Claire Messud has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.5★ across 8 ratings. The most-rated is The Burning Girl.
The Burning Girl
Summary
A bracing, hypnotic, coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children. Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way.
©2017 Claire Messud (P)2017 Recorded Books
The Woman Upstairs
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children, a brilliant new novel: the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own. Nora Eldridge, a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who long ago abandoned her ambition to be a successful artist, has become the "woman upstairs", a reliable friend and tidy neighbor always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents - dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar and professor at the École Normale Supérleure; and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist - have come to Boston for Skandar to take up a fellowship at Harvard. When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who call him a "terrorist" Nora is drawn into the complex world of the Shahid family: She finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora's happiness explodes her boundaries, until Sirena's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill - and the devastating cost - of giving in to one's passions.
©2013 Claire Messud (P)2013 Random House Audio
The Last Life
Summary
Narrated by a 15-year-old girl with a ruthless regard for truth, The Last Life is a beautifully told novel of lies and ghosts, love and honor. Set in colonial Algeria, and in the south of France and New England, it is the tale of the LaBasse family, whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from a grandfather's rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble, long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before he was even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed, a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue - the family business - to its knees. Messud skillfully and inexorably describes how the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling, can turn on us in a moment. It is a work of stunning power from a writer to watch.
©1999 Claire Messud (P)2018 Recorded Books
The Emperor's Children
Summary
Two-time PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Messud is hailed as "a writer of enormous skill and stylistic grace" by Publishers Weekly. This wonderfully crafted comedy of manners was called a "stinging portrait of life among Manhattan's junior glitterati" in a starred review by Kirkus Reviews.Friends at Brown University, Marina, Danielle, and Julius are still looking to make their marks as they approach their 30s. Marina lives with her celebrated parents on the Upper West Side while trying to complete her book. TV producer Danielle's success is due to the puff pieces she churns out. Freelance critic Julius can barely make ends meet. Into this mix comes Bootie, Marina's college dropout cousin, who is just the catalyst the three friends need to start making significant changes in their lives.
©2006 Claire Messud (P)2006 Recorded Books
Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of the literary page-turner The Emperor's Children discusses her richly drawn new novel, The Woman Upstairs, with Meghan O'Rourke (The Long Goodbye). Her latest release is a riveting compulsively readable (and listenable) confession of a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Mass, drawn into the complex world of her new neighbors - a Lebanese scholar and professor of Ethical History, his glamorous Italian artist wife, and their son - who move in and change her life in ways she never expected. With a reading from the novel by Patricia Kalember (Don't Dress for Dinner).
©2013 Symphony Space (P)2013 Symphony Space