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The guest book / Sarah Blake.

Blake, Sarah, 1960- (author.). Cassidy, Orlagh, (narrator.).

Summary:

"A novel about past mistakes and betrayals that ripple throughout generations, The Guest Book examines not just a privileged American family, but a privileged America. It is a literary triumph. The Guest Book follows three generations of a powerful American family, a family that "used to run the world." And when the novel begins in 1935, they still do. Kitty and Ogden Milton appear to have everything--perfect children, good looks, a love everyone envies. But after a tragedy befalls them, Ogden tries to bring Kitty back to life by purchasing an island in Maine. That island, and its house, come to define and burnish the Milton family, year after year after year. And it is there that Kitty issues a refusal that will haunt her till the day she dies. In 1959 a young Jewish man, Len Levy, will get a job in Ogden's bank and earn the admiration of Ogden and one of his daughters, but the scorn of everyone else. Len's best friend, Reg Pauling, has always been the only black man in the room--at Harvard, at work, and finally at the Miltons' island in Maine. An island that, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this last generation doesn't have the money to keep. When Kitty's granddaughter hears that she and her cousins might be forced to sell it, and when her husband brings back disturbing evidence about her grandfather's past, she realizes she is on the verge of finally understanding the silences that seemed to hover just below the surface of her family all her life. An ambitious novel that weaves the American past with its present, Sarah Blake's The Guest Book looks at the racism and power that has been systemically embedded in the U.S. for generations" -- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781250220875
  • Physical Description: 13 sound discs (16.5 hours) : digital, CD audio ; 4 3/4 inches
  • Edition: Unabridged.
  • Publisher: New York : Macmillan Audio, ℗2019.

Content descriptions

Participant or Performer Note:
Read by Orlagh Cassidy.

Search for related items by subject

Subject: Family secrets > Fiction.
Islands > Maine > Fiction.
Compact discs.
Maine > Fiction.
Genre: Domestic fiction.
Historical fiction.
Audiobooks.
Topic Heading: Audiobooks, Unabridged.

Available copies

  • 3 of 3 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
  • 1 of 1 copy available at Castlegar Public Library.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 3 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Holdable? Status Due Date
Castlegar Public Library CD FIC BLA (Text) 35146002154102 CD Fiction Volume hold Available -
► Summaries & More
▼ Additional Content
  • Baker & Taylor
    The bereaved matriarch of a powerful early-twentieth-century American family makes a fateful decision that reverberates throughout two subsequent generations further impacted by racism, reversed circumstances, and disturbing revelations.
  • McMillan Palgrave

    "Orlagh cassidy narrates Blake's beautifully written multigenerational story of love and lies with consummate skill. Elegant and clear, distant yet passionate, she helps listeners discover the quirks in characters' personalities and explore their motives, both evident and hidden." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

    This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

    The thought-provoking new audiobook by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake

    A lifetime of secrets. A history untold.

    No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are both from families considered the backbone of the country. But this refusal will come to be Kitty’s defining moment, and its consequences will ripple through the Milton family for generations. For while they summer on their island in Maine, anchored as they are to the way things have always been, the winds of change are beginning to stir.

    In 1959 New York City, two strangers enter the Miltons’ circle. One captures the attention of Kitty’s daughter, while the other makes each of them question what the family stands for. This new generation insists the times are changing. And in one night, everything does.

    So much so that in the present day, the third generation of Miltons doesn’t have enough money to keep the island in Maine. Evie Milton’s mother has just died, and as Evie digs into her mother’s and grandparents’ history, what she finds is a story as unsettling as it is inescapable, the story that threatens the foundation of the Milton family myth.

    Moving through three generations and back and forth in time, The Guest Book asks how we remember and what we choose to forget. It shows the untold secrets we inherit and pass on, unknowingly echoing our parents and grandparents. Sarah Blake’s triumphant novel tells the story of a family and a country that buries its past in quiet, until the present calls forth a reckoning.

    “Sarah Blake is such a beautiful writer she can make any world shimmer." — Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin

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