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
    Triburbia
    Unavailable
    Triburbia
    Unavailable
    Triburbia
    Audiobook8 hours

    Triburbia

    Written by Karl Taro Greenfeld

    Narrated by Kirby Heyborne, Sean Runnette, Cris Dukehart and

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A group of fathers meets each morning at a local Tribeca coffee shop after walking their children to school. The sound engineer looks uncomfortably like the guy on the sex offender posters around the neighborhood; the memoirist is on the verge of being outed for fabricating his experiences; and the chef puts his quest for the perfect quail-egg frittata before his children's well-being. Over the course of a single school year, we are privy to their secrets, passions, and hopes, and learn of their dreams deferred as they confront harsh realities about ambition, wealth, and sex. And we meet their wives and children, who together with these men are discovering the hard truths and welcome surprises that accompany family, marriage, and real estate at midlife.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJul 31, 2012
    ISBN9781611209143
    Unavailable
    Triburbia
    Author

    Karl Taro Greenfeld

    Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of seven previous books, including the novel Triburbia and the acclaimed memoir Boy Alone. His award-winning writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories 2009 and 2013, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. Born in Kobe, Japan, he has lived in Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and currently lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with his wife, Silka, and their daughters, Esmee and Lola.

    More audiobooks from Karl Taro Greenfeld

    Related to Triburbia

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Off The Shelf

      Sep 6, 2023

      Maya Linnell is back with the first book in a new series based in the wine country of South Australia’s Limestone Coast, where she grew up. All her trademark themes are there from country shows, gardening and baking to DIY renovations and, inevitably

      3 min read

    • Article

      Journey To The Soul

      Oct 6, 2019

      Journey To The Soul
      7 min read

    • Article

      Being Bill’s Daughter

      Jul 17, 2020

      Being Bill’s Daughter
      4 min read

    • Article

      Embracing Change

      Nov 6, 2020

      Embracing Change
      3 min read

    • Article

      Soul Sisters

      Apr 19, 2024

      Soul Sisters
      8 min read

    • Article

      Family Matters

      Oct 20, 2023

      Family Matters
      5 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS TO READ in March/April

      Feb 24, 2020

      BY SHEREEN JOG (STRUIK LIFESTYLE, R260) This book reflects a cuisine that is modern and yet rooted in the traditional methods and tastes of East Africa. Fifth-generation Tanzanian Shereen Jog shares her recipes for delicious soups, salads, main meals

      5 min read

    • Article

      Growing And Betraying

      Aug 10, 2020

      Growing And Betraying
      5 min read

    • Article

      Why Mark Zuckerberg Wrote a Letter (and You Should Too)

      Feb 6, 2018

      On Dec. 1, 2015, days after Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan had their first child, they posted a lengthy letter to her on Facebook. "Dear Max," it starts. "Your mother and I don't yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the futur

      5 min read

    • Article

      Tenacity, Tempting Food, And Tension

      Aug 10, 2020

      Musk was born in Canada and raised in South Africa by adventurous parents who flew their own small, canvas-winged plane from continent to continent and into the wilds and deserts of Southern Africa. That sense of adventure rubbed off on their daughte

      1 min read

    • Article

      Come One, Come All

      Sep 1, 2021

      Come One, Come All
      4 min read

    • Article

      Timely Reflection

      Aug 2, 2020

      Timely Reflection
      3 min read

    • Article

      Nurturing Growth

      Jul 7, 2020

      I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, which was both challenging and rewarding. Mountain people live off of the land, and while that offers harvest, hope, and bounty, it also brings hardship and struggles. Due to rugged terrain an

      4 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Jan 27, 2023

      SO THERE we have it – the first month of the year is almost over and for many it’s a case of good riddance! It isn’t called Januworry for nothing: the funds that have to stretch and stretch long after the holidays are over, the school fees that need

      5 min read

    • Article

      Podcasts For The Drive

      Dec 5, 2023

      Podcasts For The Drive
      1 min read

    • Article

      ‘I Deserve To Be SPOILT’

