Parakeet: A Novel
Written by Marie-Helene Bertino
Narrated by Angela Dawe
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.
The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet?
Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.
In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.
A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change?
Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.
A Macmillan Audio produciton from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Editor's Note
Feel-good dark humor…
The week leading up to your wedding can be stressful enough, even without your deceased grandmother visiting you in the form of a parakeet telling you that instead of getting married, you need to go find your brother. From the acclaimed author of “2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas” comes a novel brimming with warmth and humor and questions about the nature of our memories.
Marie-Helene Bertino
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Beautyland, Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and Mississippi Review 30. She is the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.
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Reviews for Parakeet
39 ratings3 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to have a complex and surreal story line. The writing is gorgeous and thought-provoking, with paradigm-shifting insights on gender. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is highly recommended for those who enjoy a thinking woman's read.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Odd story line. Story was Hard to follow at times.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Surreal, gorgeous, complex. Not everyone's cup of tea, this book is more like whiskey neat. The writing is gorgeous, and I found myself pausing several times an hour to ponder some of the things she mentioned almost casually, paradigm-shifting insights of women and men. Highly recommended as a thinking woman's read.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Couldn’t get past 6 minutes of this reader. No passion. I’ll have to read it.