Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Crazyladies of Pearl Street: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Crazyladies of Pearl Street: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Crazyladies of Pearl Street: A Novel
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Crazyladies of Pearl Street: A Novel

    Written by Trevanian

    Narrated by Leonardo Leoncavallo

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching autobiographical novel destined to become a classic American coming-of-age story.

    The place is Albany, New York. The year is 1936. Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and their spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned-again-by his father, a charmer and a con artist. With no money and no family willing to take them in, the LaPointes manage to create a fragile nest at 238 North Pearl Street. For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, with its ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. As Jean-Luc discovers, it's a neighborhood of "crazyladies": Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher who ignites his imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty parlor/fortune-telling salon in the back of her husband's grocery store; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc's own unconventional, vivacious mother.

    Jean-Luc is a voracious reader who never stops dreaming of a way out of the slum. He gradually takes on responsibility for the family's survival with a mix of bravery and resentment while his mom turns from spells of illness and depression to eager planning for the day when "our ship will come in." It's a heartfelt and unforgettable look back at one child's life in the 1930s and '40s, a story that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.


    Look for these Trevanian classics from Three Rivers Press: Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Summer of Katya, and The Main.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 21, 2005
    ISBN9781415926406
    Unavailable
    The Crazyladies of Pearl Street: A Novel

    Related to The Crazyladies of Pearl Street

    Related audiobooks

    Coming of Age Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Vuong, Arnett, Dennis-Benn, Ohlin, and More

      Jun 4, 2019

      Three novelistic debuts, a James Beard Award–winner's memoir, and the latest from 'Eat, Pray, Love' author Elizabeth Gilbert. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Vuong, Arnett, Dennis-Benn, Ohlin, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Village Affair

      Jul 14, 2021

      AS an attentive aunt, Jane Austen was keen to encourage her niece, Anna, with the novel she was writing. ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,’ she wrote to her in 1814, adding, ‘such a spot… is the delight of my

      4 min read

    • Article

      Autumn Reading

      Mar 25, 2020

      A charming novel about a ready-to-retire Paris psychiatrist, who is counting the hours until his final session. Our protagonist has never spoken to his next-door neighbour, although he hears the old gent rattling around at night. He has never enquire

      7 min read

    • Article

      Dust & grit

      Feb 28, 2021

      Dust & grit
      2 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Book Guide

      Nov 30, 2023

      This is journalist Trent Dalton’s third novel and it deals with hopes and dreams in the most terrifying places. Lola is 17 and living in an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van on a scrap yard by the Brisbane River. When Lola was a baby, Erica plunged a knif

      8 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Book Guide

      Nov 30, 2023

      This is journalist Trent Dalton’s third novel and it deals with hopes and dreams in the most terrifying places. Lola is 17 and living in an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van on a scrap yard by the Brisbane River. When Lola was a baby, Erica plunged a knif

      7 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 25, 2020

      In this novel, set amid the Spanish Civil War, Isabel Allende gives us a short but incisive account of the horrors of war, as seen through the eyes of the Dalmau family from Barcelona, the Republican forces’ centre. It’s 1938, and the Republicans are

      5 min read

    • Article

      #askabookseller

      Dec 22, 2021

      #askabookseller
      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 18, 2024

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Horrocks, Russo, Lenz, Zink, and More

      Jul 30, 2019

      New Richard Russo and Nell Zink, a darkly humorous coming-of-age novel, and a powerful debut on the faith and politics of Middle America. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Horrocks, Russo, Lenz, Zink, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      Emma Cline, author, on David Plante's Difficult Women

      Mar 23, 2023

      “Thick slabs of biography are less appealing to me these days - what I've been looking for lately is particularity, a book where someone cuts off a thin slice of a life and applies their own sensibility to it. Difficult Women by David Plante makes yo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 17, 2020

      It’s been a while since I’ve been completely blown away by a novel. Ocean Vuong’s devastatingly beautiful first offering is the coming-of-age story of Little Dog, a Vietnamese immigrant in the US. Framed as a letter from a writer in his 20s to his il

      5 min read

    • Article

      Enchanting chapters WEEKLY TOP 10

      Nov 20, 2022

      With best-selling author Nicky Pellegrino One of New Zealand’s best-loved novels, this is the story of five-year-old Rose, who arrives with her mother in the bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston on the West Coast in the late 1800s. It is a rough

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Aug 9, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Messud, Boland, and More

      Oct 13, 2020

      This week we're looking at new titles from the likes of Claire Messud, Eavan Boland, and Max Gross. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Messud, Boland, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 19, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Alam, Klay, French, Kafka, and More

      Oct 6, 2020

      In a year that's been disorienting, bizarre, and nightmarish, it seems only fitting that a new book by Franz Kafka publishes today. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Alam, Klay, French, Kafka, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Southern Stories

      Jul 1, 2019

      Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl (Milkweed Editions) In her debut essay collection, Renkl takes readers from the riverbeds and back roads of her home state of Alabama to her backyard in Nashville today. The editor

      1 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      May 19, 2021

      Great Read
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Aug 9, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Jul 13, 2022

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Coates, Jamison, Patchett, Krasznahorkai, Ware, Smith, and More

      Sep 24, 2019

      In case you've been living under a rock, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new book out (and so do Patti Smith, Ann Patchett, Leslie Jamison, and Chris Ware. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Coates, Jamison, Patchett, Krasznahorkai, Ware, Smith, and M

      7 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      May 19, 2021

      Great Read
      5 min read

    Reviews for The Crazyladies of Pearl Street

    3.5/5

    51 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Beautifully written and easy to visualize.
    • 2/5
      For OTOW book group. Suppose to be fiction, but seemed written with the detail and description of a memoir of a boy, his mother and deserted mother living in NYC in a tenement in the 1940s. Very depressing.