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.

    Elders
    Elders
    Elders
    Audiobook8 hours

    Elders

    Written by Ryan McIlvain

    Narrated by Brian Hutchison

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A glorious debut that T.C. Boyle calls "powerful and deeply moving" that follows two young Mormon missionaries in Brazil and their tense, peculiar friendship. Elder McLeod-outspoken, surly, a brash American-is nearing the end of his mission in Brazil. For nearly two years he has spent his days studying the Bible and the Book of Mormon, knocking on doors, teaching missionary lessons-"experimenting on the word." His new partner is Elder Passos, a devout, ambitious Brazilian who found salvation and solace in the church after his mother's early death. The two men are at first suspicious of each other, and their work together is frustrating, fruitless. That changes when a beautiful woman and her husband offer the missionaries a chance to be heard, to put all of their practice to good use, to test the mettle of their faith. But before they can bring the couple to baptism, they must confront their own long-held beliefs and doubts, and the simmering tensions at the heart of their friendship. A novel of unsparing honesty and beauty, Elders announces Ryan McIlvain as a writer of enormous talent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 7, 2013
    ISBN9781470347383
    Elders

    Related to Elders

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      How Befriending Mister Rogers' Widow Allowed Me To Learn The True Meaning Of His Legacy

      Nov 26, 2019

      Fred Rogers proposed to Sara Joanne Byrd in a letter. A letter she lost almost immediately in a flurry of excitement as she rushed to a pay phone to give him her answer: "Yes, yes, yes!" Both 24, she just 11 days his senior, they were friends but not

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Death of a Prophet

      Jan 5, 2018

      The Death of a Prophet
      3 min read

    • Article

      'The Help' Tops Netflix During Protests, And Twitter Is Shaking Its Head

      Jun 8, 2020

      After a historic week of protests decrying the state of race relations in America, a 2011 movie about black servants and their white employers has become one of the most popular movies on Netflix. Starring Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Emma Stone,

      2 min read

    • Article

      'It Just Felt Very Wrong:' Sherman Alexie's Accusers Go On The Record

      Mar 5, 2018

      Author Sherman Alexie issued a statement in his own defense last week after allegations of sexual harassment began to circulate online. Now, several of the women accusing him are speaking to NPR.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      He threw the pale pink envelopes into the trashand smashed the Mickey Mouse phone hanging up. And when his wife asked you okay? he said okay,then took a twistoff to the back, screaming FUCK so loud he spooked the treefrogs and cicadas.He’d got canned

      2 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Nothing to Declare

      Jun 15, 2019

      All the senior partners were having a laugh about a movie they’d seen. Forty-Five Years. Something, something about the movie taking forty-five years to sit through. The woman McGuinness thought he recognized was in it with them at the far end of the

      24 min read

    • Article

      Marco

      Mar 1, 2022

      THE ALLEY STANK . Marco could feel the damp soaking into his tunic as he pressed his back against the wall, trying to seem like part of the shadows. He cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid? He knew if he stayed out after dark they might f

      6 min read

    • Article

      The talking TREMAYNES

      Aug 2, 2023

      The talking TREMAYNES
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Library Of Gromma

      Feb 10, 2021

      Zac was sweating and panting as he reached the top of the hill. The crooked beams of the library loomed over him. He dropped the buckets of water, swore at the few drops that spilt, and escaped the piercing morning sun in the shade of the library. He

      22 min read

    • Article

      Fathead

      Nov 8, 2017

      Fathead
      16 min read

    • Article

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR

      May 7, 2020

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra

      Jun 8, 2021

      Selim the half-wit hoarded everything—that was the story they told me my first day in waste management. Selim had lost his wife, and I guess everyone figured he took up hoarding as a way to fill the void. It started out with stuff his wife might have

      24 min read

    • Article

      6667 Hollywood Boulevard

      Jul 2, 2019

      6667 Hollywood Boulevard
      7 min read

    • Article

      Restless Souls

      Mar 6, 2018

      Restless Souls
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Library of Gromma

      Jul 10, 2023

      Zac was sweating and panting as he reached the top of the hill. The crooked beams of the library loomed over him. He dropped the buckets of water, swore at the few drops that spilled, and escaped the piercing morning sun in the shade of the library.

      22 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      This is the time of year when stormsspin up from distant dustand sand and make their way to us,and we worry and adjust the scales we carry in our headsto account for luck and prayer.We buy batteries and candles, cordsand water to prepare. There are t

      5 min read

    • Article

      Maxim Osipov

      Mar 9, 2021

      Vnukovo is the smallest, most intimate of Moscow’s airports, and when your flight arrives—especially if it arrives on Saturday at eleven at night—you don’t expect to see much of a crowd. Stamps in the passport, baggage claim—quick and easy. “Where ar

      14 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Cross My Heart

      Sep 1, 2022

      Cross My Heart
      6 min read

    • Article

      Come Stay

      Jan 16, 2024

      Come Stay
      23 min read

    • Article

      The Thin Place

      Nov 16, 2020

      We looked out of the window at the torrential rain. We’d booked tickets for the Castle’s Halloween event. The Castle was famous for being haunted by the ghost of its last court jester and made the most of this reputation every October, hosting a fair

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Elders

    3.5/5

    20 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Let me first start off by saying that this is a book that I enjoyed up until the first half. Having been a missionary myself, and being a current member of the church, I found it surprisingly honest about the missionary experience for some people. That being said, the book lost its radical potential for articulating difference near the end.

      As an academic Latin Americanist, the thought kept running through my head: would this fit under the category of Latin American novel? Or is it yet another white Anglo person writing about Latin American experience from a very white perspective? The possible vacillation between the two makes it a fascinating read on an intellectual level, but it still leaves much to be desired.

      McCloud is certainly the Avatar of the author; boldly intellectualist, smug in his liberal hypocrisy, eventually leading to his pseudo-mormonism that, as always, touts itself in brutal honesty compared to the rest of the church. But Passos is the author's alter ego, acting as a genuine counterbalance to the jadedness of his companion, also being a wholly tin foil pastiche of afro-indigenous religious tropes: the desire to go to byu, the aping of strict obedience as a missionary, the lucid dreams and flashbacks that often paint the Latino body as somehow more spiritual or fervent in its devotion to the religious cause.

      It is certainly impressive to see how the author vacillates between these two registers at the beginning of the book, making it feel more genuine than other attempts in Mormon literature. The struggle over language, politics, culture, and other signs of difference that can easily tear companionships apart gives us an opportunity to explore the nuances of universalism. But that attempt to recognize the other fails in the latter half of the book, precisely because the author leans too hard into the overt representation of the two leads. In an oddly naturalist nod to late 19th century Latin American novels, the end is almost comically abrupt and downright unsympathetic to the situations of either elder.

      Granted, this might work for some, but it feels like a hollow promise to the reader when the author takes an otherwise nuanced look of missionary life in the beginning towards an absurdly antagonistic conclusion. That is not to say that these kinds of things don't happen on missions, as they most certainly do. But to leave the reader high and dry without a better explication or articulation of the breakdowns in communication is an intellectually dishonest representation of missionary work. Rather than placing the onus of responsibility on cultural difference in the struggle for understanding, the book insinuates that the struggle lies in the lacklusterness of religious experience. That should offend people who are both religious and non-religious, white and non-white alike, as it blithely insinuates that mormonism is the culprit and not the sociopolitical, linguistic, or cultural challenges that impede them from the get-go.

      Had the book taken a different turn in its approach while still conserving the agency of both individuals, it could have offered a radical politics of change for transnational coalitions through religious practice. Instead, readers are left feeling emptied out. The surly white intellectual goes back to Boston, a jaded, de-virginized post Mormon; the poor Brown boy, still clinging to a faith that now seems cold and unforgiving in the hopes that it will offer him material benefits.

      In this light, we find neither sympathy nor empathy for either. As a result, it reaffirms the neoliberal notion that the only reason that people ever follow religious Praxis in Latin America is for strategic purposes. This robs us, the white readers, of any real chance to reflect upon how our casual dismissal of religious experience reaffirms white supremacy and colonization in the global south.

      In conclusion, I will say that this book is not bad, but it is yet another manifestation of what is wrong with much of the more "genuine" Mormon literature by writers who generally identify themselves as either post Mormon or ex-mormon: they will betray nuance by the end, causing a narratological interdiction that demands that the reader submit to pessimism rather than affirmation.
    • 4/5
      Seeing as we're going with a religious theme here, let me start with a confession: I totally judge books by their covers and Elders is a prime example. I think this cover is brilliant.

      So, does the novel live up to the cover? It comes pretty close. Elders follows McLeod and Passos, a pair of Mormon missionaries in Brazil. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, the couple is bonded together as they spend their days knocking on unopened doors and hoping to reach their quietly personal goals.

      What I thought might be a fiery expose of Mormonism was actually written in a delicate way that is neither accusing nor particularly supportive of the religion, rather it focuses more on the relationship between the Elders themselves. With different languages, backgrounds and cultures, McLeod and Passos have plenty to cause a rift between them. However, it is the different way they approach the Mormon religion and their beliefs that leads to the tension in their partnership.

      Though it ended a bit abruptly for my liking, Elders is a unique, carefully written novel that is easy to appreciate and enjoy.
    • 2/5
      I was looking forward to reading this book after hearing an interview with the author on Fresh Air. It sounded like this semi-autobiographical novel would be a great window into a world I know so little about. Unfortunately, it fell well short of my expectations.Pros: Ryan McIlvain's Elders (American McLeod and Brazilian Passos) paint an interesting picture of how insular and isolating it can be to be a Mormon missionary. I certainly cannot imagine how difficult it would be to spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a virtual stranger, regardless of how committed we both were to the same cause. Add in the extra layer of missionary ambition (who knew??), and the whole situation can become a political powder keg. I also appreciated the way the author dealt with Elder McLeod's doubt. It was interesting to hear the perspective that someone who considers himself religious enough to go on a mission could have legitimate doubt as part of his faith journey. Sort of a biblical "fake it 'til you make it" approach to religious coming-of-age.Cons: I never really connected with any of the characters in this book. Neither Elder inspired trust, confidence, or sympathy. I just didn't care what happened to them or anyone else.Other than the moderately interesting education I received about the day-to-day life of Mormon missionary work (recognizing this IS fiction), Elders had little to offer. I love a book where interesting things happen to interesting people, and this book missed the mark on both counts.