Toad
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Christina Delaine
About this listen
"Delaine has the perfect deadpan narration that conveys the hopelessness of our protagonist."- Booklist
Sally Gunnar has withdrawn from the world.
She spends her days alone at home, reading drugstore mysteries, polishing the doorknobs, waxing the floors. Her only companions are a vase of goldfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning supplies once a month. She broods over her deepest regrets: her blighted romances with self-important men, her lifelong struggle to feel at home in her own body, and her wayward early twenties, when she was a fish out of water among a group of eccentric, privileged young people at a liberal arts college. There was Sam, an unabashed collector of other people’s stories; Carlotta, a troubled free spirit; and Rennel, a self-obsessed philosophy student. Self-deprecating and sardonic, Sally recounts their misadventures, up to the tragedy that tore them apart.
Colorful, crass, and profound, Toad is Katherine Dunn’s ode to her time as a student at Reed College in the late 1960s. It is filled with the same mordant observations about the darkest aspects of human nature that made Geek Love a cult classic and Dunn a misfit hero. Daring and bizarre, Toad demonstrates her genius for black humor and her ecstatic celebration of the grotesque. Fifty-some years after it was written, Toad is a timely story about the ravages of womanhood and a powerful addition to the canon of feminist fiction.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Critic reviews
"A gentle, funny, heartbreaking indictment of the naïve excesses of the 1960s and the testament of a woman who survived them." —Kirkus, starred review
"A sobering look at the reality of what one’s glory days actually entailed, shot through with the unmistakable undertow of pain and self-loathing." —Publishers Weekly
“Toad is a gift to those of us who have been dreaming for decades of a new novel from Katherine Dunn, and a book that will bring her many devoted new fans. Nobody’s sentences heave and breathe like Dunn’s do. Her language scintillates and sheds its scales, revealing truths that nobody else dares to utter, or can. She is Portland’s bard of ‘the genuine wound,’ exploring the deep world within the body and the human animal’s capacities for savagery, tenderness, loneliness, friendship, loathing, and love.” —Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Orange World and Other Stories
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Pull of the Moon
- By: Elizabeth Berg
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In the middle of her life, Nan decides to leave her husband at home and begin an impromptu trek across the country, carrying with her a turquoise leather journal she intends to fill. The Pull of the Moon is a novel about a woman coming to terms with issues of importance to all women. In her journal, Nan addresses the thorniness - and the allure - of marriage, the sweet ties to children, and the gifts and lessons that come from random encounters.
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For women over 50
- By Laura on 07-07-15
By: Elizabeth Berg
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The Last House on Needless Street
- By: Catriona Ward
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street at the edge of the wild Washington woods lives a family of three. A teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, not after last time. A man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory. And a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what is buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all.
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I can only listen in 1-2 hour segments!
- By Brenda on 10-04-21
By: Catriona Ward
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Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All
- By: Laura Ruby
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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When Frankie’s mother died and her father left her and her siblings at an orphanage in Chicago, it was supposed to be only temporary - just long enough for him to get back on his feet and be able to provide for them once again. That’s why Frankie's not prepared for the day that he arrives for his weekend visit with a new woman on his arm and out-of-state train tickets in his pocket. Now, Frankie and her sister, Toni, are abandoned alongside so many other orphans - two young, unwanted women doing everything they can to survive.
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Boring, boring, boring
- By Marie J. on 08-20-21
By: Laura Ruby
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Vacationland
- By: Sarah Stonich
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge - only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather’s care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images "reflected across the mirrors of memory and water", much as the linked stories of Vacationland cast shimmering spells across distance and time.
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Reminded me of home
- By jill on 06-02-13
By: Sarah Stonich
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Vanishing Falls
- A Novel
- By: Poppy Gee
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar House - currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner; his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms - and Celia Lily isn’t in any of them. She has vanished without a trace.… Joelle Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s simple-minded.
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OK Story
- By Cindy House on 12-21-21
By: Poppy Gee
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Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
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Pearl in a Cage
- By: Joy Dettman
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.
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Pearl in a Cage
- By Verita on 06-16-17
By: Joy Dettman
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A Second Chance
- An Amish Romance
- By: Linda Byler
- Narrated by: Katie Koster
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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For years, Edna Miller has found herself drawn to Emery Hoschtettler with an attraction she can explain no better than she can put a stop to it. Other suitors come and go, but none make her feel the way she feels around Emery - that incredible floating feeling, as if she was walking on air, mixed with a painful desperation to be ever nearer to him. Despite the fact that Emery seldom seems to pay her much attention, she decides it would be unfair to marry anyone else when her heart longs only for him. He hasn’t seriously dated anyone else either.
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Beautiful
- By Amazon Customer on 09-21-23
By: Linda Byler
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The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
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I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
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Earthly Delights
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Louise Siversen
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Baking is an alchemical process for Corinna Chapman. At four am she starts work at Earthly Delights, her bakery in Calico Alley. But one morning Corinna receives a threatening note saying 'The wages of sin is death' and finds a syringe in her cat's paw. A blue-faced junkie has collapsed in the dark alley and a mysterious man with beautiful eyes appears with a plan for Corinna and her bread. Then it is Goths, dead drug addicts, witchcraft, a homeless boy and a missing girl and it seems she will never get those muffins cooked in time.
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Don't know why I waited so long.
- By S. Sarabasha on 09-13-13
By: Kerry Greenwood
What listeners say about Toad
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kelly
- 01-12-23
Performance is bad
I am having the most trouble listening to this narrator. Her “take” on the main character is not at all sustaining for this book. Every. Single. Sentence. is dripping with the same tone of someone who is just reading words and not involved in what is happening.
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- John Tebbutt
- 05-07-24
Beautifully rendered characters, perfect narration
Delaine is first rate as a narrator. Her laid back, sassy tones are perfectly suited to the strange, sleazy yet mystical vision of the various characters we meet through our heroine's flat, almost sociopathic understanding.
This is a weird and thoroughly bewitching read.
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- LaSonya Elmore
- 12-14-22
love love love
do you ever finish a book and want nothing else except the story to continue??? i want more!!!
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- Clay Cassells
- 06-05-24
To think this was almost never published
The narration is so well matched to Dunn's writing. A grim, unsparing novel, but so vivid and well-written.
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- Susan
- 12-06-22
Fabulous
I’m so happy I came upon this author. I read Geek Love years ago, but will probably do so again. This story is unbeatable in its depiction of characters, who are fully realized and intriguing. The plot line is not meant to be the thing. This is about people—how and why they do what they do, and what drives them to gladness and madness.
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