      Dec 22, 2020

      For many single people, lockdown in March brought dating to a complete stop. Orders to stay at home were unprecedented. Bars, cinemas, clubs and restaurants closed. We weren’t allowed to meet loved ones we didn’t live with, never mind a potential par

      4 min read

    • Article

      An Education on Wheels

      Apr 22, 2022

      An Education on Wheels
      3 min read

    Reviews for Triburbia

    3/5

    7 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Maybe you have to love New York to love this book. I do and I did. Linked stories organized by street address, because Real Estate Is Life in Tribeca. Although the stories focus on the dads, the women and daughters are actually the more interesting characters even though they are seen through the male filters. I think it's like John Updike for moderns, and the moderns are much more shallow and obsessed with status. I think it might even be a roman a clef as some of the stories seem like familiar ones, unless it's just that any reader of the New Yorker and the Sunday New York Times Style and Business sections are all used to the tales of the rise and decline of the almost 1% since the financial crash. Makes for an engrossing read, well written and lean.
    • 2/5
      In Triburiba, step into the lives of the people of Tribeca. Their children go to the same school; the parents find a group with one another; and their lives are intertwined. Who are the characters? What are their connections and/or interconnections? Stop in and visit with the people of Tribeca.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this more. After all, it's about contemporary downtown Manhattan... real estate porn. But the novel was more like interconnected short stories, and sometimes it wasn't clear who was who. Some characters were struggling, some raking it in, some committed to family, others not, good kids, mean kids, lots of casual drug use. Not awful, but it didn't grab me.
    • 4/5
      It took me a few stories to get into this collection but I found them to have many layers once put together. They aren't exciting or fast-paced but an inside look at the lives of people in a small neighborhood in NYC that moves from a place for starving artists to a place for the rich. We see the lives they present to the outside but get a look at their real selves.The stories are all well-written and well crafted. I'm not sure everyone would enjoy this but I really did.
    • 2/5
      I think I'm over the whole "novel told in stories" idea. I tried not to let that influence me when I read Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfeld. It's a decent novel. It meanders a bit, tells the stories of the lives of a group of Tribeca residents. The stories are identified by address, with a lot of overlap and some surprising revelations about their residents.The novel starts with a group of fathers, an informal breakfast club that meets after walking their kids to school. There has been a incident involving a young girl and a child molester, and one of the fathers feels singled out. The police sketch looks a bit like him, if you squint the right way, and suddenly people are staring. They're too polite to come right out and say anything, but he is certain of what they're thinking.The stories are generally pretty interesting. The residents of this neighborhood are a mixed bunch -- old money, new money, different careers. Mostly artistic types, but artists with money, not the starving type. A lot of money and privilege.What struck me about the book is that, a week after reading it, I can't recall the name of a single character. I recall the story about the child molester, an entrepreneurial young woman who found a novel way to raise her college tuition, and a complicated story that had a woman leaving her stoned husband somewhere in Spain, I think. Oh -- the marijuana. They smoked a lot of pot in this book. No adults I know smoke that much dope. We have jobs and lives and stuff.It also struck me as a novel for New Yorkers. When you say "Tribeca" to me, I don't have a reaction. I know it's a neighborhood in New York City, but it doesn't mean anything to me. Maybe if I had an emotional connection to the neighborhood, or if I came into the novel with some sort of expectation about the residents, it would have had more impact.
    • 2/5
      Just a week or so ago I reviewed Motherland, a satirical exploration of parenthood and relationships in upper class Brooklyn. Triburbia is set just across the East River in Manhattan with a near identical premise and unfortunately I didn't enjoy this novel any more than I did the other.Loosely connected by business, relationships or simply the school run, the men of Triburbia, whose creative professions allow them some flexibility, meet casually over breakfast to discuss film, sports and politics. Beginning with the Sound Engineer (113 North Moore), Greenfield reveals the histories of this group of men that includes a sculptor, a film producer, a writer, a career criminal, and the wives and daughters who share their lives.With a mixture of first and third person narratives, it's disconcerting to start a chapter with a new character that has no identity except for an address and a profession. I was never entirely sure who was speaking, surprised once or twice to find it was a wife or even a daughter interjecting into the narrative. More properly a series of vignettes rather than a novel Triburbia has a disjointed feel, with no sure direction, though Greenfield does bring things full circle eventually.There are one or two characters than inspire some sympathy, the father struggling with doing his best by his autistic son and the man who lost his first love and to his sister for example, but largely these men are shallow and self involved, fretting over real estate values, sex and social status. After the first few introductions, these men - their concerns and their ambitions - are all too similar. While Greenfield's observations may be wryly accurate they lack the insight I hoped for.The wives are almost uniformly distant from their husbands, busy with work, childcare or in the case of at least one mother, an extensive drug habit. The vignettes that introduce the daughters of these men - the precocious, status aware Cooper and the ambitious Sadie in particular are a more interesting commentary on parenting in the enclave of the affluent.I was perhaps more interested in the evolution of the Tribeca neighborhood than its residents. A once bohemian community full of shabby artist studios and warehouses the influx of wealthy financial types ordering "...renovations as vast and grand in scale as the construction of ocean liners..." ensure Tribeca is home to New York's newest millionaires. Still, a few artists remain like the puppeteer turned repairman (47 Lispenard) one of the lucky few in rent controlled loft spaces who by default is now privy to quality public schools for his children and a social status he cannot afford.Greenfield, a resident of Tribeca, seems to have mined his own personal background for character inspiration and I suspect that his neighbours may also some recognise themselves within the pages of Triburbia. While I am sure the inhabitants of New York will delight in this portrait of their neighborhood, despite being largely unflattering, I suspect it will have little cultural relevance or interest outside of its environs.
    • 3/5
      There is a sentence near the beginning of “Triburbia” that perfectly sums up most of the characters contained within its pages. “We are a prosperous community. Our lofts and apartments are worth millions. Our wives vestigially beautiful. Our renovations are as vast and grand in scale as the construction of ocean liners, yet we regularly assure ourselves that our affluence does not define us. We are better than that. Measure us by the books on our shelves, the paintings on our walls, the songs on our iTunes playlists, our children in their secure little school. We live in smug certainty that our taste is impeccable, our politics correct, our sense of outrage at the current regime totally warranted.”In other words, these people are and want to be defined only by exterior measures – only by their possessions and not at all by the quality of person they are. They are so incredibly entitled that even when they have everything, feel the desire to have even more or even better – and when their actions then cause them to lose something they had but didn’t value until then – the fault is never theirs.The children of these smug adults are hardly better. “Cooper was a pretty little brunette, big round eyes, perfect nose that if it wasn’t god-given you would have said came from Park Avenue, big lips, a gorgeous smile, slender, the kind of kid you saw in Gap ads or in brochures for new condominiums that wanted to appear family-friendly. Rankin had seen enough of her to know she was a killer – he knew that an eight-year-old who is aware of her looks and social magnetism, and is willing to use them to take down other girls, can be harder to fight than cancer.”These characters are so self-involved and so pretentious that it’s hard to keep one’s eyes from rolling while reading. I had to put the book down several times because I could only take so much navel gazing at one sitting.One of the characters, who is basically James Frey under slightly different circumstances (which I found a very odd choice), faces the consequences of years of lying for his own benefit. His choices, his actions. And yet he still feels sorry for himself, still thinks he deserves sympathy. “It seemed so unfair that anything this bad should happen to me while I had just suffered the misfortune of having a developmentally disabled son. Where was the justice in that?” He thinks that bad things HAPPEN to him – but all the good things in his life were his own making, that he deserves all of the good fortune and should never be subjected to the bad.Beyond the incredibly annoying and unsympathetic characters, “Triburbia” does contain some modern day insight that I found funny. “On the way to school, Rankin saw the smug bastard and his cute little kids. With his long hair, the expensive-looking coat, the fancy sneakers, the father looked like an overgrown little boy. What happened to grown ups? Rankin wondered. When did every mom and dad start to look like an oversize version of the shorties they were dropping off in the yard?”I can’t fault this book for the realism of some of the characters, the rich, entitled, deluded members of our society. But it does make for a less than pleasant read when the strongest emotion that the book inspires is the desire to shut them up.