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    Two Sisters
    Two Sisters
    Two Sisters
    Audiobook9 hours

    Two Sisters

    Written by Mary Hogan

    Narrated by Randye Kaye

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The third child in a family that wanted only two, Muriel Sullivant has always been an outsider. She worships her beautiful blond sister, Pia, and envies the close bond she shares with their mother, Lidia. Growing up in their shadow, Muriel believes that if she keeps all their secrets-and she knows plenty, outsiders always do-they will love her too. Now an adult, Muriel has accepted the disappointments in her life. With her fourth-floor walk-up apartment and entry-level New York City job, she never will measure up to Pia and her wealthy husband, their daughter, and their suburban Connecticut dream home.

    One day, Pia shows up to visit and shares devastating news that Muriel knows she cannot tell-a secret that will force her to come to terms with the past and help her see her life and her family in unexpected new ways.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 22, 2014
    ISBN9781494575267
    Two Sisters
    Author

    Mary Hogan

     Mary Hogan is the bestselling author of Two Sisters and the historical novel, The Woman in the Photo. Previous novels include the young adult titles, The Serious Kiss, Perfect Girl and Pretty Face (HarperCollins). Mary lives in New York City with her husband, actor Robert Hogan, and their Catahoula Leopard rescue dog, Lucy. maryhogan.com

