-
The Big Hurt
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Erika Schickel
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 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 $21.83
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
This complex memoir shows what it was like growing up in the shadow of a literary father and a neglectful mother, getting thrown out of boarding school after being seduced by a teacher, and all of the later-life consequences that ensue.
In 1982, Erika Schickel was expelled from her East Coast prep school for sleeping with a teacher. She was that girl - rebellious, precocious, and macking for love. Seduced, caught, and then whisked away in the night to avoid scandal, Schickel’s provocative, searing, and darkly funny memoir, The Big Hurt, explores the question, How did that girl turn out?
Schickel came of age in the 1970s, the progeny of two writers: Richard Schickel, the prominent film critic for Time magazine, and Julia Whedon, a melancholy mid-list novelist. In the wake of her parents’ ugly divorce, Erika was packed off to a bohemian boarding school in the Berkshires.
The Big Hurt tells two coming-of-age stories: one of a lost girl in a predatory world, and the other of that girl grown up, who in reckoning with her past ends up recreating it with a notorious LA crime novelist, blowing up her marriage and casting herself into the second exile of her life.
The Big Hurt looks at a legacy of shame handed down through a maternal bloodline and the cost of epigenetic trauma. It shines a light on the haute culture of 1970s Manhattan that made girls grow up too fast. It looks at the long shadow cast by great, monstrously self-absorbed literary lives and the ways in which women pin themselves like beautiful butterflies to the spreading board of male ego.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
All the Colors Came Out
- A Father, a Daughter, and a Lifetime of Lessons
- By: Kate Fagan
- Narrated by: Kathleen Fagan, Kate Fagan
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kate Fagan and her father forged their relationship on the basketball court, bonded by sweaty high fives and a dedication to the New York Knicks. But as Kate got older, her love of the sport and her closeness with her father grew complicated. The formerly inseparable pair drifted apart. The lessons that her father instilled in her about the game, and all her memories of sharing the court with him over the years, were a distant memory. When Chris Fagan was diagnosed with ALS, Kate decided that something had to change.
-
-
Very reflective and therapeutic
- By Dani L on 06-24-21
By: Kate Fagan
-
My Remarkable Journey
- A Memoir
- By: Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick, Katherine Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times best seller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change.
-
-
Amazing Woman, Interesting Life
- By Grace on 08-20-21
By: Katherine Johnson, and others
-
How to Be Human
- An Autistic Man’s Guide to Life
- By: Jory Fleming, Lyric Winik
- Narrated by: Jory Fleming, Lyric Winik
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a child, Jory Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for people, and couldn’t manage the outside world. Slightly more than a decade later, he was bound for England, selected to attend one of the world’s premier universities. How to Be Human explores life amid a world constructed for neurotypical brains when yours is not. But the miracle of this book is that instead of dwelling on Jory’s limitations, those who inhabit the neurotypical world will begin to better understand their own.
-
-
Revealing
- By Helena Abreu on 06-05-21
By: Jory Fleming, and others
-
Pastoral Song
- By: James Rebanks
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in England's Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognizable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song.
-
-
Peter Noble's narration ruined this book for me.
- By sarah clayton on 08-18-21
By: James Rebanks
-
The Power of the Dog
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Savage, Annie Proulx - afterword
- Narrated by: Chad Michael Collins, Annie Proulx
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of domestic tyranny, brutal masculinity, and thrilling defiance from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in American literature. The novel tells the story of two brothers—one magnetic but cruel, the other gentle and quiet—and of the mother and son whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already tenuous peace.
-
-
Abrupt Ending and Hard to Follow Story
- By Trevor on 09-08-21
By: Thomas Savage, and others
-
How Lulu Lost Her Mind
- By: Rachel Gibson
- Narrated by: Stephanie Einstein
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lou Ann Hunter’s mother, Patricia, has always had a passionate nature, which explains why she’s been married and divorced five times and spooned enough male patients to be ousted from three elderly care facilities. She also has Alzheimer’s, which is why she wants to spend the rest of her life surrounded by childhood memories at Sutton Hall, her family’s decrepit plantation home in Louisiana. Lou Ann, aka Lulu the Love Guru, has built an empire preaching sex, love, and relationship advice to the women of America - mostly by defying the example her mother has set for her.
