Invisible Woman, Katia Lief
Invisible Woman, Katia Lief
List: $34.99 | Sale: $24.50
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Invisible Woman

Author: Katia Lief

Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie

Unabridged: 6 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/09/2024


Synopsis

Joni Ackerman’s decision to raise children, 25 years ago, came with a steep cost. She was then a pioneering filmmaker, one of the few women to break into the all-male Hollywood club of feature film directors. But she and her husband Paul had always wanted a family, and his ascending career at a premier television network provided a safety net. Now they’ve recently transplanted to Brooklyn so that Paul can launch a major East Coast production studio, when a scandal rocks the film industry and forces Joni to revisit a secret from long ago involving her friend Val. Joni is adamant that the time has come to tell the story, but Val and Paul are reluctant, for different reasons. As the marriage frays and the friends spar about whether to speak up, Joni’s struggles with isolation in a new city and old resentments about the sacrifices she made on her family’s behalf start to boil over. She takes solace, of sorts, in the novels of Patricia Highsmith—particularly the masterpiece Strangers on a Train, with its duplicitous characters and their murderous impulses—until the lines between reality and fantasy become blurred. Invisible Woman is at once a literary thriller about the lies we tell each other (and ourselves) and a powerful psychological examination of the complexities of friendship, marriage, and motherhood.

About Katia Lief

Katia Lief teaches fiction writing at The New School in Manhattan and lives with her family in Brooklyn. She is the author of A Map of the Dark and Last Night published under the pseudonym Karen Ellis. Earlier work includes USA Today and international bestselling novels Five Days in Summer, One Cold Night, and The Money Kill, which was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

About Carrington MacDuffie

Carrington MacDuffie is a recording artist, writer, and voice actor who has narrated over 100 audiobooks and received numerous Earphones awards and six Audie finalists. Her original audiobook of poetry and music, Many Things Invisible, was nominated for an Audie in two categories.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jillian

Once an acclaimed filmmaker in her own right, Joni now spends her days as the supportive wife of her TV producer husband. Lonely and unmoored in a new city, and haunted by a secret from the past, Joni reaches out to an old friend from her twenties. Events spiral from there, leaving at least one pers......more

Goodreads review by Karen

I love my neighbors. Without them, I probably wouldn’t read some of the books that I do. So many books that are dropped off at my Little Free Library Shed are books I never would have considered reading hadn’t they have been donated. One of my neighbors is an actor, director, producer who also is pa......more

Joni Ackerman wrote and directed two feminist-inspired, award-winning films in the 80s and 90s, but then faded from the spotlight. She married Paul Lovett, who’d become a famous and influential TV producer, and had two children. Now empty nesters, she and Paul have moved into a Brooklyn mansion, and......more

Goodreads review by Dennis

INVISIBLE WOMAN is a suspense-driven drama that reflects the MeToo Movement in Hollywood. Centered around filmmaker Joni Ackerman and her family, this story shows the complexities of marriage and friendship. Joni and her husband Paul have moved from Los Angeles to Brooklyn so Paul can launch a produ......more

Goodreads review by Belle

This one is 5 stars for me and it’s going to get overlooked. I just know it. It’s only rated at 3.73 so far. This is feminism done right. It is meta. Who doesn’t love that. This is a nod ( or even more perhaps) to the author Patricia Highsmith. I don’t care for her writing but her story elements even......more


Quotes

Part domestic thriller, part psychological mystery, this is a tight, well-paced novel, and it hangs on the complex and flawed character of Joni herself. Rediscovering Patricia Highsmith’s novels, Joni begins to lean into the darkness of her own soul . . . Caught in the nefarious web of the patriarchy at every turn, she finds in Highsmith a way to fight back and reclaim some of her own agency. . . Absolutely a novel of its time–and a novel of women's stories across time.