Try free for 30 days
-
The Presence of Absence
- Narrated by: Philip Battley
- Length: 2 hrs and 24 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $12.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Night Came with Many Stars
- By: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light.
-
The Sadness of Beautiful Things
- Stories
- By: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Simon Van Booy, Alana Kerr Collins, James Fouhey, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes listeners into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better.
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Absorbing and insightful
- By Melinda on 02-03-2023
-
The Road from Belhaven
- A Novel
- By: Margot Livesey
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it. Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her.
-
Bomb Shelter
- By: Mary Laura Philpott
- Narrated by: Mary Laura Philpott
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a daughter, mother, and friend, Mary Laura Philpott considered herself an “anxious optimist”—a natural worrier with a stubborn sense of good cheer. And while she didn’t really think she had any sort of magical protective powers, she believed in her heart that as long as she loved her people enough, she could keep them safe.
-
Forgiveness
- An Alternative Account
- By: Matthew Ichihashi Potts
- Narrated by: Roman Howell
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sensitive and probing book, Matthew Ichihashi Potts explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than as an instrument of healing or justice. Though forgiveness is often linked with reconciliation or the abatement of anger, Potts resists these associations, asserting instead that forgiveness is simply the refusal of retaliatory violence through practices of penitence and grief.
-
Night Came with Many Stars
- By: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light.
-
The Sadness of Beautiful Things
- Stories
- By: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Simon Van Booy, Alana Kerr Collins, James Fouhey, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes listeners into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better.
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Absorbing and insightful
- By Melinda on 02-03-2023
-
The Road from Belhaven
- A Novel
- By: Margot Livesey
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it. Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her.
-
Bomb Shelter
- By: Mary Laura Philpott
- Narrated by: Mary Laura Philpott
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a daughter, mother, and friend, Mary Laura Philpott considered herself an “anxious optimist”—a natural worrier with a stubborn sense of good cheer. And while she didn’t really think she had any sort of magical protective powers, she believed in her heart that as long as she loved her people enough, she could keep them safe.
-
Forgiveness
- An Alternative Account
- By: Matthew Ichihashi Potts
- Narrated by: Roman Howell
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sensitive and probing book, Matthew Ichihashi Potts explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than as an instrument of healing or justice. Though forgiveness is often linked with reconciliation or the abatement of anger, Potts resists these associations, asserting instead that forgiveness is simply the refusal of retaliatory violence through practices of penitence and grief.
Publisher's Summary
As a writer lies dying, he has one last story to tell: a tale of faith and devotion, a meditation on what lies beyond this life, and a prayer of gratitude that may lead to rebirth.
"Language is a map leading to a place not on the map," announces a young writer lying in a hospital bed at the beginning of The Presence of Absence. As he contemplates his impending physical disappearance and the impact on his beloved wife, he realizes, "Life doesn't start when you're born . . . it begins when you commit yourself to the eventual devastating loss that results from connecting to another person."
Infused with poetic clarity and graced with humor, Simon Van Booy's innovative novella asks us to find beauty—even gratitude—in the cycle of birth and death. Stripped of artifice, The Presence of Absence is a meditation between the writer and the listener, an imaginative work that challenges the deceit of written words and explores our strongest emotions.
Simon Van Booy is not only a master storyteller but a writer whose fiction is rich with philosophical insights into things both mapped and undiscovered. The Presence of Absence parts the darkness to reveal what has been just out of sight all along.