Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Garden Party: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Garden Party: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Garden Party: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Garden Party: A Novel

    Written by Grace Dane Mazur

    Narrated by Bernadette Dunne

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A rehearsal dinner brings together two disparate families in this sparkling, witty novel

    The Cohens are wildly impractical intellectuals—academics, activists, and artists. The Barlows are Wall Street Journal-reading lawyers steeped in trusts and copyrights, golf and tennis. The two families are reserved with and wary of each other, but tonight, the evening before the wedding that is supposed to unite them in marriage, they will attempt to set aside their differences over dinner in the garden.

    As Celia Cohen, the eminent literary critic, sets the table, her husband, Pindar, would much rather be translating ancient recipes for his Babylonian cookbook than hosting this rehearsal dinner. Meanwhile, their son, Adam, the poet (and nervous groom), wonders if there is still time to simply elope. One of Adam's sisters, Naomi, a passionate but fragile social activist, refuses to leave her room, while Sara, scorpion biologist turned folklore writer, sits up on the roof mourning an imminent breakup. And Pindar's elderly mother, Leah, witnesses everything, weaving old memories into the present.

    The lawyers are early: patriarch Stephen Barlow and his bespangled wife, Philippa, who specializes in estates, along with Philippa's father, Nathan, hobbled by age and Lyme disease. Then come the Barlow sons William (war crimes), Cameron (intellectual property), and Barnes (the prosecutor), each with desperate wife and precocious offspring. How could their younger siblings—Eliza, the bride, an aspiring veterinarian, and her twin brother, Harry, recently expelled from divinity school—have issued from such a family?

    Up and down the dinner table, with its twenty-four (or is it twenty-five?) guests, unions are forming and dissolving while Pindar is trying to figure out whether time is really shaped like baklava, and off in the surrounding forest with its ancient pond different sorts of mischief will lead to a complicated series of fiascoes and miracles before the party is over. Set over the course of a single day and night, Grace Dane Mazur's brilliantly observed novel weaves an irresistible portrayal of miscommunication, secrets, and the power of love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 10, 2018
    ISBN9780525630777
    Unavailable
    The Garden Party: A Novel

    Related to The Garden Party

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Pirates, Ghosts And Gangsters

      Feb 16, 2020

      Pirates, Ghosts And Gangsters
      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 16, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 16, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      'Ladysitting' Offers Candor And A Singular Take On A Tale Familiar To Many

      May 6, 2019

      As Lorene Cary tells the story of her Nana and the stress and sadness all too common for caregivers, it's her recounting of her upbringing and ancestry that is most engaging and captivating.

      3 min read

    • Article

      What To Read?

      May 26, 2023

      BY ELEANOR CATTON GRANTA Described by one critic as “a Kiwi Jonathan Franzen”, this fantastic novel explores what happens when a hippie collective clashes with a ruthless billionaire. Mira and Shelley run Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening group tha

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Lives Of War Prisoners And An Ex-spy

      Apr 19, 2024

      Don’t allow yourself to be put off by the cumbersome title because this is a good book. South Africa’s contribution to the Allied cause in the north African deserts and Abyssinia is well known – less so that it resulted in upwards of 100 000 Italian

      2 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Books Guide

      Nov 30, 2022

      This is Fiona McIntosh’s first novel set entirely in Australia. Her heroine, Fleur, is just eight when she is already helping her adoptive undertaker parents prepare bodies. Mother Mae knows their only daughter is capable of running the Port Adelaide

      10 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Feb 1, 2024

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      May 17, 2023

      Great Read
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Spectacular P. T. Barnum

      Jul 19, 2019

      The Spectacular P. T. Barnum
      5 min read

    • Article

      Paradise Past

      Feb 17, 2023

      Paradise Past
      3 min read

    • Article

      Salem

      Oct 5, 2023

      Salem
      11 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Oct 12, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Guide

      May 16, 2022

      Summer Reading Guide
      15 min read

    • Article

      A Story For Our Times

      Dec 29, 2021

      ROBINSON CRUSOE is a lockdown story, as are most Golden Age detective novels, set in remote country houses: Jane Eyre and Rogue Male, but Stella Gibbons, wrote the lockdown story for our age. Born in 1902, she was the eldest of three children whose f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      Apr 22, 2022

      By Don Winslow This first book in a projected trilogy about warring mobster families is set in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1986. The Italians and the Irish have carved up the city, controlling the trucking industry and the docks. The author makes ov

      2 min read

    • Article

      When The S**t Hits The Fam

      Dec 6, 2020

      When The S**t Hits The Fam
      2 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Erdrich, Enright, McBride, Unferth, Ripatrazone, and More

      Mar 3, 2020

      This week we're looking at books from Louise Erdrich, Anne Enright, James McBride, Deb Olin Unferth, and our own Nick Ripatrazone. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Erdrich, Enright, McBride, Unferth, Ripatrazone, and More appeared first on

      6 min read

    • Article

      SUMMER Reading SPECIAL

      Dec 28, 2022

      In last year’s Booker Prize shortlisted Oh William! we found narrator Lucy Barton reconnecting with her first husband, William, following the death of her second husband. In this sequel COVID has hit New York and William takes control. As a scientist

      10 min read

    • Article

      Putting Down Roots

      Aug 20, 2021

      Putting Down Roots
      3 min read

    • Article

      Liar, Liar

      Apr 4, 2021

      Liar, Liar
      7 min read

    • Article

      Book CLUB

      Oct 26, 2021

      Book CLUB
      1 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      May 21, 2020

      Book Club
      4 min read

    • Article

      Anne McElvoy on Theatre

      Apr 27, 2023

      Anne McElvoy on Theatre
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tenor Of The Times

      Aug 7, 2022

      Tenor Of The Times
      4 min read

    • Article

      Heol Fanog What Lies Beneath?

      Mar 23, 2023

      Heol Fanog What Lies Beneath?
      16 min read

    Reviews for The Garden Party

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words