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The UnAmericans
- Stories
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
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Editorial reviews
Publisher's summary
The UnAmericans, a stunning exploration of characters shaped by the forces of history, is the debut work of fiction by Molly Antopol, a 2013 National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree.
An absentee father, a former dissident from communist-era Prague, needles his adult daughter for details about her newly commissioned play when he fears it will cast him in an unflattering light. An actor, imprisoned during the Red Scare for playing up his communist leanings to get a part with a leftist film director, is shamed by his act when he reunites with his precocious young son. An Israeli soldier, forced to defend a settlement filled with American religious families, still pines for a chance to discover the United States for himself. A young Israeli journalist, left unemployed after America’s most recent economic crash, questions her life path when she begins dating a middle-aged widower still in mourning for his wife. And in the book’s final story, a tour de force spanning three continents and three generations of women, a young American and her Israeli husband are forced to reconsider their marriage after the death of her dissident art-collecting grandmother.
Again and again, Molly Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
- Winner of the 2015 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award
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Story
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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The Rest of Her Life
- By: Laura Moriarty
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy, the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community.
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Obnoxious musical interludes ruin the story
- By Joan on 12-25-11
By: Laura Moriarty
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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
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Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
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The Daisy Children
- A Novel
- By: Sofia Grant
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When Katie Garrett gets the news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston and travels to rural Texas. There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly and flamboyant, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.
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Multigenerational storyline lacked dignity
- By John F. Oldani, Jr. on 06-07-24
By: Sofia Grant
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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Garden Spells
- By: Sarah Addison Allen
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.
Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.
Together again in the house they grew up in, the Waverley sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy - if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom - or with each other.
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I so want to give it 5 stars...!!!!
- By Joihelene on 10-09-10
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Lost Lake
- By: Sarah Addison Allen
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future. That was half a lifetime ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband, George, is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone.
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Pure Sarah Addison Allen
- By tooonce72 on 01-27-14
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If I Forget You
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from alternating points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair.
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Good, but not great.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-16
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The Golden State
- A Novel
- By: Lydia Kiesling
- Narrated by: Amanda Dolan
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In Lydia Kiesling's razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent - her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a "processing error" - Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.
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Tedious read but delightful reader Amanda Dolan
- By Eric on 02-14-19
By: Lydia Kiesling
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The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
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If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
What listeners say about The UnAmericans
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Huey
- 03-20-19
weak
the stories were incomplete and led to wrongheaded conclusions. there was the possibility of a wonderful outcome in every story, but that's not where they were heading before they left the reader hanging.
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- ag435
- 12-23-22
Every story is a punch in the gut
This is a rare collection. Antopol has this way of putting into focus this specific kind of loneliness of being unmoored, in the way we can be through the generations, in a sort of historical way, in a way that is difficult to articulate. These stories are poetry in their essence. As quintessentially Jewish as anything I’ve read!
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- W Perry Hall
- 02-07-14
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
"The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
This quote was brought to mind by the final steamroller of a story, "Retrospective," in this wonderful collection of thought-provoking stories. I appreciated all but one of the 7 other stories, which revolve mostly around Jews in World War II Europe, communists and the red scare during the McCarthy era, and Israel. I cannot begin to discuss all of the stories here, so I'll just hit some of my high points.
While the stories involve so many relationships and emotions, the common thread seemed to be the character’s revelation of self through loneliness, including: an elderly widower, remarried late and wanting to belong to an old world culture (or a religion); an Israeli soldier’s need for his amputee brother’s love and to be an important part of his small family contrasted with his selfish feelings for the bro’s girl and his guilt from what is on track to be much more; loneliness borne of fear and resentment that comes from being a 13-year-old Jewish girl escaping through sewers and living hungry and in hiding during the coldest winter ever; isolation from a daughter and loss of status in the world; a daughter’s loneliness from normal society outside the narrow world of her father, a communist party leader in the U.S. during the Eisenhower years, and her eagerness to do anything to escape; and, a man’s loneliness from the loss of his relationship with his wife and 10-year-old son caused by his selfishness and ego.
In “Retrospective,” which I consider the best short story I’ve read in many years, Ms. Antopol quilts the mind with a vivid landscape over which the reader thinks she/he knows the way. [[Seen a lot of this before, know where we’re headed. Turbulence, but set her on cruise control; ahh ..., four more to go, take foot off gas and coast; two more, put right foot easily on brake, and ..... WHAM!]]
