Brock Clarke has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?.
Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?
Summary
With the comic unpredictability of a Wes Anderson movie and the inventive sharpness of a John Irving novel, author Brock Clarke introduces listeners to an ordinary man who is about to embark on an absurdly extraordinary adventure. After his mother, a theologian and best-selling author, dies in a fiery explosion,49-year-old Calvin Bledsoe's heretofore uninspired life is upended. A stranger shows up at the funeral, claiming to be Calvin's aunt Beatrice, and insists that Calvin accompany her on a trip to Europe, immediately. As he and Beatrice traverse the continent, it quickly becomes apparent that his aunt's clandestine behavior is leading him into danger. Facing a comic menagerie of antiquities thieves, secret agents, religious fanatics, and an ex-wife who's stalking him, Calvin begins to suspect there might be some meaning behind the madness. Maybe he's not the person he thought he was? Perhaps no one is who they appear to be? But there's little time for soul-searching, as Calvin first has to figure out why he has been kidnapped, why his aunt disappeared, and who the hell burned down his house. Powered by pitch-perfect dialogue, lovable characters, and surprising optimism, Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? is a modern-day Travels with My Aunt, a novel about grabbing life, and holding on-wherever it may take you.
©2019 Brock Clarke (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
Summary
As a teenager, it was never Sam Pulsifer's intention to torch an American landmark, and he certainly never planned to kill two people in the blaze. To this day, he still wonders why that young couple was upstairs in bed in the Emily Dickinson House after hours. After serving 10 years in prison for his crime, Sam is determined to put the past behind him. He finishes college, begins a career, falls in love, gets married, has two adorable kids, and buys a home. His low-profile life is chugging along quite nicely until the past comes crashing through his front door. As the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even a replica of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, go up in smoke, Sam becomes the number-one suspect. Finding the real culprit is the only way to clear his name. But sometimes there's a terrible price to pay for the truth. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is a tour de force: a novel disguised as a memoir, a mystery that cloaks itself in humor, and an artful piece of literature that bites the hand that breeds it.
©2007 Brock Clarke (P)2007 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Exley
Summary
Best-selling author Brock Clarke is acclaimed for his wry, absurdist humor. In Exley, Clarke introduces nine-year-old Miller, who becomes convinced that his father—who left without explanation—must have run away to join the military, and is now lying comatose in a VA hospital. Thinking a visit from his father’s favorite writer will help revive him, Miller decides to track down "A Fan’s Notes" author Frederick Exley.
©2010 Brock Clarke (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
The Price of the Haircut
Summary
From an acclaimed and original writer comes a new collection of stories bursting with absurdist plot twists and laced with trenchant wit. Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and Exley, among other novels, now offers up bite-sized morsels of his trademark social satire that will have listeners laughing and perhaps shifting uncomfortably in their seats. The title story delivers a cringingly biting dissection of racial attitudes in contemporary America, and Clarke also turns his eagle eye to subjects like PTSD, the fate of child actors, and, most especially, marital discord in stories like "Considering Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife" and "The Misunderstandings". In "The Pity Palace", a masterful study in self-absorption and self-delusion, a reclusive husband in Florence, Italy, who believes his wife has left him for a famous novelist, sells tickets to tourists anxious to meet someone more miserable than they. It's a distinctly Clarkean world, in which listeners find themselves reflected back with the distortion of fun-house mirrors - and swept up on a wild ride of heart-wrenching insight and self-discovery.
©2018 Brock Clarke (P)2018 HighBridge Company