Martha Plimpton has narrated 13 audiobooks on Listento.it by 6 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 6 ratings. The most-rated is An Abbreviated Life.
An Abbreviated Life
Summary
A beautiful, startling, and candid memoir about growing up without boundaries, in which Ariel Leve recalls with candor and sensitivity the turbulent time she endured as the only child of an unstable poet for a mother and a beloved but largely absent father, and explores the consequences of a psychologically harrowing childhood as she seeks refuge from the past and recovers what was lost. Ariel Leve grew up in Manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as "a poet, an artist, a self-appointed troublemaker and attention seeker". Leve learned to become her own parent, taking care of herself and her mother's needs. There would be uncontrolled, impulsive rages followed by denial, disavowed responsibility, and then extreme outpourings of affection. How does a child learn to feel safe in this topsy-turvy world of conditional love? Leve captures the chaos and lasting impact of a child's life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to survive later incapacitated her as an adult. There were material comforts but no emotional safety except for summer visits to her father's home in Southeast Asia - an escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody. Following the death of a loving caretaker, a succession of replacements raised Leve - relationships that resulted in intense attachment and loss. It was not until decades later, when Leve moved to the other side of the world, that she could begin to emancipate herself from the past. In a relationship with a man who had children, caring for them yielded clarity of what was missing. In telling her haunting story, Leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic psychological maltreatment on a child's developing brain and to discover how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible: an unabbreviated life.
©2016 Ariel Leve (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
A Chair for My Mother
Summary
After a fire destroys their home and possessions, Rosa, her mother, and her grandmother save and save until they can afford to buy one big, comfortable chair that all three of them can enjoy.
©1982 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
The Heidi Chronicles
Summary
This Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning play is the tale of a baby-boomer's long hard road from 1960s confusion to 1990s self-made woman...or so she hopes.
(P)L.A. Theatre Works
Diary
Summary
Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid. Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he's remodeled and scrawling vile messages all over the walls - an old habit of builders but dramatically overdone in Peter's case. Angry homeowners are suing left and right, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. But can her newly discovered talent be part of a larger, darker plan? Of course it can... Diary is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America's favorite, most inventive nihilist.
©2003 Chuck Palahniuk (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House AudioBooks, A Division of Random House, Inc.
A Chair For Always
Summary
There are some things that Rosa just knows. She knows that she can't wait to meet her new baby cousin, due to be born at any minute right upstairs. She knows that she will grow up and move away and maybe go to college, and perhaps even become the president of the United States. And she knows that the chair, that wonderful, beautiful, beloved chair, the chair for her mother, will always be there. Always.
©2009 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Something Special for Me
Summary
The money jar that Rosa, Mama, and Grandma filled with their coins will be emptied to buy Rosa whatever she wants for her birthday. But what can Rosa choose that special enough-unless it's a gift they can all enjoy!
©1983 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe
Summary
Follow the red canoe from moment to moment as it journeys down river, carrying the family on a camping tour. It's the next best thing to paddling it yourself.
©1981 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Music, Music for Everyone
Summary
Now that Rosa's grandma is sick, Rosa and her friends play music for her after school. She says their playing makes her feel like a girl dancing at a party - and that gives Rosa an idea. She organizes her friends into the Oak Street Band in order to earn money her family needs because of her grandma's illness.
©1984 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart
Summary
A funny book that makes you cry. A sad book that makes you laugh. A book about two sisters and their family that makes you wish you were part of it - and grateful that you are not. In short, this book is one surprise after another. The only thing that is not a surprise is that Vera B. Williams has created a wholly unforgettable, absolutely wonderful portrait of Amber, Essie, and their world. Listen to the book. You will never be the same again.
©2001 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Cherries and Cherry Pits
Summary
When Bidemmi starts to draw, her imagination takes off. Enter her world and watch her stories grow and grow. You will never forget her.
©1986 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
A Chair for My Mother and Other Stories
Summary
Listen to four stories about Rosa and her family: "A Chair for My Mother" (A Caldecott Honor Book); "Something Special for Me"; "Music, Music for Everyone"; and "A Chair for Always". This collection also includes "Cherries and Cherry Pits" and an interview with the author.
©2009 Vera B. Williams (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Mrs. Kimble
Summary
In her masterful first novel, Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh delivers the compelling story of three women who marry the same man, an enigmatic opportunist named Ken Kimble. Birdie. 1961. He was the choir director at a Southern Bible college. At practice she followed his hands with her eyes. She imagined his shoulders bare beneath his shirt, his body long and white. One evening he approached her. Joan. 1969. She met him at a pool party in Florida. His lank dark hair hung to his shoulders; he wore faded jeans and a colorful cotton blouse. No man had touched her in a year. He was engaged to someone else. Dinah. 1979. They met by accident in Washington, D.C. Their paths had intersected once before, when she was a teenager. "You're a beautiful girl," he'd told her, oblivious to the hideous scar on her face. He was old enough to be her father. Kimble is revealed through the eyes of the women he seduces: his first wife, who struggles to hold herself together after his desertion; his second wife, a lonely heiress shaken by personal tragedy, who sees in Kimble her last chance at happiness; and finally Dinah Whitacre, a beautiful but damaged woman half his age. Woven throughout is the story of Kimble's son, Charlie, whose life is forever affected by a father he barely remembers. Ken Kimble is a chameleon, a man able to become, at least for a while, all things to all women. To each of the three Mrs. Kimbles, he appears as a hero to whom powerful needs and nameless longings may be attached. Only later do they glimpse the truth about this elusive, unknowable man. A captivating exploration of human love, marriage, and the illusions upon which it is founded, Mrs. Kimble presents a fascinating psychological portrait of a mesmerizing opportunist and the women who believe in him. Beautifully wrought, stunningly original, Jennifer Haigh's sparkling debut marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.
©2003 Jennifer Haigh (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
After This
Summary
Alice McDermott's powerful new novel wittily captures the social, political and spiritual upheavals of the mid-20th century through the story of a family, and the changing world in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence. After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family.
©2006 Alice McDermott (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC