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    The Whore's Child and Other Stories
    Unavailable
    The Whore's Child and Other Stories
    Unavailable
    The Whore's Child and Other Stories
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Whore's Child and Other Stories

    Written by Richard Russo

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    To this irresistible debut collection of short stories, Richard Russo brings the same bittersweet wit, deep knowledge of human nature, and spellbinding narrative gifts that distinguish his best-selling novels. His themes are the imperfect bargains of marriage; the discoveries and disillusionments of childhood;the unwinnable battles men and women insist on fighting with the past.

    A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife's lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents' marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore's Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have, unsparingly truthful yet hugely compassionate.

    "The Whore's Child," read by Mark Bramhall
    "Monhegan Light," read by Robertson Dean
    "The Farther You Go," read by Arthur Morey
    "Joy Ride," read by Lincoln Hoppe
    "Buoyancy," read by Stefan Rudnicki
    "Poison," read by Fred Sanders
    "The Mysteries of Linwood Hart," read by John Rubinstein

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 11, 2011
    ISBN9780307967428
    Unavailable
    The Whore's Child and Other Stories
    Author

    Richard Russo

    Richard Russo is the author of nine novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir, and several produced screenplays. Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and his adaptation of the book for HBO was nominated for an Emmy. His collection of essays, The Destiny Thief, will be published in 2018. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Portland, Maine.

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    Reviews for The Whore's Child and Other Stories

    3.5/5

    167 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Richard Russo is simply one my favorite authors and one of our best contemporary writers. I believe that I have now read all of his fiction. He writes novels but has done a couple of short story collections and this one would be a perfect introduction into his work. He writes a lot about working class towns in New England and the east. This collections deals with many different subjects but it is best at revealing the inner workings of his characters minds. The final and longest story is about a 10 year old boy dealing with his parents marital difficulties while he develops an interest in baseball. The book was worth it just for that story alone. You may also be familiar with Russo through his Pulitzer winning novel "Empire Falls" and "Nobody's Fool" which was made into a movie starring Paul Newman. Check him out. You will not be sorry.
    • 5/5
      I love short stories and i really enjoy Richard Russo. Thus i was excited to tear into this small collection. And i was not disappointed!!! I loved this book. Russo has some mysterious way of totally captivating me with his character's humanity.....i feel like i know them, be they adult or child.....i've felt those same things.....occasionally i realize he could be talking about me! Or my mother! It was really a joy to read. I live in Maine, as does Russo, so the Maine settings trip my trigger as well. 'The Whore's Child' (sad & poignant) was probably my favorite, with 'Joy Ride' (a child forced to deal with a mother trying to figure things out), 'Monhegan Island' (Seeing our life through someone else's eyes) , & 'The Mysteries of Linwood Hart' (the absolute mystery of growing up as a child with adult parents) all close behind. A quick easy read that i was sorry ended after only 7 stories! Thank you Mr. Russo!
    • 3/5
      Richard Russo is an old soul. He writes eloquently about what is more likely his parents' time -- of cocktail parties and defined gender roles and the conundrums of middle age, and the era of American manufacturing and the echoes it leaves in contemporary times. This collection of short stories touches on many of these themes with earnestness and sympathy and careful attention.
    • 4/5
      4.5 These short stories will stand out in my experiences equally and caused me to contemplate the complex motivations, reactions, consequences, and feelings behind and within the simplest of human experiences.

      Russo excels at creating characters who are so real that later you find yourself saying, "I know this guy once who....." and you realize, "No I didn't--that was a character in a book!"

      This reading experience even had a perfect ending. I intended to finish it on the airplane so that I could leave it in the seat-back pocket for another traveler's serendipitous find. Better yet, a passenger next to me peeked at the cover of my engaging read and said, "Russo? Is this a new one? I've read everything he's written and I've never even heard of this one. I love Russo.... I saw him speak in Syracuse...." I finished this collection within 4 minutes of landing and handed it to her. So satisfying.
    • 3/5
      7 short stories in Russo's well-known voice. Enjoyable, but I prefer his novels. His characters become so real, you want to know more about them, spend more time with them than a short story allows - every one of the stories could be the first chapter of a novel I'd gladly read. The short stories are just too ... short.
    • 5/5
      I've always loved Russo's style of writing. He has a way of describing people so intimately that you can see them there in front of you, flaws and all. This is my first taste of his short stories and they are exceptionally good. The title story, The Whore's Child, is about a nun's foray into a writing workshop and her attempt at a memoir. It was simple and did exactly what a great short story should do, give you a glimpse at a few characters and leave you wishing you knew just a bit more about them. Russo writes about a young boy's cross-country road trip with his mother, a man struggling to come to terms with the discovery of his wife's lover, a married couple who are haunted by the decisions of their youth and more. I loved the book as a whole and was left wishing for more stories from the author.
    • 4/5
      “I normally am not interested in Short Stories. These stories, however, we extremely well written and linked together by an underlying current of self-appraisal and self discovery. My favorite stories are "The Whore's Child" about Sister Ursula and her coming to terms with her live through her writing. I found "Boyauncy" very enlightening with respect to a husband's new awareness of his wife and his roll as husband.”
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the title story and the last one, "The Mysteries of Linwood Hart", the best. The middle stories were all very similar in tone and setting and even now are beginning to blur together for me.