-
-
What Happened To The Romance?!!!
- By Annette Williams on 09-22-20
By: Rachel Gibson
-
All the Colors Came Out
- A Father, a Daughter, and a Lifetime of Lessons
- By: Kate Fagan
- Narrated by: Kathleen Fagan, Kate Fagan
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kate Fagan and her father forged their relationship on the basketball court, bonded by sweaty high fives and a dedication to the New York Knicks. But as Kate got older, her love of the sport and her closeness with her father grew complicated. The formerly inseparable pair drifted apart. The lessons that her father instilled in her about the game, and all her memories of sharing the court with him over the years, were a distant memory. When Chris Fagan was diagnosed with ALS, Kate decided that something had to change.
-
-
Very reflective and therapeutic
- By Dani L on 06-24-21
By: Kate Fagan
-
My Remarkable Journey
- A Memoir
- By: Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick, Katherine Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times best seller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change.
-
-
Amazing Woman, Interesting Life
- By Grace on 08-20-21
By: Katherine Johnson, and others
-
How to Be Human
- An Autistic Man’s Guide to Life
- By: Jory Fleming, Lyric Winik
- Narrated by: Jory Fleming, Lyric Winik
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a child, Jory Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for people, and couldn’t manage the outside world. Slightly more than a decade later, he was bound for England, selected to attend one of the world’s premier universities. How to Be Human explores life amid a world constructed for neurotypical brains when yours is not. But the miracle of this book is that instead of dwelling on Jory’s limitations, those who inhabit the neurotypical world will begin to better understand their own.
-
-
Revealing
- By Helena Abreu on 06-05-21
By: Jory Fleming, and others
-
Pastoral Song
- By: James Rebanks
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in England's Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognizable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song.
-
-
Peter Noble's narration ruined this book for me.
- By sarah clayton on 08-18-21
By: James Rebanks
-
The Power of the Dog
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Savage, Annie Proulx - afterword
- Narrated by: Chad Michael Collins, Annie Proulx
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of domestic tyranny, brutal masculinity, and thrilling defiance from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in American literature. The novel tells the story of two brothers—one magnetic but cruel, the other gentle and quiet—and of the mother and son whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already tenuous peace.
-
-
Abrupt Ending and Hard to Follow Story
- By Trevor on 09-08-21
By: Thomas Savage, and others
-
How Lulu Lost Her Mind
- By: Rachel Gibson
- Narrated by: Stephanie Einstein
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lou Ann Hunter’s mother, Patricia, has always had a passionate nature, which explains why she’s been married and divorced five times and spooned enough male patients to be ousted from three elderly care facilities. She also has Alzheimer’s, which is why she wants to spend the rest of her life surrounded by childhood memories at Sutton Hall, her family’s decrepit plantation home in Louisiana. Lou Ann, aka Lulu the Love Guru, has built an empire preaching sex, love, and relationship advice to the women of America - mostly by defying the example her mother has set for her.
-
-
What Happened To The Romance?!!!
- By Annette Williams on 09-22-20
By: Rachel Gibson
-
Billie Eilish
- In Her Own Words
- By: Billie Eilish
- Narrated by: Billie Eilish, Maggie Baird, Patrick O’Connell
- Length: 1 hr and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billie Eilish is a 21st-century global pop phenomenon. Uncompromising and unapologetic, between her record-breaking, award-winning music and artistry, it's no surprise that she has become one of the biggest and most loved artists of her generation. Published simultaneously with the book, this stand-alone audio is full of exclusive, unique content. Capturing the essence of Billie inside and out, offering listeners personal glimpses into her childhood, her life on tour, and more, this audio edition is essential for any fan.
-
-
Not what I thought
- By Lisa M. Hopkins-Kaplan on 05-17-21
By: Billie Eilish
-
All the Lonely People
- By: Mike Gayle
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Birdpaints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfillment. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he receives some good news - good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that will force him out again, into a world he has long since turned his back on.
-
-
For all the lonely and not-so-lonely people
- By R. Sharma on 08-22-21
By: Mike Gayle
-
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
- The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
- By: Rebecca Donner
- Narrated by: Rebecca Donner
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.
