The Blizzard Party, Jack Livings
The Blizzard Party, Jack Livings
List: $44.99 | Sale: $31.50
Club: $22.49

The Blizzard Party
A Novel

Author: Jack Livings

Narrator: Rebecca Lowman

Unabridged: 15 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/23/2021

Synopsis

A panoramic novel set in New York City during the catastrophic blizzard of February 1978On the night of February 6, 1978, a catastrophic nor'easter struck the city of New York. On that night, in a penthouse in the Upper West Side’s stately Apelles, a crowd gathered for a wild party. And on that night, Mr. Albert Haynes Caldwell―a partner emeritus at Swank, Brady & Plescher; Harvard class of '26; father of three; widower; atheist; and fiscal conservative―hatched a plan to fake a medical emergency and toss himself into the Hudson River, where he would drown.In the eye of this storm: Hazel Saltwater, age six. The strange events of that night irrevocably altered many lives, but none more than hers. The Blizzard Party is Hazel’s reconstruction of that night, an exploration of love, language, conspiracy, auditory time travel, and life after death.Cinematic, with a vast cast of characters and a historical scope that spans WWII Poland, the lives of rich and powerful Manhattanites in the late 1970’s, and the enduring effects of 9/11, The Blizzard Party is an epic novel in the form of a final farewell.

About Jack Livings

Jack Livings is author of The Dog, which was awarded the 2015 PEN / Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. The Dog was named a Best Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani included the book as one of her ten favorites of 2014. Livings' stories have appeared in A Public Space, The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Tin House, The New Delta Review, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, and have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He lives in New York with his family and is at work on a novel.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Glen on March 03, 2021

I won this book in a goodreads drawing. During the New York blizzard of 1978, somebody's having a party. It isn't much fun and bad things happen. Filled with unpleasant, neurotic people.......more

Goodreads review by James on February 13, 2021

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. I loved the author’s last book called The Dog, which was a book of short stories that dazzled by quickly thrusting us into different and varied worlds in modern day China. Now his first novel is even more impressive. The epic sprawl of the book starts on a......more

Goodreads review by jrendocrine at least reading is good on July 03, 2021

I can't say that i really enjoyed this Jackson Pollack of a book, a kaleidoscope of stories bound together by a blizzard (that left the north east blanketed in endless snow, people walking outside in the sun and sledding down hills), but I never thought I wouldn't finish it. All the stories are inte......more

Goodreads review by Beth on January 30, 2022

A professional proofreader, pimp to a stable of freelancers, told me last year that she no longer reads for pleasure. The work has spoiled it for her. And I can kind of see that, although the possibility depresses me. While my paid work does not prevent me from reading (yet), maybe my earlier traini......more

Goodreads review by Kim on April 30, 2021

I don't think this is too *spoilerish*, but fair warning: my general thoughts could be considered a bit of a giveaway. ___________________ This is a densely-packed drama. At first, the atmospherics rule: the sights, sounds, the nonchalant eccentricity on display. The characters slowly emerge and begi......more

Quotes

“This audiobook has it all—mystery, mayhem, and sci-fi in a story that flashes forward and back as it revels in the lost world of late 1970s Manhattan. Narrator Rebecca Lowman presents the many complex characters at just the right pace. She carefully delivers the various voices—male and female, accented and not—and keeps the reality-stretching doings moving along.” —AudioFile Magazine"[A] brilliant debut novel . . . Livings calls to mind the work of Michael Chabon as he brings insight into the way events and circumstances shape his characters' lives. This is one to savor." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)"[An] ambitious debut . . . [The Blizzard Party] features moments of brilliance, especially in the dialogue and the surprising connections. A literary feast." —BOOKLIST

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