And yet, this was no contrived shock ending. I wish I could do justice to the author's work by adequately describing my jumbled and racing thought and how the final scene was so well-laid that it rendered my heart heavy and left me feeling so alone that my only remedy seemed to be my eternal consciousness and my faith. I recovered, but that is one that stays around in your head for a while.
I plan to purchase the print version because I’d like to read a few of these again and mine them for the gold I know is there.
Ms. Van Dyck’s talented narration enhanced these stories as an experience–in sound as well as in sight and mind.
I highly recommend this book.
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5 people found this helpful
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- blake
- 12-13-14
I tried, I really did.
Would you try another book from Molly Antopol and/or Jennifer Van Dyck?
Very unlikely. I came away unsatisfied and somewhat disappointed.
What could Molly Antopol have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Provided more synthesis between the characters' actions and their personalities. I believe she felt it was obvious as she wove her tales but the idiosyncrasies and contradictory natures of the characters often induced them to say and do things that felt odd and disjointed. Also, each ending seemed premature and raw - a bit too clever, graduate school English Lit for my tastes.
Which scene was your favorite?
The conversation in the tree at the kibbutz.
Did The UnAmericans inspire you to do anything?
Yes. Read more than three or four reviews before I use a credit on a book.
Any additional comments?
I couldn't shake the feeling that the author was attempting a dynastic style even though the stories are not connected. Had she succeeded this book could have been as great as Salinger's Glass family stories. Oh well...
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- MidwestGeek
- 05-04-14
Sensational stories! Brilliant new author.
Molly Antopol is a wonderful first-time author with a clarity of expression and insight into human behavior that is astonishing. Time and again I was surprised by the unusual degree of self-awareness shown by her characters. This collection of stories mostly take place between about 1943-1953, long before she was born. Their locale varies from San Francisco to Jerusalem to Belarus. Although her themes surround WWII and its aftermath, especially for Jews, the stories encompass universal issues. The title refers obliquely to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, whose activities in the late 1940's resulted in the creation of Hollywood blacklists of professionals in the movie industry and the jailing of 10 men. One of her stories deals directly with the personal consequences of this tragedy.
Jennifer van Dyck's reading is good, but she makes no attempt to speak in character or to use different voices. It took me a little while to get used to men speaking in a female voice, and her range of emotion is limited. The strength of the writing comes through anyway. For those of you expecting more from a narrator, I encourage you to read the book instead since the narration adds little.
Finishing the book, I wanted to know more about this author. She wrote an interesting commentary on her namesake village, Antopol, in the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog (Jan. 29, 2014). There are interviews with her in "The Times of Israel" (Feb. 15, 2014) and The Rumpus (Feb. 17, 2014). She divides her time between San Francisco and Israel, when she isn't traveling elsewhere. I look forward to reading her first full-length novel.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Lissa Goldman
- 12-25-14
The most inappropriate narration ever
I have never heard a more inappropriate narration, and I have listened to well over 100 audio books. All of the characters were Jewish and some of the stories were set in Israel. The narrator did not pronounce one name, location, city or expression correctly. I felt as if she had absolutely no connection to the stories she was narrating. In addition, I found her voice very irritating and also not connected emotionally to the stories .
This is unfortunate as the stories were all interesting and left me thinking of the characters long after the story ended. I recommend reading this book.
Isn't there more oversight as how the narrators narrate the story and correct mispronunciations? It was so irritating!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jami
- 08-21-17
Short Story Collection
This was an interesting collection of short stories with well developed characters. I enjoyed that they stories and characters were varied; although I liked some more than others, there were none in the collection that I didn't like. The narration was solid and added to the enjoyment of the book.
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- David and Shoshana Cooper
- 05-05-15
Narrator mispronounces Hebrew
A powerful and auspicious first book. Unfortunately audible insists on hiring narrators to read books with foreign vocabulary who have no idea how to correctly pronounce the foreign words. Of the many Hebrew words and phrases that appear in this English language audiobook the narrator did not correctly pronounce even one. Books with a significant amount of foreign words should be read by bilingual narrators who can pronounce the foreign words correctly. That said, don't let this shortcoming prevent you from listening to this fine book.
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- RAD
- 01-17-20
Like a Writing workshop
Stories did not go far but writing skills and empathy for charters was high. Just not too compelling. Author has great skills and would read again in a longer form or deeper story. BUT, worry story may still be only about character development. So will check reviews of story plot and that something happens in addition to the angst of life and inner feelings of the characters. Those are good but not enough for me.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-20-21
Random personal conflicts without resolution
The title says it all. It was senseless display of pain.
I want a refund
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