-
-
Riveting narrative non fiction
- By Sarah Q on 10-22-21
By: Rebecca Donner
-
The Godmothers
- A Novel
- By: Camille Aubray
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet the Godmothers: Filomena is a clever and resourceful war refugee with a childhood secret, who comes to America to wed Mario, the family's favored son. Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family's only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.
-
-
Easy Enjoyable Read
- By Bunny on 06-23-21
By: Camille Aubray
-
Freedom Road
- By: William Lashner
- Narrated by: James Daniels
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oliver Cross is fresh out of jail. His plans for the future are to live out his days in regret, back pain, and a bottle of Lone Star. But when he finds out his granddaughter, a wild child who reminds him of his late wife, has vanished - bless her hell-raising heart - Oliver jumps parole. With a sketchy teen and an abandoned dog, he hits the blacktop to find her. On the road and on the run from a vengeful Russian drug dealer, Oliver finds himself on a trip across America and into his own past, fueled by fumes from a Ford F-250 and a reason to live.
-
-
Boys and Girls in Armor Ride Dragons into Battle
- By Empress Karen on 01-17-20
By: William Lashner
-
Baggage
- Tales from a Fully Packed Life
- By: Alan Cumming
- Narrated by: Alan Cumming
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is absolutely no logical reason why I am here. The life trajectory my nationality and class and circumstances portended for me was not even remotely close to the one I now navigate. But logic is a science and living is an art. The release I felt in writing my first memoir, Not My Father’s Son, was matched only by how my speaking out empowered so many to engage with their own trauma. I was reminded of the power of my words and the absolute duty of authenticity.
-
-
Entertaining but a little Helter-Skelter
- By Deborah N on 11-16-21
By: Alan Cumming
-
We Keep the Dead Close
- A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence
- By: Becky Cooper
- Narrated by: Becky Cooper
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious 23-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.
-
-
Needs a great editor
- By Leslie G. on 11-13-20
By: Becky Cooper
-
Just Between Us
- By: Rebecca Drake
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Morgan Hallett, Jeanine Bartel, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alison, Julie, Sarah, Heather. Four friends living the suburban ideal. Their jobs are steady, their kids are healthy. They're as beautiful as their houses. But each of them has a dirty little secret, and hidden behind the veneer of their perfect lives is a crime and a mystery that will consume them all.
-
-
Entertaining but dreadfully implausible
- By Andi on 02-07-18
By: Rebecca Drake
-
The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All
- A Novel
- By: Josh Ritter
- Narrated by: Josh Ritter
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, 99-year-old Weldon Applegate recounts his life in all its glory, filled with tall tales writ large with murder, mayhem, avalanches, and bootlegging. It’s the story of dark pine forests brewing with ancient magic, and Weldon’s struggle as a boy to keep his father’s inherited timber claim, the Lost Lot, from the ravenous clutches of Linden Laughlin.
-
-
That was a pretty good story….
- By Linda on 10-02-21
By: Josh Ritter
-
Count the Ways
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Maynard
- Narrated by: Joyce Maynard
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times best-selling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family - from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives
-
-
AA Deeply Felt Story that Sometimes Goes Too Far Afield…
- By Molly on 07-18-21
By: Joyce Maynard
-
Educated
- A Memoir
- By: Tara Westover
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University.
-
-
The Other Side of Idaho's Mountains
- By Darwin8u on 03-28-18
By: Tara Westover
-
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- By: Stephen Chbosky
- Narrated by: Noah Galvin
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant "wallflower" Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.
-
-
You're Not Too Old To Read This
- By Anonymous User on 08-06-18
By: Stephen Chbosky
Critic reviews
"I picked up Erika Schickel's memoir and the world disappeared for the next two days. I was transported and consumed by Schickel's hypnotic unspooling of her troubled, sexed-up adolescence and the way the legacy of that time followed her like a black dog into midlife. Beautifully written, intensely relatable, and fueled by incendiary fury and love, The Big Hurt belongs on the shelf with a small number of memoirs that rearranged my world-view and maybe even a few of my cells. I loved this book." (Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble)
"One of the top five books I've ever read, don't remember what the other four were. Wowee." (Sandra Tsing Loh, author of The Madwoman in the Volvo)
"The Big Hurt fulfills the promise of which too many memoirs fall short: it takes the vagaries and vicissitudes of the human heart and elevates them to the level of social, even political, inquiry. Erika Schickel is not just an interrogator of her own psyche but an interpreter of the times - the current era as well as the decades that led us here." (Meghan Daum, author of The Problem with Everything)
Related to this topic
-
Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
-
-
Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
-
Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
-
-
A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
-
Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
-
-
Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
-
He Came in with It
- A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.
