The Stowaway
A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica
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The Stowaway
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Narrated by:
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Jacques Roy
About this listen
The spectacular true story of a scrappy teenager from New York's Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties' most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica.
It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over, and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? This was the moon landing before the 1960s. Everyone wanted to join the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning's every stage.
The night before the expedition's flagship launched, Billy Gawronski - a skinny, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business - jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard.
Could he get away with it?
From the grimy streets of New York's Lower East Side to the rowdy dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica's blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro's The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a gutsy young stowaway who became an international celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your-bootstraps age.
©1997 Philip Toshio Sudo. All rights reserved. (P)2018 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Critic Reviews
What listeners say about The Stowaway
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 29-09-2018
Loved every second, lived every moment.
A compelling coming of age story couched in terms of physical challenges posed by life at sea and psychological challenges arising from a flawed hero and adult mores.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Lisa
- 30-01-2018
3 hours in - no story yet.
What disappointed you about The Stowaway?
After listening for 3 hours, still nowhere near Antarctica or anything remotely resembling adventures at sea or elsewhere.
Billy's life story is very mundane, no entertainment value there, and the vague background stories of polar explorers that could have added lots of interest is very matter of fact,
Has The Stowaway put you off other books in this genre?
I love this genre. Anything about early explorers, adventure travel, pioneering - I'll listen to it.
Shackleton's story for example is my idea of the greatest story ever told.
But this one simply makes me wonder why this character was chosen as someone to write about.
There's nothing engaging about his childhood story or his personality and it turns out that stowaways were a dime a dozen at the time. There were three on his boat alone. So the premise of the brave and daring stowaway evaporates pretty much from the beginning.
How could the performance have been better?
The narrator is extremely downbeat and monotone.
There's no trace of humour or enthusiasm, in fact I'd say he sounds distinctly uninterested in what he's reading.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Stowaway?
Would definitely cut the clunky references to the girlfriend he possibly had - or not.
There was a thin story about his high school girlfriend that really had no substance and no relevance whatsoever. And came across like an exercise to fill a page or tick a box.
Any additional comments?
If you are particularly interested in this era in New York City, and the immigrants of the time AND you're obsessed with anything at all to do with seagoing exploration AND you like a story that rolls slowly along in a ho-hum way without anything particularly interesting to break the flow - you might love it.
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