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A Year of Last Things
- Poems
- Narrated by: Michael Ondaatje
- Length: 2 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
From one of the most influential writers of his generation, a gorgeously surprising poetry collection about memory, history, and the act of looking back
Following several of his internationally acclaimed novels, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje’s long-awaited return to poetry. In pieces that are sometimes witty, sometimes moving, and always wise, we journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and the abandoned landscapes we hold on to to rediscover the influence of every border crossed.
Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Molière’s chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to the California coast and his beloved Canadian rivers, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges memory with the present, in the way memory as the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence everything that surrounds him.
From his poem "His chair, a narrow bed, a motel room, the fox":
At the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles Sam Cooke was shot dead.
‘See that shadow on the wall . . .’ All those motels and hotels
in literature and song, where X wrote this,
where Y got drunk, where Z overdosed.
The one Hank Williams was driven past, dead already in his car.
The Slavianski Bazaar Hotel in "The Lady with a Dog,"
where Dmitri imagines their dark but hopeful future.
The Hôtel de ville de Courtrai, where Verlaine shot Rimbaud.
The Casa Verdi in Milan, where retired opera singers were welcomed
along with various heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa in their afterlife.
Critic reviews
“Each new book of Michael Ondaatje’s is a literary event, but that is particularly true for his books of poetry. In A Year of Last Things he comes close to writing something like a timeless poem, ‘a memory poem’ that reflects outside and inside time at the same moment, recording the mercurial, mysterious feeling of being alive. The poems become intimate, unresolved stories, loyal to feeling and presence, the lyricism of dreams applied to narratives of lives and landscapes. A Year of Last Things is a remarkable, incomparable new collection.”—Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak
“Dazzling . . . This collection radiates the joy of a fully realized, literary life.”—Publishers Weekly, starred
“A poetry collection in which we ‘journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and the abandoned landscapes we hold on to to rediscover the influence of every border crossed.’” —Lit Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2024”
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Story
Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are her alphabetical diaries.
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I love this book and the narration.
- By Ruth Marks on 02-17-24
By: Sheila Heti
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Old God's Time
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a white Victorian Castle in Dalkey overlooking the sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, but his peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask questions about a decades-old case. A traumatic case which Tom never quite came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother and family who move in next door, a woman on the run from her own troubles. And what of Tom’s family, his wife June, and their two children?
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Boring and self conscious
- By Leah on 06-25-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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Cloistered
- My Years as a Nun
- By: Catherine Coldstream
- Narrated by: Catherine Coldstream
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Cloistered takes the listener deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead.
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Interesting, but so long-winded!
- By We R Dust on 06-04-24
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Lilith
- A Novel
- By: Eric Rickstad
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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After her son, Lydan, suffers traumatic injuries in a school shooting, single mom Elisabeth Ross grows enraged at men in power. If they won’t do anything to help end this epidemic of violence, she will. Believing it’s her destiny, she sets out to awaken the world to the cowards these men are and commits her own shocking act of violence.
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Great story and dilemma
- By Runner Mike on 04-05-24
By: Eric Rickstad
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This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
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accents drove me nuts
- By Bluebird on 05-21-24
By: Claire Messud
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The Cemetery of Untold Stories
- By: Julia Alvarez
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and revisions, and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
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Interesting concept
- By Mr.R on 06-04-24
By: Julia Alvarez
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James
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
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Justice
- By caprice on 03-24-24
By: Percival Everett
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What listeners say about A Year of Last Things
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-08-24
Mesmerizing !
Nothing to dislike. Ondaatjes reading was beautiful. The poems, the words, the cadence were all mesmerizing and unforgettable. I shall reread, re listen to, many times.
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