-
-
So Beautifully Written
- By Michael on 08-01-22
By: Miriam Feldman
-
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
- By: Danielle Evans
- Narrated by: Daniel Deadwyler, Jeanette Illidge, Je Nie Fleming, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
-
-
things we do to oursekves
- By Jamintel on 02-06-23
By: Danielle Evans
-
Surfside Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Nantucket woman returns home to find that reunions aren’t always simple, in this heartwarming novel from the New York Times bestselling author. Keely Green always dreamed of leaving the beautiful shores of Nantucket to become a writer. Now she’s a bestselling novelist living in New York City, attending glamorous cocktail parties, mingling with the literary elite, and dating a charming pediatric surgeon. But a moment of clarity strikes when Keely’s boyfriend suddenly wants to settle down and her editor rejects her latest novel.
-
-
Too fluffy!
- By LoRe Bolling on 07-10-19
By: Nancy Thayer
-
Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
-
-
Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
-
Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
-
-
A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
-
Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
-
-
Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
-
He Came in with It
- A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.
-
-
So Beautifully Written
- By Michael on 08-01-22
By: Miriam Feldman
-
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
- By: Danielle Evans
- Narrated by: Daniel Deadwyler, Jeanette Illidge, Je Nie Fleming, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.
-
-
things we do to oursekves
- By Jamintel on 02-06-23
By: Danielle Evans
-
Surfside Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Nantucket woman returns home to find that reunions aren’t always simple, in this heartwarming novel from the New York Times bestselling author. Keely Green always dreamed of leaving the beautiful shores of Nantucket to become a writer. Now she’s a bestselling novelist living in New York City, attending glamorous cocktail parties, mingling with the literary elite, and dating a charming pediatric surgeon. But a moment of clarity strikes when Keely’s boyfriend suddenly wants to settle down and her editor rejects her latest novel.
-
-
Too fluffy!
- By LoRe Bolling on 07-10-19
By: Nancy Thayer
-
My Body
- By: Emily Ratajkowski
- Narrated by: Emily Ratajkowski
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age 21, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.
-
-
so vain..
- By Emily Valdez on 01-10-22
-
As I Knew Him
- My Dad, Rod Serling
- By: Anne Serling
- Narrated by: Anne Serling
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To Anne Serling, the imposing figure the public saw hosting The Twilight Zone each week, intoning cautionary observations about fate, chance, and humanity, was not the father she knew. Her fun-loving dad would play on the floor with the dogs, had nicknames for everyone in the family, and was apt to put a lampshade on his head and break out in song. He was her best friend, her playmate, and her confidant. After his unexpected death at 50, Anne, just 20, was left stunned.
-
-
A Beautiful Tribute to a Wonderful Man
- By Becky on 04-12-20
By: Anne Serling
-
The Fourth Child
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Winter
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.
-
-
Just OK - Considered Bailing
- By Madeleine Homan on 04-18-21
By: Jessica Winter
-
The Baddest Bitch in the Room
- (Explicit Version)
- By: Sophia Chang
- Narrated by: Sophia Chang
- Length: 8 hrs
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophia Chang is a badass of the music industry. As the daughter of Korean immigrants in predominantly white suburban Vancouver, she grew up shunning the “model minority” myth. Armed with a fierce sense of independence, she moved to New York City and infiltrated the world of hip-hop, yet remained mostly in the shadows of the artists she supported. With her debut memoir, Sophia Chang is finally ready to grab the mic for herself.
-
-
Something in the music spoke to me...
