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The Great Wide Open

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The Great Wide Open

By: Douglas Kennedy
Narrated by: Regina Reagan
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About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Great Wide Open written by Douglas Kennedy, read by Regina Reagan.

“All families are secret societies. Realms of intrigue and internal warfare, governed by their own rules . . .”

It’s 1980s New York. Heady, excessive times. Alice Burns - a young book editor - is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life. The observations resonates, perhaps because she has just watched her own family implode.

As she reads she wonders: When did the sadness start? And could it be that unhappiness is a choice?

Thus begins a great American epic which follows Alice as she navigates high school bullying, first love and sexism at an elite college, a spell in 1970's Ireland, and a tragedy that sends her stateside as the US embraces a cowboy actor named Reagan. But it is also the tale of her endlessly complex parents and brothers; how their destinies are written by the lies they tell themselves and others.

The Great Wide Open is an immensely ambitious and compulsive saga; a novel which will speak volumes to anyone who has marvelled at that pain that can only be caused by family itself.

©2019 Douglas Kennedy (P)2019 Penguin Audio Family Life Fiction Literary Fiction Tear-jerking

Critic Reviews

This novel is a page-turner with a relentless pace (Kate Saunders)

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This book gets better

The first part is somewhat mundane but once through the introduction of the characters, the story line has some twists and turns which is typical of Douglas Kennedy's work.

Initially it was challenging to establish which of the characters voices the narrator was talking in. Seemed to lack differentiation in that department.

Quite a long listen but made it to the end.

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