Audiobook13 hours
Barren Island
Written by Carol Zoref
Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
How does one remember a world that literally no longer exists? How do the moral imperatives to do so correspond to the personal needs that make it possible? Told from the point-of-view of Marta Eisenstein Lane on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, Barren Island is the story of a factory island in New York's Jamaica Bay, where the city's dead horses and other large animals were rendered into glue and fertilizer from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s. The island itself is as central to the story as the members of the Jewish, Greek, Italian, Irish, and African-American factory families that inhabit it, including those who live their entire lives steeped in the smell of burning animal flesh.
The story begins with the arrival of the Eisenstein family, immigrants from Eastern Europe, and explores how the political and social upheavals of the 1930s affect them and their neighbors in the years between the stock market crash of October 1929 and the start of World War II ten years later. Labor strife, union riots, the New Deal, the World's Fair, and the struggle to save European Jews from the growing threat of Nazi terror inform this novel as much as the explosion of civil and social liberties between the two World Wars.
The story begins with the arrival of the Eisenstein family, immigrants from Eastern Europe, and explores how the political and social upheavals of the 1930s affect them and their neighbors in the years between the stock market crash of October 1929 and the start of World War II ten years later. Labor strife, union riots, the New Deal, the World's Fair, and the struggle to save European Jews from the growing threat of Nazi terror inform this novel as much as the explosion of civil and social liberties between the two World Wars.
Related to Barren Island
Related audiobooks
I Wanna Be Yours Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How To Be Dead Boxed Set: Books 4-6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLondon Incognita Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWill: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Orchard: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNow Then: A Biography of Yorkshire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSick on You: The Disastrous Story of The Hollywood Brats, the Greatest Band You've Never Heard Of Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Encounter [Dramatized Adaptation] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lambs: My Father, a Farm, and the Gift of a Flock of Sheep Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmong the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crimes of Clearwell Castle: A 1920s Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ash Museum Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Ringer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Prussian Captain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInto the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath—And Beyond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDark Harvest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sum and Total of Now Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghost Rifle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSlow Dollar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Football Team That Fought the Great War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCreepers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Restless in the Grave: A Kate Shugak Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crafter: Legacy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oklahoma's Atticus: An Innocent Man and the Lawyer Who Fought for Him Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dualitists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psammead Trilogy: Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet & The Story of the Amulet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilded Age Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lies, Damned Lies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
General Fiction For You
The Three-Body Problem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Mist and Fury Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Thorns and Roses Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Wings and Ruin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Frost and Starlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Two Towers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Return of the King Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens: A Full Cast Production Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weyward: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neverwhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fight Club Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stardust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Barren Island
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
5 ratings0 reviews