- By Tina G. on 09-30-19
By: Sophia Chang
-
Scars and Stilettos - 2nd Edition
- By: Harmony Dust
- Narrated by: Harmony Dust
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scars and Stilettos: At 13, after being abandoned by her mother one summer and left to take care of her younger brother, Harmony becomes susceptible to a relationship that turns out to be toxic, abusive, and ultimately exploitative. She eventually finds herself working in a strip club at the age of 19, and her boyfriend becomes her pimp, controlling her every move and taking all of her money. Ultimately, she discovers a path to freedom and a whole new life.
-
-
A religious book
- By Amazonbuyer on 10-12-21
By: Harmony Dust
-
A Wild and Precious Life
- A Memoir
- By: Edie Windsor, Joshua Lyon
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Joshua Lyon
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
-
-
🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
- By Natalia Zimnoch on 10-15-19
By: Edie Windsor, and others
What listeners say about The Big Hurt
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- George
- 01-06-22
A Lot Of Tough Insights
How do you fix pathology? How do you fix patterns that don't work? How do you take a troubled past and make it into something else? How do you move on? There are two horrible relationships, two horrible men, Henry and Sam. Henry is hard to believe, especially his letters. Henry is beyond the cringe. Sam is a study in Macho Degeneration. How does anyone have two guys like this in one life? I guess people get locked into patterns with other people. In some ways CJ is the most depressing. She doesn't get into it, but he's like a young teen made into a sex toy at a boarding school. Eventually they pay him off. This brings up two problems, for me. First off, you pay him and it's like 'Ok, you were a prostitute and now we've paid you'. Then they use the NDA, no disclosure, to seal the deal. Basically, this guy was abused, lost his sexuality, in some sense. There is no treatment, as such. It doesn't seem like the author ever broke the pattern. She had the 'normal' family deal, and left that. It's hard to find the elements of a message here. Toward the end it's like the author is saying "Dear reader, let's not dig too deep". It's like some kind of Drama Addiction. Everything is drama. The book is an expose of toxic men, an endless stream of broken male sexuality. There needs to be more of a conclusion, some path to change. It's a view of a world I don't want to live in.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jessica Martin
- 04-12-24
So good!
Loved everything about this book. Excellent writing. Reflective and healing. Everything a memoir should be. Even though I don’t relate to the specifics of the story, it’s told in a way that I end up rooting for her through her “not so great” choices. Highly recommend
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joan W
- 02-11-24
Painfully honest.
I can’t begin to imagine how difficult this was for Erika to summon the traumas inflicted to the surface and then to find her voice to tell her story. Excellently written.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- BannerQueen
- 12-17-21
Talking about my generation…
This woman’s brave telling of her painful and confounding relationships with her parents, authority figures, and predatory men is unfortunately a kind of time capsule for many women who came of age during this era. It is well written with wit and candor, keeps one interested in what’s ahead, and is perfectly narrated. On a personal note, it articulated for me areas of my own life that I had been unwilling to see for what they were and I am grateful for her opening a way for personal growth and understanding.
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
- Andrea
- 12-17-21
A Touching, Treacherous Read
A riveting, touchingly penned memoir which makes you want to go for a walk or have coffee with Ericka Schickel, both to make sure she’s okay and to maybe hear her read the menu because she makes everything interesting. As I listened to stories of her girlhood, I couldn’t help harkening back to my adolescent self, acutely remembering the vulnerability, the dance of navigating the predators that so many of us did as a matter of course.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joanne
- 09-07-21
A terrific storyteller and master of description
This book kept me engaged in all ways: the honesty, the descriptions, the use of language, the intricacies of family, the predatory behaviors and attitudes that get explained away, the smart & creative women that get sucked into (and put up) with ridiculous men, and more!
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
-
Performance
-
Story
- George Young
- 12-14-21
This is a GEM of introspection! WOW!
Understanding our own lives is a challenge and few of us get it right. We either have done stupid things we can't take back, or we don't have a clue why we choose to do awful things, or, worse, we don't care why we do what we do.
It seems that only pain is able to bring us to some understanding by forcing us to poke at it afterwards to gain knowledge.
In her brilliant autobiography Erica Schickel has picked at her life with the care and focus, and intention to understand, like a coroner.
