Anywhere But Here
Written by Mona Simpson
Narrated by Kate Rudd
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Anywhere But Here is a moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer. As they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions, Ann and Adele bring to life a novel that is a brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation. Simpson's first novel is ultimately a heart-rendering tale of a mother and daughter's invaluable relationship.
"The two women in this book are American originals. Ann is a new Huck Finn, a tough, funny, resourceful love of a girl. Adele is like no one I've encountered, at once deplorable and admirable--and altogether believable."
--Walker Percy
"Anywhere But Here is a wonder: big, complex, masterfully written, it's an achievement that lands [Simpson] in the front ranks of our best novelists."
--Newsweek
Mona Simpson
Mona Simpson is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Grant and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. She is the author of the acclaimed novels Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road and My Hollywood. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband and their two children.
More audiobooks from Mona Simpson
The Lost Father Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Off Keck Road Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Regular Guy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Casebook: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Anywhere But Here
Related audiobooks
Are We There Yet? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Celestial Navigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inventing the Abbotts: And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of Ruth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5At Home in the World: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Burning Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Family Album: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Life as a Rat: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Family Pictures: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unless Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black and White Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Good Mother: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ellen Foster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Theory of Relativity Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bright Shiny Morning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She's Come Undone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some Go Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMudwoman Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Man Without a Shadow: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Virtuous Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Too Good to Be True: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Alternate Side: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Dreams and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sights Unseen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fiona Range Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Center of Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Motherland: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Object Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Family Life For You
The Collected Regrets of Clover: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Idea of You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Steps: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Joy Luck Club Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regretting You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winter Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Leftover Woman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Let Her Stay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Five Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Then She Was Gone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reminders of Him: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maybe in Another Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing to See Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Racing in the Rain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mask of Sanity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home: the most moving and heartfelt novel you'll read this year Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time's Mouth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Commonwealth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Where the Forest Meets the Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Minutes: A novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forever, Interrupted: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bean Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Humans: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5After I Do: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flipping Boxcars: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Anywhere But Here
162 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson; (2 1/2*)The author divides the book in an unusual manner. Each section has a different character speaking about past and present experiences. There are chapters written by Anne, Adele, Lillian, and Carol.Overall the book was a bit over the top which made it difficult to care about what was going on within the story.The mother is a whack job whose teenage daughter has more sense than she does. Adele thinks her daughter is ready to be a star; which is what she wants for her while the daughter is an academic who wants an education so they move from Wisconsin to California. There they find life difficult but the mother is too dense to realize what is and is not important.The mother is a pathetic creature wanting, wanting, wanting and all at the expense of her daughter, whether knowingly or not. I could not be sympathetic for her. The daughter is a very strong girl though she does not realize it and is continually picking up the pieces of their lives.All in all I found this read to be just okay enough to complete it. The author divides the book in an unusual manner. Each section has a different character speaking about past and present experiences. There are chapters written by Anne, Adele, Lillian, and Carol.Overall the book was a bit over the top which made it difficult to care about what was going on within the story.The mother is a whack job whose teenage daughter has more sense than she does. Adele thinks her daughter is ready to be a star (what she wants for her, while the daughter is an academic who wants an education) so they move from Wisconsin to California. There they find life difficult but the mother is too dense to realize what is and is not important.The mother is a pathetic creature wanting, wanting, wanting and all at the expense of her daughter, whether knowingly or not. I could not be sympathetic for her. The daughter is a very strong girl though she does not realize it and is continually picking up the pieces of their lives.All in all I found this read to be just okay enough to complete it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mona Simpson and Kate Rudd had me captivated for 20 hours.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I've had this book for years and decided to read it cause it was in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust. There were some parts that were okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of this book. The mother, Adele August, drove me nuts! I hated this woman and I've seen women similar to her in real-life! A girl back in high school did an essay/project on it and she thought it was funny. I didn't find it to be really funny at all, and I was expecting it to be a bit different.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Half the dysfunction STILL would have been too much. This book was such a downer. Adele, the mother, was a complete flake. Ann, her daughter, always overcomes--somehow or other. Author sometimes abruptly changes the course of action. There were several times I thought I had turned ,multiple pages and lost the plot line, but no. I was reading consecutive pages, just another random plot twist from nowhere.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A mother with big dreams moves with her daughter from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills. It took forever to get through this meandering story told from different characters' viewpoints. Maybe the movie is more compelling.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ann August’ mother refuses to be ordinary...the very thing that her adolescent daughter longs for most. Adele August, mother of Ann, is a high spirited woman who doesn't fit the profile of a mom. "Strangers always love my mother," Ann tells us early on. Ann is sometimes torn between loving and hating her mother, as are most teen-age girls, but most mothers aren’t grandiose, manipulative, and narcissistic. Ann states,”it’s always people like my mother who start the noise, and bang things, who make you feel the worst; they are the ones who get your love.” ; which by common knowledge is the response pattern of most abused people and animals for that matter.Adele yearns for a life in California, where life will be beautiful and Ann will become a famous television star. But her lifelong dream and goal turns out, like many things in the Augusts' lives, to be lackluster when it becomes reality.She pushes Ann towards a direction she thinks will be great for her, wanting to give her daughter a life she didn't have. She forces Ann to become the adult and to be the one to think logically.Anywhere But Here is dense with misery and amazement all tangled together--a realistic and thus rare portrait of love.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5None of the characters were sympathetic. Mother is weird and neurotic.