by Daniel Mason (read by Michael Crouch, Susannah Jones, Jay Ben Markson, Lucy Rayner, Joel Richards, Gary Tiedemann) c. 2020
Audible Daily Deal
24 Festive Tasks: Door 6
Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 05-05-20
Language: English
Publisher: Hachette Audio
B087LB2H1V
Publisher's Summary
On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.
At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories - among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner - cap a 15-year project. From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the "[S]truggle for survival...hand to hand, word to word", by "[O]ne of the finest prose stylists in American fiction".
Expanding My Horizons: Audible Daily Deal Lucky Find
Usually the Daily Deal offerings are variations of the same crap that I have no interest in reading -- too violent, too depressing, too dysfunctional, too maudlin, too much the same as every other book they offer. But, every now and again, they find a title that sparks my interest. Please don't ask what grabbed my attention the other day when I decided to buy this title. I have no idea who the authors is, what his background is, what kind of books he writes. There was something in the title, the cover, the description, the price; before I knew it, I was buying it.
I lucked out on this buy. Much to my surprise, especially as I listened to the first story and wondered what I was getting myself into, not only did I like the stories but I liked the writing. The stories are challenging. They are layered. They make you think. Where the heck did the author come up with these ideas? This is definitely not the light storytelling of Christie or Jeffrey Archer; this is 'literary fiction,' storytelling on a whole different plane. In fact, Mason's stories make me think of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, two wizards of short fiction.
Four and a half stars -- for the writing and for the imagination of the author.
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