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    Reviews for Two Sisters

    4/5

    112 ratings74 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Not really science fiction, but it does have speculative elements. This is sort of a paean to lost childhood, but while it is nostalgic, it is never maudlin or nauseating; Bradbury recalls that childhood is also a time of terror and uncertainty, as well as fun.
    • 3/5
      Strange but almost believable things happen to Douglas Spaulding in the summer of 1928: a neighbors attempts to invent a happiness machine, a young boarder falls in love with someone several times his age, the junkman sells fresh air for nothing, folks leave Green Town willingly and unwillingly. If this genre is magical realism, there's definitely more realism than magic. A willingness-to-suspend-disbelief kind of realism with a good dose of philosophy thrown in, but realism nonetheless.
    • 5/5
      Transcendent. Luminous. Heartbreakingly nostalgic. A re-read, of course, spurred on by the discovery of a brand new sequel. I've always loved this book, but never so much as now when my own boy is 12. This warm and loving novel-cum-memoir is nothing at all like Bradbury's other books. It's a love letter to that moment when one is hanging suspended in the dream space between childhood and manhood. It's the magic of new tennis shoes and the realization that you too must die. Bradbury inhabits Doug so fully that I have the summer of 1928 among my own memories. Extraordinary, highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.So begins Ray Bradbury's magical tale of Green Town, in the summer of 1928, and the eventful 12th summer of Douglas Spaulding's young life. Boy," whispered Douglas.Boy, indeed! Bradbury painted pictures with words in a way unlike any other author. Green Town, 1928, is a wondrous place where Leo Auffman tries to build a Happiness Machine, and Mr. Tridden takes the trolley over one last ride over the abandoned track beyond town. Townsfolk brave the dark depths of The Ravine, knowing that The Lonely One may be somewhere about, stalking for his next murder victim. And as the summer progresses, the memories are bottled up, with one bottle of dandelion wine labeled and stored for each wonder-packed day of the summer.Bradbury's prose makes the summer come alive with the patter of sneakered feet, the slam of screen doors, and the heat of the summer sun. Marvelous, marvelous writing.
    • 4/5
      This is a novel loosely based on Bradbury's childhood experience-with many of the chapters originating from short stories, all with the recurrent characters of Douglas Spaulding and his family. Most of the book is retold through the eyes of Douglas as he experiences summer and the recurrent symbol of dandelions. One of the central themes of the story revolve around the joy of being alive and acceptance of dying.
    • 4/5
      Series of sketches really, but what beautiful sketches they are, Mr. Bradbury really knows how to use words to convey a feeling.
    • 4/5
      In effect this book is a perfect blend of nostalgia and fantasy in which Bradbury creates a dream world. My personal preference is for his later science fiction like The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451; however, Dandelion Wine, along with many of his fine short stories collected in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, is almost as enjoyable a read. This novel is semi-autobiographical, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, presumably a pseudonym for Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois.The title refers to a wine made with dandelion petals and other ingredients, commonly citrus fruit. In the story, dandelion wine, as made by the protagonist's grandfather, serves as a metaphor for packing all of the joys of summer into a single bottle. The main character of the story is Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year-old boy loosely patterned after the author. Most of the book is focused upon the routines of small-town America, and the simple joys of yesteryear.As Bradbury writes in "Just This Side of Byzantium," a 1974 essay used as an introduction to the book, Dandelion Wine is a recreation of a boy's childhood, based upon an intertwining of Bradbury's actual experiences and his unique imagination. Dandelion wine is presented as a metaphor of summer, bottled for the winter season of illnesses and wheezing.In Douglas' words: "Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered."Dandelion Wine has been described as the first of Bradbury's nostalgic "autobiographical fantasies," in which he recreates the childhood memories of his hometown, Waukegan, in the form of a lyrical work, with realistic plots and settings touched with fantasy to represent the magic and wonders of childhood. Even with the focus on the bright days of summer, Bradbury, in his typical style, briefly explores the horrific side of these events.Farewell Summer, the official sequel to Dandelion Wine, was published in October 2006. While Farewell Summer is a direct continuation of the plot of Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, a novel with a completely different plot and characters, is often paired with the latter because of their stylistic and thematic similarities.
    • 5/5
      Bradbury's best novel by far, in my opinion. Perfectly captures his sense of awe for the everyday wonders of life.
    • 5/5
      --At the end of 2009 I returned this Inter-Library Loan book. Themes of boys & summer aren't new but Bradbury's writing is poetic & fresh. He introduces us to memorable characters. DANDELION WINE will remain a classic book for decades. --
    • 2/5
      My friends gave my child this and another book by Ray Bradbury, and as I knew he was popular, I started reading it. Okay, it is a page-turner, but I do not quite get. Is it because I am a non-American, or is it because I have never liked semi-children books a la Harry Potter, I do not know. It remains in my bookshelf hoping to be picked up some day again, you never know...
    • 5/5
      In the summer of 1928, Doug and Tom Spaulding experience all the full life that summertime brings, from making dandelion wine with their grandfather to new shoes to discovering that old people have amazing stories to tell.I've never read another book that so perfectly captures the feeling of summer as a child, when school is out and there are no responsibilities, when you can have lazy days or full ones, and you make discoveries about yourself and others. Countless times I wanted to write down a passage, but didn't when I realized that, just like a summer's day, if you took the words out of the story, out of the context, and looked at a sentence or two alone, it just didn't have that same feeling or essence anymore. It was beautiful, but suddenly only a shadow and memory of itself. Green Town is a sleepy mid-western town based on the one in which Bradbury himself grew up, and we get to know many of its inhabitants. If I were to identify a main character, it would be twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding, though the tone of the book is so nostalgic that I would not call it a children's or teen book. I will definitely be returning to Dandelion Wine when I need a dose of summer again.
    • 4/5
