Elizabeth Tallent has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators. The most-rated is Mendocino Fire.
Scratched
Summary
“Reading Scratched gave me the feeling of standing very close to a blazing fire. It is that brilliant, that intense, and one of the finest explorations I know of what it means to be a woman and an artist.” (Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction) In a bold and brilliant memoir that reinvents the form, the acclaimed author of the novel Museum Pieces and the collection Mendocino Fire explores the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her writing life as well as her rich, dramatic, and constantly surprising personal life. Scratched is an intimate account of the uses a child, and the adult she becomes, will find for perfectionism and the role it will play in every part of her life. Elizabeth Tallent’s story begins in a hospital in mid-1950s suburban Washington, DC, when her mother refuses to hold her newborn daughter, shocking behavior that baffles the nurses. Imagining her own mother’s perfectionist ideal at this critical moment, Elizabeth moves back and forth in time, juxtaposing moments in the past with the present in this innovative and spellbinding narrative. Elizabeth traces her journey from her early years in which she perceived herself as “the child whose flaws let disaster into an otherwise perfect family”, to her adulthood, when perfectionism came to affect everything. In the decade between 27 and 37, she publishes five literary books with Knopf and her short stories appear in The New Yorker. But this extraordinary start to her career is followed by 22 years of silence. She wrote, or rather published, nothing at all. Why? Scratched is the remarkable response to that question. Elizabeth’s early publications secure her a coveted teaching job at Stanford University. As she toggles between Palo Alto and the Mendocino coast where she lives, raises her son Gabriel, and pursues an important psychoanalysis, Elizabeth grapples with the perfectionism that has always been home to her. Eventually, she finds love and acceptance in the most unlikely place, and finally accepts an “as is” relationship with herself and others. Her final triumph is the writing of this memoir, filled with wit, humor, and heart, and unlike any other you will find. Scratched is a brave book that repeatedly searches for the emotional truth beneath the conventional surface of existence. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Elizabeth Tallent (P)2020 HarperAudio
Mendocino Fire
Summary
Beginning in the 1980s, Elizabeth Tallent's work, appeared in some of our most prestigious literary publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and Harper's. Marked by its quiet power and emotional nuance, her fiction garnered widespread praise. Now, at long last, Tallent returns with a new collection of diverse, thematically linked, and deeply powerful stories that confirm her enduring gift for capturing relationships at their moment of transformation: marriages breaking apart, people haunted by memories of old love and reaching haltingly toward new futures. Mendocino Fire explores moments of fracture and fragmentation; it limns the wilderness of our inner psyche and brilliantly evokes the electric tension of deep emotion. In this audiobook, Tallent explores expectations met and thwarted, and our never-ending quest to avoid being alone. With this breathtaking collection, Elizabeth Tallent cements her rightful place in the literary pantheon beside her contemporaries Lorrie Moore, Ann Beattie, and Louise Erdrich. Visceral and surprising, profound yet elemental, Mendocino Fire is a welcome visit with a wise and familiar friend. Produced by arrangement with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All Rights Reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the publications where the following stories appeared: “The Wrong Son” appeared in The Threepenny Review, Summer 2009. “Tabriz” appeared in The Threepenny Review, Summer 2007, and in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses (2008). “Mystery Caller” appeared in The Threepenny Review, Fall 2001. “Eros 101” appeared in Tin House, Summer 2004, and in Best of Tin House: Stories (2006). A different version of “Nobody You Know” appeared in Boulevard, 2001, as “Woman Weighing Pearls.” “The Wilderness” appeared in The Threepenny Review, Spring 2012, and in The Best American Short Stories 2013. “Never Come Back” appeared in The Threepenny Review, Spring 2010, and in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011. “Mendocino Fire” appeared in ZYZZYVA, July 2014. “Narrator” appeared in The Threepenny Review, Winter 2015.
©2015 Elizabeth Tallent (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.