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    Cambridge
    Cambridge
    Cambridge
    Audiobook8 hours

    Cambridge

    Written by Susanna Kaysen

    Narrated by Kathe Mazur

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "It was probably because I was so often taken away from Cambridge when I was young that I loved it as much as I did . . . "

    So begins this novel-from-life by the bestselling author of Girl, Interrupted, an exploration of memory and nostalgia set in the 1950s among the academics and artists of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    London, Florence, Athens: Susanna, the precocious narrator of Cambridge, would rather be home than in any of these places. Uprooted from the streets around Harvard Square, she feels lost and excluded in all the locations to which her father's career takes the family. She comes home with relief-but soon enough wonders if outsiderness may be her permanent condition.

    Written with a sharp eye for the pretensions-and charms-of the intellectual classes, Cambridge captures the mores of an era now past, the ordinary lives of extraordinary people in a singular part of America, and the delights, fears, and longings of childhood.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 18, 2014
    ISBN9781452689852
    Cambridge

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    Reviews for Cambridge

    3.5/5

    30 ratings8 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I didn't care for this book. The main character takes no joy in anything and decides that her goal in life is to earn a Nobel Prize in failure. Susanna is a contrary child who dislikes most everything despite the opportunities she's given. Even the place she claims to love is a place that she's not happy with.
    • 3/5
      I was listening to the CD version, read by Kathe Mazur, and parts of this were so good --- the reader's voices for the nanny and the boyfriend and his brother employee from India were wonderful---but the story? It was somewhat boring....
    • 5/5
      Susanna Kaysen did an amazing job describing what goes through the mind of a prepubescent girl, at least to my mnd she did. This book was an engaging study of an era and a travelogue filtered through the engaging mind of the narrator.
    • 2/5
      I had high hopes for Cambridge by Susanna Kaysen. I should have paid closer attention, however, to the summary because I usually read them in advance, just to be sure, but I didn't in this case because I was too enamored by the beautiful cover. So, instead, I read it just before cracking the book and it put a bad taste in my mouth.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on April 4, 2014.
    • 5/5
      This is about my favorite city - and it isn't! It's really what I imagine to be the author's peripatetic childhood spent away from her beloved city - in England, Italy, and Greece. The character is named Susanna also, and it doesn't really matter what's true and what's made up. What matters is how many glorious descriptions of just about everything are here - how a mother can read your mind, how to absorb music into your body, how reading Greek myths changes your life, how glorious it is for a fourth grader to stay up through an entire adult dinner party. And so much more. This is almost a coming-of-age story, but not limited to just that. And Cambridge IS there, in the flesh, in the sixties, when there were no chain stores and it was actually neighborhoods rather than unreachably unaffordable. Just lovely and so filled with the workings of the mind of a child-who-isn't-quite-a child. And loaded with quirky and warmly drawn characters. One of my 2014 top ten so far and I might have to make Cambridge a permanent addition to my collection, to reread and savor again. Most memorable.
    • 4/5
      Although the plot seemed a bit light, I found the book to be an interesting character study. Told from the point of view of a grown Susanna recalling her youth, she tells the story of her love if Cambridge and feeling rootless as her parents move her to England, Greece and other places.The story brings out the need for security and home. As Susanna grows up, she finds disappointments and in turn disappoints her mother. All true to life scenarios and the characters felt very authentic. Reader received a copy from Good Reads First Reads.
    • 4/5
      ‘Cambridge’ is the home of young Susanna, daughter of an economics professor and a pianist who no longer performs. The book is a first person POV by Susanna as she relates her life from second grade to sixth. The author has a keen memory; while told by adult Susanna, she’s picked up on the way kids perceive things marvelously. She lays it out there flatly, just as the child saw and heard it, with no adult’s explanation of what might really have been going on. This is the best part of the book, the part that will make many readers remember how they felt and saw things when they were that age. Cambridge is home, but Susanna spends an awful lot of time away from it; a sabbatical year in England, time in Italy, a long summer in Greece, all take her away. Life, she feels, would be better in Cambridge, but once she’s there, it’s not very satisfying. She doesn’t fit in anywhere. She has a younger sister, known to us on as ‘the baby’. Her father seems to have little if anything to do with her upbringing (not unusual in the 1950 setting) while her mother ignores her except to criticize her or to tell her to do something. This latter she does by pointing at an object or person, expecting Susanna to wordlessly deal with whatever it is mother pointing at. Susanna is never mistreated and has no physical needs unmet, she is emotionally neglected by her parents. She has to look beyond them for nurturing. There is not much of a plot to the book; young girl grows up, meets challenges, is disappointed by life while disappointing her mother. Susanna is not particularly likeable but she’s not unlikable, either. She’s contrary and bored with most of her peers. This struck a chord with me. I can remember feeling like she does; her feelings about her first period pretty much summed up how I reacted to that same circumstance. It’s not a great book, but it’s a good book and really held my interest.
    • 4/5
      Could be the prequel to Girl Interrupted, I really enjoyed this story.