      For some reason I've been thinking of this books as one with a bit of a reputation, the ugly duckling of the Bradbury library, if you will. And yes, the unflinching, starry-eyed nostalgia for small-town america och days gone yonder and the mythologisation of childhood that this book is so ripe with should by my experiense have triggered the mother of all knee-jerk responses, since I have very little patience with sentimentalist nonsense - especially if it's a thinly veiled celebration of the superiority of the author's upbringing. It is one of the many reasons I detest Stephen King's It (a novel which owes more to Dandelion Wine than, I suspect, King would like to admit), for example.But no, not this time. Because it's Bradbury, goddammit! He's just too good. It's all there: the nostalgia; the sentimentalism; the impossibly perfect families and childhood games and all that. But it's all intermixed with the the trademark weirdness and darkness of Bradbury: there's also muder, sadness, strife, pettiness, and human failures. All blended together in this perfect magical realism that makes you accept anything and everything (small-town wtiches! bottled air! happienss machines!) while still retaining the sense of wonder.The main selling point, however, was the poetry of the language. Me metaphor of wine is apt, for this is rich, complex, intoxicating stuff. Brabyry is known as a master of the fantastical, but his treatment of the mundane is just as evocative, filling the page with tight, yet lavish prose. In all, this was a very pleasant surprise. I taught me to be more careful about dismissing books based on second-hand opinions and vague impressions, and that even tenuous subject matter can sparkle with brilliance in the hands of a master.
    • 1/5
      This is possibly the driest most horrible book I have ever had to read. I was forced to read this over the summer for school, and it was just so hard to get through it. The only thing that I could remember about this book was the title, its very forgettable. Although we discussed it in class, I could not even tell you what the message or theme of the book was.
    • 3/5
      When I started [Dandelion Wine] I was expecting something quite different: a semi-fictionalised account of Bradbury's own childhood, perhaps something along the lines of [Cider with Rosie]. What I found was a much more fictional series of inter-connected short stories set in the fictitious Greentown (based on Bradbury's own home town). And although the main focus of the book is on the two boys, Douglas and Tom Spaulding, many of the stories focus on other characters, and it is frequently the adult point of view that is seen.At times this does seem to be the standard nostalgic view of a boyhood summer when the sun was always shining, a safer and simpler age where children play outdoors from dawn until dusk. But there are darker elements at work: mothers warn their children to beware of the 'Lonely One', discovered to be not just a name to frighten children but a real serial killer at large. And some elements seem almost fantastical, in particular the story where one of the town's residents attempts to make a 'happiness machine'. Overall, I found that it was not the picture of childhood that resonated with me most, it was the picture drawn of old age. A favourite was the story of the old Colonel Freeleigh, who brings the past back to life for the boys with his tales of seeing the gigantic herds of buffalo roaming the prairie, and who longs to escape from the stultifying care with which his family has surrounded him in his last days. And equally good was the story of Ellen Loomis and Bill Forester, who find a true meeting of minds despite there being sixty years difference in their age.Overall, despite liking some of the individual stories a lot, I found the overall effect a little too determinedly heart-warming for my taste. While people die and things change, there always seems to be some positive lesson that is being learnt by the boys, and I found it ever so slightly cloying after a while.  The nostalgia of small town America isn't my nostalgia, so I'm probably not as susceptible as some. A good read, but not great.
    • 5/5
      There is nothing so open to exciting possibilities than the summer months to a twelve year old and Douglas Spaulding starts off summer by climbing up to his cupola and starts the summer off by switching on the life of the town he lives in... or so it appears. And therein are we treated to the idyllic and magical summer of 1928 through the eyes of Douglas, boy extraordinaire.Douglas and his brother Tom the summer tracking all that is wonderful, exciting and even fearful with a sense of innocent wonderment that is truly beautiful to behold. The openness with which he embraces all that summer brings, the moment he realizes what it means to be alive, truly alive, sparks the heart of the reader and we follow him eagerly as he flings himself wholeheartedly into life. But this is also a summer where joy is mixed with sadness, when the thrill of new tennis shoes brings the speed of Hermes to the wearer and an elderly lady lets go of her past souvenirs accepting that she must live in the present, when 2 boys manage to rescue Mme Tarot from her evil warden and when one has to stay goodbye playing statues with his best friend. There is nothing but magic in this book. It provides the reader with a time machine on which to travel to a more innocent and carefree time of their own childhood.
    • 4/5
      Who knew Bradbury could write such engaging prose outside of the sci-fi realm? Although, he does add elements of suspense through the almost supernatural serial killer that is on the loose. Great book though, really captures the mind of a kid but writes with the mind of an adult
    • 5/5
      The summer of 1928. Bradbury takes us back to his childhood, growing up in a small town in northern Illinois. And what a glorious time. This fictionalized account is centered around twelve year old Douglas Spaulding, as he runs through this warm magical season, encountering a wonderful array of colorful characters and places. There is Mr. Jonas, the junkman, the Tarot Witch, unfurling the future, the murderous Lonely One, stalking the night. There is the Happy Machine and the Green Machine, the scary Ravine and of course, the delightful, intoxicating, dandelion wine. Wonderful.
    • 3/5
      I read this as a child and I didn't like it as much as the other Bradbury I had read (eg. Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes). What was lacking was the obvert sense of the fantastical, the magic I craved to find in books as a child. I need to go back and reread this and see how it fares on other levels.
    • 5/5
      A literary treasure. I've been meaning to read this book for at least a decade, because I really like Bradbury. "Dandelion Wine" is beautifully written. It explores one summer through the eyes of imaginative boys. Many of the offbeat characters and summer adventures will stay with me for quite some time. If you ask me, Bradbury's nostalgic romp reminds readers that even life's mundane routines and "average Joes" can exude a sense of wonder and intrigue. It all hinges on whether we're satisfied plodding through life with our eyes (and minds) in sleep mode, or whether we're game for adventure. The wide-eyed boys in "Dandelion Wine" vividly show us the way...
