smitty what he wants. Far from being a time of satisfaction and complacency, the middle age encountered by Begley's hero is the beginning of a new journey tantalizing, yet unnerving. From the first step, Begley draws the reader deeply into a man's quest for new ways to understand an unstable world.

About Louis Begley

Louis Begley's novels include Killer, Come Hither; Memories of a Marriage; Schmidt Steps Back; Matters of Honor; Shipwreck; and Wartime Lies, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey

"Relatively soon, I will die. Maybe in 20 years, maybe tomorrow, it doesn't matter. Once I am dead and everyone who knew me dies too, it will be as though I never existed. What difference has my life made to anyone. None that I can think of. None at all." Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in a reg......more

Goodreads review by Clif

A grumpy old white male, that's one way to describe Schmidt. He seems to hate everybody and everything, including himself. But maybe his behavior can be explained by the fact that what he thought was a successful life and career has disappeared after his retirement and death of his wife. His wife had......more

Goodreads review by Sarah

This book was made to be relatively realistically bloomy. I teared at many instances and at many chapters specially towards the end. I think the story really depicts one of the most renowned fears of all time and that's loneliness of senility and the personality change that comes afterwards. I relat......more

Goodreads review by Dean

The riveting tale of an aging WASP as he heroically struggles to overcome his anti-Semitism. The sexual escapades of a lecherous retiree who with little effort and even less game inexplicably seduces the pants off a beautiful 20-year old Puerto Rican waitress. The astonishing and highly relatable st......more