A Patchwork Planet - Anne Tyler

Written by Anne Tyler
Read by Kirby Heyborne
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
Release date: March 17, 2021
Duration: 09:27:20

Barnaby Gaitlin was never a bad kid, but he was certainly doing his best to impersonate one. As a teenager, he developed a habit of breaking into other people’s houses. But he wasn’t interested in the valuable loot—he just liked to read people’s mail, peruse their family albums, and maybe pocket a few personal mementos. Now almost thirty and divorced, he finds himself working for Rent-aBack, which helps the elderly and infirm move furniture or take down their Christmas trees. It’s the perfect career for Barnaby: with each job, he’s able to steal a glimpse into a customer’s house and life. Then Barnaby meets Sophia. Her inherent, unshakeable goodness is totally foreign to him—and irresistible. With small moments of growth, Barnaby struggles to become the good man he hopes to be, finding that life rarely happens all at once but rather builds over time, patch by patch.

Knowing the boundary between eccentricity and caricature is one of Tyler’s surest gifts as a novelist. While surely quirky and idiosyncratic, her characters do not lapse into cliché, which is why Tyler’s works are always original and surprising.

Audio File was not kind to the reader…” In this narration about an underachieving young man trying to outdistance the bad behavior of his past, Shale too often adopts characterizations that are broad to the point of ludicrous. He can do better–and does in his sympathetic portrayal of Barnaby, the main character who is belatedly struggling to grow up. But with virtually every other figure, Shale turns Tyler’s well-drawn portraits into clowns.”