    • 3/5
      It's really unfortunate that I just randomly picked this book off a library shelf, seeing the name Bradbury and swooning. I would've read the synopsis and known then and there I wasn't quite in the right frame of mind to enjoy it, but the library slapped their fancy bar code sticker over most of it (what ever happened to the little cards inside the back cover full of stangers' signatures?).Turns out, it's the one Bradbury book (that I know of, anyway) that's completely outside of his trademark genre. Happily, about a hundred pages in, I adjusted my expectations. I started enjoying the writing. Bradbury shares my annoying habbit of terribly long sentences, he just has an infinitely better talent for it. I savored every descriptive element, feeling, smelling, seeing, tasting Bradbury's love letter to Summer. Do: read this book outside where you can smell cut grass and grilled hot dogs.Don't: wait for the point of it all.
    • 4/5
      Ray Bradbury proves he is the king of simile, metaphor and imagery in this lightly autobiographical rambling about the summer of 1928 in Green Town, Illinois. The young boys Doug and Tom come to many deep realizations during the summer, not the least of which regard the great mysteries of life, death, happiness, and fear. There is no cohesive plot, but one is hardly missed with such poetic vignettes to take its place. WARNING: This is NOT Science Fiction.
    • 5/5
      Summertime in novel format. He aced it!
    • 5/5
      I first read Ray Bradbury's miracle of a book, Dandelion Wine, when I was 16, and I have read it every year since. Over time I continue to gain a deeper appreciation for these lovely, strange, often magical vignettes (more properly parables, each one with a little implied moral) that explore the nature of happiness, the magic of love and, above all, what it means to be alive. To me, the overarching intent of the book is to remind all us adults that:* Being alive means maintaining a balance between Discoveries & Revelations and Ceremonies & Rites. Though the latter are important, binding us to our family & our community, our future & our past, it is Discoveries & Revelations that make us think, experience, change, and grow.* Being alive means living in the present. Even if this means giving away the tokens of a beloved past, as happens in one particularly poignant tale.* Being alive means being connected with the world - with family, neighbors, your community, the earth. It's no coincidence that the mysterious murderer haunting Douglas Spaulding's Childhood is called The Lonely One.* Being alive means being able to experience happiness ... not only understanding the nature of happiness, but possessing the wisdom not to let yourself be tricked into pursuing something that can't/won't make you happy.* Being alive means recognizing the presence of magic in our everyday lives. Because magic is out there ... in the spring of a new pair of tennis shoes, in the mysteries of love, in the essence of Dandelion Wine.Contrary to popular opinion, I do not believe Bradbury intended this to be a book about childhood. In fact, his 12yr old narrator, Douglas Spaulding, does not appear in many of the parables. I do think that Bradbury intentionally chose a child as his narrator, however, because children are inherently alive -- always discovering, always filled with wonder, connected to their family and the world and the present in ways that we begin gradually to forget as adults. Dandelion Wine is both nostalgia and a cautionary tale, challenging us to remember what it felt like to be alive and reminding us adults that - unless we take care - we may become so consumed by life that we forget to be alive.As far as I am concerned, this book is a little bit of magic in and of itself: part essence of childhood, part elixir of wisdom. Believe and partake!
    • 5/5
      If you appreciate poetry. If you were ever a 10-year-old boy in the midwest. This is the best book ever written in the English language.As long ago as I can remember having a favorite book, it's been Dandelion Wine. Martian Chronicles was good sci-fi and Farenheit 451 was a very important book in my life. But Dandelion Wine walks many paths. It's first appeal to me was through the youth of it's hero - the Dennis-the-Menace-like Douglas Spaulding and his well-described childhood frights of abandoned ravines and people hiding in closets. As I grew up and began to admire styles - Ray Bradbury's was the best. No one has ever walked the fine line between poetry and prose any better. His sentences are delicious. For the sheer pleasure of reading something that's been well written, no one else is as satisfying. Now, I'm old and nostalgic. I love the torture and sense of regret in works like Winesburg, Ohio and Spoon River Anthology. My favorite book? Still Dandelion Wine. But now I read it as a chronicle of a long spent childhood. The similarities I have with the hero are now painful reminders that fictional characters don't have to age but I do and I have. But there is still a hope suggested by Bradbury that the memories of my own life can be pressed and bottled, to be enjoyed again when they've been forgotten as my own Dandelion Wine.
    • 5/5
      I'd never considered reading Bradbury because I thought he was a sci-fi writer and that's "not my thing". Dandelion Wine is not sci-fi and it IS a lovely book. It traces the summer (1928) of a 12-year-old boy in a small town in Ilinois touching on his summer rituals as well as the things he learns that year. It's a warm, womderful book written in beautiful English. Thank you whoever started the Group Read, without you I wouldn't have found this book or this author.
    • 4/5
      I love the idea of summer in a small town- being able to run around in new tennis shoes, the sounds of lawnmowers, and drinking lemonade with the neighbors.
      I don't remember why I put this book on my "to read" shelf, but I'm glad I did.
    • 5/5
      the most beautifutl book i have ever read!
    • 5/5
      My favorite of the Ray Bradbury books. In one section, Doug is hiding from his brother in the tall grass of a meadow. While he lies there he hears his heart beat and comes to the realization that he is alive for the first time. When his brother finds him, he feels sorry for his brother, because he does not yet know that he is alive.
    • 5/5
      Dandelion Wine is perhaps the best book I've ever read; and read and read and read! I first read it as a young teenager, decades ago; I've never stopped rereading it.Early in the book, 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding comes to the shocking realization that he is alive; truly alive! Throughout the rest of the book, Douglas examines the people in his family and his town, trying to learn if and how they deal with this huge thing called Life.The prose is brilliant, and evokes so much color and feeling (both joyous and bittersweet) that it ranks as one of the books I always recommend to others when asked for something to read.
    • 4/5
      This non-science fiction work of Bradbury's is my favorite of his works. As a Midwesterner, the world depicted in this series of vignettes inspires a sense of nostalgia and warmth. I feel as if I am entering the world of my forbearers when reading his memories of the Midwest in days gone by.