There is no grandstanding, there is no shyness, there is no fear of judgement by others. There is only the cutting back of layers of reality to explain to herself, and to us, what the hell happened in her life.
When I read biographies I judge them against two that I simply love for their honesty: U.S. Grant's memoirs and the diary of Samuel Pepys. Both men lived in times of great change and had major roles in them. Erica Schickel is a woman who has lived a modest life that happened during a rich, and mostly boring, era. She had no great role in it, nor does she describe any of the big historical events that happened in her time. She simply tells the story of her life. How can that compare to Grant's and Pepys's? HONESTY. Grant is one of the most remarkable men in history for having done great things but with zero ego. Pepys was a nasty, selfish, careful man, who wrote in a shorthand he was sure few could penetrate, so he wrote exactly what he was thinking, leaving behind as brilliant a portrait of his times, as of his mind. Erica Schickel has created an autobiography that is as rich, honest, and potent, as Grant's and Pepys's. At one point in her book she quotes her father saying that writers must tell stories for others to be able to understand their own lives better. Erica Schickel certainly does that.
I have been thinking about what she wrote and her understanding of her life since I finished the book yesterday. I listened to her reading her own words and she is a master not only of writing about her experiences, but also of narrating them. I felt I was in the presence of a friend describing her life as sincerely as she could to a sympathetic listener. And I was a very sympathetic listener because I felt she was giving me her life with open hands: this demands a respectful, thoughtful, listening.
As I listened to her own words, and extensive quotes from her father's letters to her, of her mother's cold behaviour, the indifference, selfishness, or plain criminality of lovers or sexual predators, in her life, I kept thinking of "theory of mind."
Ultimately, I believe, if we are able to imagine what others will be thinking about our actions, we'll be able to act properly. The people who hurt Erica Schickel all seem to me to be lacking in the ability to imagine the result of their actions in the minds of others. Of course, we don't expect sexual predators to care about the harm they cause in the minds of the people they hurt because they are selfish. But those closest to Erica Schickel seem unable to understand either how to see into Erica's mind, or how their actions will be understood by her. Her father writes with such clarity but his behaviour, from his marriage for influence, to his sexual behaviour, reveal a man so unaware of himself and others, that it's a wonder his daughter could soar above such indifference. Her mother, dying, has a sudden awareness of how she abandoned Erica when she was a struggling teen, and that is impressive, if way too late, even if Erica appreciates it.
As Thoreau wrote, we all live lives desperately trying to learn as we live. We are rarely completely successful. Some of us act selfishly and have relatively happy lives. Some of us are predators of others, often successful in our crimes by being unpunished. Still others act without malice, getting hurt, hurting others, and, finally, before it's too late, come to understand how complex life is, seeking justice, extending forgiveness, standing before others naked, unafraid, and, well, human, honestly human, in the end.
When I read history I often wonder what the life of a person was really like in their time. When I read the words of Grant and Pepys I come as close to that knowledge as words can bring us. When I listened to the words of Erica Schickel I felt the same intimacy, honesty, understanding.
I am sure digital libraries of the future will be lined with the lives of the great, the infamous, who made history. But somewhere in that ocean of digits there will be autobiographies like Erica Schickel's, which are just as potent and important, because they will tell us what it meant to be human at a particular moment in history.
As well, reading Schickel's words, others will feel their own sense of self. Having comprehended herself and others, Erica Schickel has lived, and taught, theory of mind. I come away from her autobiography with better understanding of the behaviour of others and of myself. Schickel is to be admired for that.
When the West is no more. When the tyrants against human happiness and honesty again rule the world, I am happy to know that Erica Schickel's book will be out there, like a middle finger extended, saying I matter! And that is the most powerful statement most of us ever get to make.
Wow, what a great autobiography.
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
- Wanjsash
- 01-18-22
Well done...
Beautifully written and narrated! I loved her play of words and descriptions and highly recommend it
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Karen
- 08-06-22
Brutally honest
Brutally honest and relatable - brought me to tears- the narration was excellent - I didn’t know til the end that the author was the narrator.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Yoga707
- 09-05-21
beautiful book!
Beautifully written story interweaving so many profound aspects of the author's life with toxic cultural norms. Funny, poignant and profound.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful