-
The Ask
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Sam Lipsyte
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
From the author of Home Land and Venus Drive comes Sam Lipsyte's searing, beautiful, and deeply comic novel, The Ask.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has "not been developing": after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor—a major "ask"—who, mysteriously, has requested Milo's involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo's sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the "give" won't come cheap.
Probing many themes— or, perhaps, anxieties—including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, Sam Lipsyte's The Ask is a burst of genius by an author who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
No One Left to Come Looking for You
- A Novel
- By: Sam Lipsyte
- Narrated by: Sam Lipsyte
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Manhattan’s East Village, 1993. Dive bars, DIY music venues, shady weirdos, and hard drugs are plentiful. Crime is high, but rent is low, luring hopeful, creative kids from sleepy suburbs around the country. One of these is Jack S., a young New Jersey rock musician. Just a few days before his band’s biggest gig, their lead singer goes missing with Jack’s prized bass, presumably to hock it to feed his junk habit. Jack’s search for his buddy uncovers a sinister entanglement of crimes tied to local real estate barons looking to remake New York City.
-
-
Yes read it. Listen to it.
- By Josef Sikelianos on 08-24-24
By: Sam Lipsyte
-
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult
- A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere
- By: Maria Bamford
- Narrated by: Maria Bamford
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it. In Bamford’s “trademark blend of disarming intimacy and dark whimsy” (Publishers Weekly), Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult brings us on a quest to participate in something.
-
-
Hilarious and sincere
- By B. Bazzell on 09-06-23
By: Maria Bamford
-
Misfit
- Growing Up Awkward in the '80s
- By: Gary Gulman
- Narrated by: Gary Gulman
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian’s comedian, acclaimed for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. But after two stints in a psych ward, he found himself back in his mother’s house in Boston—living in his childhood bedroom at age forty-six, as he struggled to regain his mental health. That’s where Misfit begins. Then it goes way back. This is no ordinary book about growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the listener through every year of his childhood education, with detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny.
-
-
I get it
- By Karen Johnson on 10-02-23
By: Gary Gulman
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Shards
- A Novel
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis
- Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
-
-
Don’t read if you have a weak stomach
- By Judith on 02-13-23
-
Happy-Go-Lucky
- By: David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most.
-
-
Great except for an audio glitch
- By Rynnkins on 06-01-22
By: David Sedaris
-
No One Left to Come Looking for You
- A Novel
- By: Sam Lipsyte
- Narrated by: Sam Lipsyte
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Manhattan’s East Village, 1993. Dive bars, DIY music venues, shady weirdos, and hard drugs are plentiful. Crime is high, but rent is low, luring hopeful, creative kids from sleepy suburbs around the country. One of these is Jack S., a young New Jersey rock musician. Just a few days before his band’s biggest gig, their lead singer goes missing with Jack’s prized bass, presumably to hock it to feed his junk habit. Jack’s search for his buddy uncovers a sinister entanglement of crimes tied to local real estate barons looking to remake New York City.
-
-
Yes read it. Listen to it.
- By Josef Sikelianos on 08-24-24
By: Sam Lipsyte
-
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult
- A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere
- By: Maria Bamford
- Narrated by: Maria Bamford
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it. In Bamford’s “trademark blend of disarming intimacy and dark whimsy” (Publishers Weekly), Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult brings us on a quest to participate in something.
-
-
Hilarious and sincere
- By B. Bazzell on 09-06-23
By: Maria Bamford
-
Misfit
- Growing Up Awkward in the '80s
- By: Gary Gulman
- Narrated by: Gary Gulman
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, Gary Gulman had been the comedian’s comedian, acclaimed for his delight in language and his bracing honesty. But after two stints in a psych ward, he found himself back in his mother’s house in Boston—living in his childhood bedroom at age forty-six, as he struggled to regain his mental health. That’s where Misfit begins. Then it goes way back. This is no ordinary book about growing older and growing up. Gulman has an astonishing memory and takes the listener through every year of his childhood education, with detailed stories that are in turn alarming and riotously funny.
-
-
I get it
- By Karen Johnson on 10-02-23
By: Gary Gulman
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Shards
- A Novel
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis
- Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
-
-
Don’t read if you have a weak stomach
- By Judith on 02-13-23
-
Happy-Go-Lucky
- By: David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most.
-
-
Great except for an audio glitch
- By Rynnkins on 06-01-22
By: David Sedaris
-
Running the Light
- By: Sam Tallent, Kyle Kinane - foreword
- Narrated by: Greg Chaille, Tracy Chaille, Trae Crowder, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father - comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when the opportunity doesn't come - or worse - it comes and goes?
-
-
don't let comedians do a voice actors job
- By Scott Reesor on 07-09-21
By: Sam Tallent, and others
-
The Big Sleep
- Philip Marlowe, Book 1
- By: Raymond Chandler
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.
-
-
I miss Ray Porter
- By Kindle Customer on 03-22-22
By: Raymond Chandler
-
The Passenger
- By: Cormac McCarthy
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is three in the morning when Bobby Western plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the site are the pilot’s bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
-
-
It’s a new Cormac McCarthy
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-22
By: Cormac McCarthy
-
Faith, Hope and Carnage
- By: Nick Cave, Seán O'Hagan
- Narrated by: Nick Cave, Seán O'Hagan
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave’s inner life. Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with Seán O’Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief, and love. It draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic, and his dramatic transformation in recent years.
-
-
Enlightening
- By S. R. on 11-14-22
By: Nick Cave, and others
-
I Know This Much Is True
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Ken Howard
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the long awaited follow-up to the highly praised novel She's Come Undone, Dominick Birdsey must come to terms with himself, as well as with the schizophrenic twin brother he has spent his life both protecting and resenting.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Douglas on 03-20-08
By: Wally Lamb
-
Gone Girl
- A Novel
- By: Gillian Flynn
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 19 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge.
-
-
Demented, twisted, sick and I loved it!
- By Theodore on 01-20-13
By: Gillian Flynn
-
No Country for Old Men
- By: Cormac McCarthy
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cormac McCarthy, best-selling author of National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses, delivers his first new novel in seven years. Written in muscular prose, No Country for Old Men is a powerful tale of the West that moves at a blistering pace.
-
-
Exceptional, engrossing, frightening.
- By P. Giorgio on 07-27-13
By: Cormac McCarthy
-
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
- Stories
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King, Dylan Baker, Brooke Bloom, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A master storyteller at his best - the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story. Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King's finest gifts to his constant fan. "I made them especially for you," says King. "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth."
-
-
HE'S A CUP OF COFFEE
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-10-15
By: Stephen King
-
Cemetery Road
- A Novel
- By: Greg Iles
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 23 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age 18, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington DC. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow. His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol - and perhaps even to Washington.
-
-
Cemetery Road comes to Life...
- By shelley on 03-06-19
By: Greg Iles
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray
- By: Oscar Wilde
- Narrated by: Russell Tovey
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A disturbing tale of a young man's uncanny ability to remain both young and beautiful while descending into a life of heartless debauchery, The Picture of Dorian Gray was considered proof of both Wilde's genius and his perversion. Oscar Wilde's scandalous best seller of 1891 was one of the most damning pieces of evidence used against him in the trial that brought about his downfall.
-
-
A twisted tale of vanity and poisonous people
- By Shantastic on 10-02-19
By: Oscar Wilde
-
The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
-
-
"Grandly Entertaining"? Really?
- By Georgia Burns on 10-08-13
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
The Bonfire of the Vanities
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Wolfe's best-selling modern classic tells the story of Sherman McCoy, an elite Wall Street bond trader who has it all: wealth, power, prestige, a Park Avenue apartment, a beautiful wife, and an even more beautiful mistress - until one wrong turn sends Sherman spiraling downward into a humiliating fall from grace. A car accident in the Bronx involving Sherman, his girlfriend, and two young lower-class Black men sets a match to the incendiary racial and social tensions of 1980s New York City.
-
-
Big mistake
- By karen on 08-31-14
By: Tom Wolfe
Editorial reviews
How is it that Sam Lipsyte has not killed himself? This is a writer whose deeply intelligent sense of black comedy is a direct descendant from the bitter wellsprings of David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole, except firmly anchored in realism. Like an extended outtake from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men or A Confederacy of Dunces that substitutes the corporate end of academia for New Orleans, Lipsyte’s third novel is destined to delight in a way his previous two books did not. In fairness to Lipsyte, probably his initially bright career trajectory was cut short by the fact that his first book was released on 9/11, so reviewers had other things to think about. But it is precisely his experience with this type of tragic coincidence that informs the lives of his characters so well.
Lipsyte’s double-duty as narrator for his book leaves us doubly blessed. Told from the perspective of Milo Burke, a finder of funding at a mediocre school in New York, Lipsyte’s uncanny ear for dialogue really shines as Milo tries to remain respectably under the radar of a militaristic dean, sufficiently snooty in the company of an ideas tycoon with whom he went to art school, convincingly authoritative under the scrutiny of his toddler of terror, and attentively supportive to his cheating wife. Once upon a time, Milo was going to be a successful painter. But Milo is now basically an over-educated drone just trying to eke out a mildly respectable and not-too-schmucky sustainable life for himself and his crumbling family. His comparatively big break comes when an old acquaintance is interested in making a hefty donation to Milo’s school. If Milo can make it happen, he’ll be a hero. But Milo is not good at making things happen, or at being a hero. He is, at best, a wonderful loser.
The cadences of the assorted conversations going on in this book are so absolutely real that you’ll wonder if Lipsyte has been spying on you. He perfectly captures the despairing dialogue between a parent about to crack and a child who oscillates between naive violence, ceaseless rhetorical questioning, and practical selfishness. These traits are interestingly mirrored in the witty back and forths between Milo and Don. Don is the secret love child of Milo’s old acquaintance, and keeping Don happily under wraps is what Milo will have to do in exchange for securing his big donation. But Don is an unhappy smack junkie who lost both legs in Iraq, and he is not too interested in daddy’s hush money.
Lipsyte does not deliver a happy ending for anyone, because happy endings do not reflect reality, but he does deliver a satisfyingly solid treatise on the joyous, mysterious failure that is our maddeningly complex pursuit of staying alive. Lipsyte as author is no holds barred, but Lipsyte as narrator voices not one depressing note. You will want to cry, but you will laugh instead and hope that Sam Lipsyte lives long enough to deliver many more works of such profoundly true meditations on our frail modern life. Megan Volpert
Critic reviews
“If you've heard anything about Sam Lipsyte, you've probably heard that he's funny. Scabrously, deliriously, piss-yourself funny (his characters would no doubt find a dirtier, and funnier, way of putting it), drawing audible snorts even from the kind of people, such as the people in his novels, who are way too cool to laugh out loud . . . Lipsyte's prose arrows fly with gloriously weird spin, tracing punch-drunk curlicues before hitting their marks--or landing in some weird alternate.” —Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Review of Books
“Lipsyte's brand of absurdity is deeply rooted in the now. The recession, text messaging, reality TV--all are up for grabs. What's particularly effective is Lipsyte's acerbic yet subtle approach . . . But he's never simply bitter; one can always sense a yearning in this book, even at its most acidic moments.” —Kimberly King Parsons, Time Out New York (five stars)
“With this novel, Mr. Lipsyte has proven himself to be one of the most unapologetic voices of contemporary literature. He mines the sexual frustration of Philip Roth, combines it with the paranoia of Don DeLillo and fills the space in between with a cast of characters as absurd and enigmatic as anything in a Thomas Pynchon novel . . . The Ask is a hilarious book about failure; a scathing unhappy comedy obsessed with a culture that's obsessed with obsessions.” —Michael Miller, The New York Observer
Related to this topic
-
The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
-
-
excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
-
God-Shaped Hole
- A Novel
- By: Tiffanie DeBartolo
- Narrated by: Rachael Warren
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Beatrice Trixie Jordan replies to a personal ad, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming, effervescent 30-something free-spirit writer passionately seeking life. He possesses his own turns of phrase and ways of thinking and feeling that dissonantly harmonize with Trixie's off-center vision. As they rollercoaster through the joys and furies of their wrenching romance, they try to come to terms with the hurt brought about by both of their distant fathers who, in different ways, forsook them.
-
-
To see a fortune teller or not to see one...
- By Renee on 08-08-18
-
The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
-
-
Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
-
Domestic Violets
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Norman
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned 35, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day. The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords....
-
-
What a rollicking ride!
- By Pamela Harvey on 08-13-11
By: Matthew Norman
-
Every Anxious Wave
- By: Mo Daviau
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why would we need music if our lives were exactly as we wanted them to be? Karl Bender is a quiet guy who lives in three places: his bar, his apartment, and the cheap Mediterranean place on the corner that keeps him well fed with his daily portion of hummus and chicken shwarma. But that's all about to change. When he stumbles upon a time-traveling wormhole, Karl develops a business selling access to people who want to go back in time to hear their favorite bands.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Brit N Jonn Designs on 03-31-16
By: Mo Daviau
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
-
-
excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
-
God-Shaped Hole
- A Novel
- By: Tiffanie DeBartolo
- Narrated by: Rachael Warren
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Beatrice Trixie Jordan replies to a personal ad, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming, effervescent 30-something free-spirit writer passionately seeking life. He possesses his own turns of phrase and ways of thinking and feeling that dissonantly harmonize with Trixie's off-center vision. As they rollercoaster through the joys and furies of their wrenching romance, they try to come to terms with the hurt brought about by both of their distant fathers who, in different ways, forsook them.
-
-
To see a fortune teller or not to see one...
- By Renee on 08-08-18
-
The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
-
-
Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
-
Domestic Violets
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Norman
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned 35, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day. The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords....
-
-
What a rollicking ride!
- By Pamela Harvey on 08-13-11
By: Matthew Norman
-
Every Anxious Wave
- By: Mo Daviau
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why would we need music if our lives were exactly as we wanted them to be? Karl Bender is a quiet guy who lives in three places: his bar, his apartment, and the cheap Mediterranean place on the corner that keeps him well fed with his daily portion of hummus and chicken shwarma. But that's all about to change. When he stumbles upon a time-traveling wormhole, Karl develops a business selling access to people who want to go back in time to hear their favorite bands.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Brit N Jonn Designs on 03-31-16
By: Mo Daviau
-
Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
-
-
Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
-
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
-
-
Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
-
Private Citizens
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story's four whip-smart narrators - idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda - are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Area's maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other's lives once again.
-
-
Too dour and cynical.
- By Zanriel on 01-18-17
-
Lawn Boy
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?
-
-
CATEGORY AND SUMMARY MISLEADING
- By Gretchen on 05-01-18
By: Jonathan Evison
-
Kissing Games of the World
- By: Sandi Kahn Shelton
- Narrated by: Myra Platt
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if the one person you can't bear to be with is also the one person you can't bear to be without? Jamie McClintock is a free-spirited artist and single mother who has at last found peace and freedom sharing a farmhouse with an elderly man and his young grandson. But when the old man dies suddenly her idyllic country life comes to a halt as the old man's estranged son, Nate, returns to claim the house and his child.
-
-
Great Writer, Great Narrator ! Loved it!
- By Ms. Critic on 05-30-09
-
Disturbing the Peace
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To all appearances, John Wilder has all the trappings of success, circa 1960: a promising career in advertising, a loving family, a beautiful apartment, even a country home. John's evenings are spent with associates at quiet Manhattan lounges and his weekends with friends at glittering cocktail parties. But something deep within this seemingly perfect life has long since gone wrong.
-
-
7 hours and 27 minutes pure blisd
- By Mia on 01-05-13
By: Richard Yates
-
May We Be Forgiven
- By: A. M. Homes
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May We Be Forgiven, a darkly comic novel of 21st-century domestic life, stars Harold Silver, a historian who's always been jealous of his successful brother, George. But when the hot-tempered George is institutionalized for committing a violent act, Harold finds himself comforting his brother's wife and children. What follows is a scathing examination of a family so fractured it may never be whole again.
-
-
Give this one a try!
- By JWB on 02-13-13
By: A. M. Homes
-
Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
-
-
Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
-
She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
-
-
Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
-
The Ritual Bath
- The First Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Novel
- By: Faye Kellerman
- Narrated by: Mitchell Greenberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.
-
-
Good Read
- By Eva Gannon on 08-21-08
By: Faye Kellerman
-
The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
-
-
Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
-
The Complete Lockpick Pornography
- By: Joey Comeau
- Narrated by: Teddy Hamilton
- Length: 3 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Combining two novellas into one volume, this collection explores the effects of prejudice and the ramifications of violence with a slightly unhinged sense of humor and unexpected tenderness. Lockpick Pornography, originally published in 2005, is a gender-queer adventure story that was not widely available until now. We All Got It Coming presents the experiences of a young couple dealing with the aftermath of an act of violence. From kidnapping the son of a "family values" politician to violent confrontation, these are characters who fight back.
By: Joey Comeau
-
How It Went Down
- By: Kekla Magoon
- Narrated by: Cherise Boothe, Shari Peele, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 16-year-old Tariq Johnson dies from two gunshot wounds, his community is thrown into an uproar. Tariq was black. The shooter, Jack Franklin, is white. In the aftermath of Tariq's death, everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events line up. Day by day, new twists further obscure the truth. Tariq's friends, family, and community struggle to make sense of the tragedy, and to cope with the hole left behind when a life is cut short.
-
-
gives perspective on race.
- By J. Carey on 08-17-17
By: Kekla Magoon
What listeners say about The Ask
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- barbara
- 02-03-19
Overall tedious but occasional flareups of humor
This book began with a bang...had me laughing out loud a couple of times. Then it seemed to get lost in the shuffle. The central character was hard to find amidst the shifting plot lines, and the plot was hard to find amidst the shifting characters. I wasn't sure where the author was trying to go, and in fact, I don't know that he really knew where he was trying to go.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- Joshua
- 04-28-11
The beginning was very caustic and very good.
This is a great book if you're an artist who went to art school and/or if you work in academia - biting and accurate personality profiles, and unflinchingly meticulous descriptions of university office politics - at least at the beginning. Sadly the narrative dives into a more predictable, heavy handed, and less specific plot with less realistic, more cartoonish characters. I wished it would have meandered in the lives of the more ordinary, bitter office workers. I got the feeling that someone told the author to hurry up and finish the book somewhere in the middle. I like the first person narration, however. It was interestingly noticeable that the reader never got to find out the viewpoint of the other characters, and was forced to be as blind as the main character.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- D. Martin
- 07-01-12
Portrait of liberal guilt
So as a liberal, I've always found conservatives' obsession with the concept of liberal guilt amusing. To hear them tell it, liberals just can't get over the whole killing the Indians and enslaving the blacks thing, and all the men have vagina envy.
Well, none of the liberals I know are anything like that, but the main character in this book clearly is, and as far as I could tell, Lipsyte doesn't mean this ironically. Milo is jealous and bitter at those who have gotten more out of life than him, and simultaneously sorry for everyone who has less. He works a crummy job asking wealthy people to donate money to an art school for self-indulgent and privileged students, and is fired after a false allegation of sexual harassment by a male colleague. He's rehired on the sole condition that he can get a large check out of a former college friend, who has a special personal mission he thinks Milo would be perfect for. Meanwhile, Milo's wife is cheating on him and refuses to stop, and his son is enrolled in an experimental daycare, which is constantly causing problems.
One of the funniest scenes has Milo asking a colleague whether she would read a book about a guy like him. No, she replies, he's just not relatable. I won't go quite that far. Lipsyte is clearly a writer of some talent (I haven't read any of his other works). But in this book he seems obsessed with what strikes me as a caricature of the political left. To be clear, this is an at least somewhat approving portrait. Lipsyte is certainly not a conservative offering up Milo as a cautionary tale. But neither does he offer us any hope in Milo's struggles. Nobody really cares about Milo, including the reader, because he is an inherently sad and unlikable person, and because in the grand scheme of things he's not nearly as badly off as some others. Milo is simply stuck in the system, every bit as much at the end of the novel as at the beginning. Typical liberal, always blaming society for his problems.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Michele Kellett
- 04-20-10
Black black stuff
Lipsyte loves paradox, puns and all manner of wordplay, and this book is a real delight as far as that goes. The plot is satisfyingly convoluted, and well told. Every single character, except the protagonist, is insulting and murderously aggressive toward all the other characters; every character, except the protagonist, has reached adulthood with a more or less coherent identity based in aggression. Though amusing, in a nasty way, they all sound alike, and a tender soul is grateful her own world doesn't contain more than a few of them. The world of this book, however, contains nothing but. The protagonist, Miles, is struggling for maturity, decency and basic coherence against overwhelming self-loathing, self-pity, resentment, envy and paralysis. As a consequence, Miles is someone you don't want to spend 10 minutes with, much less 8+ hours. Still, the story rocks along, and I stuck with it, but perhaps I'm not sophisticated enough to enjoy cruelty, which is mostly what this book is about.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Chris Reich
- 05-02-10
Just OK
There are some great lines in this book and some wonderful dialogue.
So, I was mildly entertained.
The plot, or storyline is a mess. I can't recommend this book unless you have absolutely nothing to do.
The premise is great. Failure to execute.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- vicktuesday
- 08-07-18
Funny and Sardonic
Sam Lipsyte has a keen enough understanding to tackle and write about complex systems such as nonprofit fundraising but with a sardonic edge. He's a great narrator, too.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- TB
- 09-06-11
Ear pollution!
I tried to listen, listened too long. No redeeming value. I think he just goes for shock value, near obscenity. Gratuitous. Trying to be an American Nick Hornby. I was hopeful. But it misses the mark by a long shot. Disappointing. A waste of time. (And I was stuck in the car with nothing else to listen to.) And I felt like I needed a shower. Don't buy this book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Paul L. Sungenis
- 06-13-10
Can't follow the story because of the narration.
This is the latest of a (sadly) growing number of books that publishers have inexplicably chosen to have read by their author, when the author has no dramatic ability and no apparent director to oversee the production. Sam Lipsyte's droning reading keeps you guessing which characters are saying what in long conversations, and eventually proves distracting enough to keep you from following the story at all. This is one to avoid.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nicholas
- 07-16-15
Dark, haunting, hilarious
I cannot remember if a book has ever made me both laugh out loud and sit in depressive contemplation as much as this one. The latter side-effect may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it a powerful experience. Through perhaps more style than substance, Lipsyte manages to paint beautiful rants of a malcontent writer that somehow also captures the setting perfectly as well: elite America at the start of its decline still struggling with denial over the impact of inequality on its downward spiral.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Matt G.
- 06-14-10
Lipsyte's THE ASK tuned
Having read his hilarious HOMELAND, I was intrigued to hear Lipsyte perform his new book, THE ASK. Here is a writer extremely attentive to language: he builds tremendous humor out of his discoveries of eccentric phrases, institutional jargon, ad-speak, and, well, the strange agency of the language governing our lives to breed creatures apart from those species concerned with communication, transparency, and honesty. He isn't precious with the stuff -- he is extremely ruthless with his observations of spoken language and the dead phrases we inflict on one another. Hearing his reading of THE ASK was not only the chance for me to catch a strong reader (you can tell Lipsyte enjoys reading, must really kill on the bookstore appearance circuit) but also was the opportunity for me to catch a secondary layer of meaning, built up through the nuance of highly intentional delivery and phrasing. It is gallows humor on the page -- but somehow with the author teasing you carefully through it, the audiobook deepens as both "dark" and "comedy."
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful