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Blackbird House cover art

Blackbird House

By: Alice Hoffman
Narrated by: John Lee, Xe Sands, Amy Rubinate, Richard Powers, Bernadette Dunne, Tavia Gilbert, Cassandra Campbell, Hillary Huber
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Summary

Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family's lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

Narrated by John Lee, Se Sands, Amy Rubinate, Paul Michael Garcia, Bernadette Dunne, Tavia Gilbert, Cassandra Campbell, Hillary Huber, Kirsten Potter, Carrington McDuffie, Kate Reading, and Laura Hicks.

©2004 Alice Hoffman (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about Blackbird House

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Got me through isolation

I loved this story. Ive been Confined to a room for 10 days with covid. Thank god for audiobooks & their free books

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

enjoyable

Alice Hoffman never fails to bring her stories to life. I liked the way it was all based around the same house but hundreds of years apart.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Difficult to follow as audiobook

This was a well written and intriguing book with lots of fascinating characters each with a good story to tell. It’s well read by a number of narrators. My only reservation is about it being an audiobook. As all the twelve stories are interlinked I would have loved a paper copy to easily flip backwards to pick up all the links and cross referencing as I found I lost a lot of the links that cemented all the stories together.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful storytelling

I really enjoyed listening to this book, the farm and house were a perfect setting for a series of tales. Each person and family left something behind and the thread of memory lived. Well written, well told stories.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

What was that about?

I listened to this on Audible. I must say this book had me confused and I found the story just didn't hold my attention. I usually love Alice Hoffman, but this time I couldn't connect with her words. That saddens me, cos the book blurb was what drew me into selecting this book in the first place. So, beats me what went wrong and why. Oh don't get me wrong, the narration was brilliant as were the performances. The story failed me. Or did I fail to appreciate it? My apologies Alice Hoffman.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Loved it!

Loved listening to this book. Made me want to go to the house and be one of the people who lived there, smell the sweet peas and smell and pick the turnips.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Unusual book

This was a very different kind of book. It consists of several short stories all about the residents of one house over many years. Although I enjoyed it I did find that sometimes I wanted more information about how a particular character/family fared. Also somethings were not clearly explained. A white blackbird featured in most if not all of the stories yet the significance was never really explained. Was it supposed to be the spirit of the boy who died at the beginning of the story? I didn’t really understand the last chapter either so felt rather underwhelmed with the ending. Still all that being said I’m glad I listened to if

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great short stories that are linked. Very evocativ

This is beautifully written and brings to life the inhabitants of a house over a few hundred years. Very enjoyable.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Super collection of entwined short stories

Really enjoyed this more than I thought I would. The marmite house that keeps hooking into different Peoples lives.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

brilliant book

The book was great and had a great storyline. It was easy to differentiated between the different story lines due to the change in narrator for each. However, some of the narrators did the story no justice but some were great.

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