Junket
Written by Lauren Groff
Narrated by Suehyla El-Attar
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
In these over-busy, stress-rich days, what sounds better than a stay at a high-end spa, complete with a much-needed change of scenery, in a warmer, gentler spot? The heroine of this latest story from beloved bestselling author Lauren Groff is offered just that: a few all-expenses-paid days of pampering at an Arizona retreat, far from the colorless cold of late winter in her hometown of Boston. Soon she’s squinting into desert sunlight, a kind of all-encompassing brightness she’s not known in years.
But relaxing is harder than it seems for Groff’s narrator, who, like so many of her unforgettable characters, is thrillingly complex and conflicted. A novelist, she’s been invited to the retreat to bring an air of intellectual sophistication—but only because a “far more famous writer” canceled at the last minute. She hasn’t had a full night’s sleep or written with any enthusiasm in months and is fresh from a breakup. Arriving with her guard up, she quickly becomes ill at ease with the wastefulness-in-the-name-of-luxury she sees around her, the complacency of the other guests—so wealthy she can barely relate to them or them to her—and the New Age spirituality on the overpriced spa menu. And yet something starts working on her. Maybe it’s the jarring beauty of the desert, the response to the reading she gives from her latest book, or even those New Age treatments she’s so suspicious of. Despite herself, her cynicism begins to soften.
And as it does so, she becomes overwhelmed by what she feels—and we are drawn into the existential and psychological terrain that Groff maps with such uncanny skill, providing piercing insight after insight into what it means to live among the twenty-first century’s environmental and socioeconomic crises. In Junket, as with her recent internationally celebrated novel Matrix, she conjures a woman at a crossroads who, rather than surrender to desolation, finds renewed courage and strength via her art, a path to a creative vision all her own, confirming once again that this three-time National Book Award finalist is a master of both the sublime and the subversive.
Editor's Note
Relax and rejuvenate…
Can healing crystals cure climate change? Of course not. But a last-minute New Age retreat does start to cut through one writer’s cynicism in this rejuvenating short story for anyone weary of the 21st century’s excesses and ills, from three-time National Book Award finalist Groff.
Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is the author of five novels: the instant New York Times bestseller The Vaster Wilds, and two National Book Award Finalists, Matrix and Fates and Furies; as well as Aradia and The Monsters of Templeton. Her story collections include Florida, winner of The Story Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Delicate Edible Birds. She has twice been a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, as well as for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and the Orange Prize for New Writers. She was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Radcliffe Fellow, a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and was named one of Granta’s 2017 Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and sons.
More audiobooks from Lauren Groff
Arcadia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Junket
Related audiobooks
Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Days of Wine and Covid Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Orchard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Town & Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Living Girl on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Baby, You're the Greatest: A Short Story Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Orgy: A Short Story About Desire Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Do You Know Who I Am?: Battling Imposter Syndrome in Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marriage Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Blue Girl Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Exotic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is Life: 10 Writers on Love, Fear, and Hope in the Age of Disasters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shelter: A Love Letter to Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is Not Your City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Uncertain Sea: Fear is everywhere. Embrace it. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to My Rage: An Evolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Echo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Famous Adopted People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cry of the Sloth Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Summer of Fall: Gravity is a bitch, but I'm still standing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stimulus Wreck: Rebuilding After a Financial Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiolab: The Feels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Moms Are Not Alright: Inside America's New Parenting Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bar Maid Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inconvenient Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Live in Water: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Florence In Ecstasy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Psychological Fiction For You
The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Dark Vanessa: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Head Full of Ghosts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Good Lie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Misery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Housemaid Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Other Name: Septology I-II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Mrs. Parrish: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Clown Brigade Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stillwater Girls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes on an Execution: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of Wild Places: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wife Upstairs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Greenwich Park Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stillhouse Lake Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Regrets of Clover: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Storyteller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect Child Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Know This Much Is True Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Magic Hour Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Butterfly Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cutting Teeth: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes from the Underground Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Schrödinger Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strange Sally Diamond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is How We End Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Users Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Junket
341 ratings23 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The writer's use of words to weave magic is astounding, such beautiful prose! She tells a touching tale of how a cynic is energized and hope reignited while on a "WELLNESS" weekend at a spa frequented by wealthy women. Who knows where inspiration is to be found? Who would have guessed?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely stunning gem of a novella - it's rare that a work has me experience, fully, the same emotions as the character and this one did, from a healing sort of weeping to the sudden whiplash of remembering the real world, Junket is a marvel. The narration is taut and friendly in all of the right places, scornful in the others. Bravo.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Uhh. Did not enjoy/like this in the slightest. Save your time.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tangail -kalihati boga Market Road.Isp Dhaka divisional internet license service provider -md:hadaed ullah(hitlo), list of the license number-14.32.0000.007.59.654.17.226-zarotech online md:hadaed ullah(hitlo)/kalihati map:-AVI JEET COMPOUTER./MDINNA Electronics.(MDINNA ISP WIFI wireless network),
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I can always trust Groff to leave me thinking and this was another win!
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Waste is a theme throughout this pretentious, self-righteous... short story? vignette?... which is ironic, since listening to this (even at 1.5x speed) was a waste of my time.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An interesting short story to add to my goodreads challenge.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I appreciated the author floating back and forth between imposter syndrome and honest appraisal. Will read more by this author
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Anger. That's the only word I can use to describe this book. Everything in the book is about anger and jealousy.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Excellent narration and interesting insight into a particular life changing event and how it affects a writer. Their is relatable self deprecation, humor and hope.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In the age of cancel culture and political correctness the last realm left to attack seems to be older women! I’m not sure if it was the narrator or the story but it sounded like a long complaint!
4 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Compelling, honest and full of emotion.
A must-read to learn about every aspect of brutal house-to-house and man-to-man combat, then the moral/spiritual toll taken by their memories.
These citizen-soldiers become good husbands/wives, fathers/mothers - loyal patriots who (on the outside) show no scars.
Along with the fallen MY heroes all.
Thank you! - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I have written many reviews in the years I have been doing this. This is the ook I have read that is awful I can't believe it actually got printed. All the nonsense, yelling, idiocy. My ears bleed from this horrid book. I am so sorry maybe I'll read some of hers that is quiter.. polite and makes sense.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I feel for the writer. Such a fine head on her shoulders.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5No!!!
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Self indulgent semi autobiographical nonsense that was extremely pointless. We get it, you're a writer.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I anticipated something exciting ...more of a climax? It reads more like a memoir I suppose.
4 people found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The character is both relatable and annoying. Rather bland slice of life writing.
6 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Surprisingly nice and emotionally fulfilling . Interesting for both believer and synics
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The story went nowhere. There really was no story lol.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
The ability to experience and express emotions is a very important aspect in our life. Emotions often play a key role in our decision-making, relationship success, self-care, and day to day interactions. But being too emotional can also take a toll and can affect our emotional health. There are too many stresses1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5https://ariataraz.com/
see my website please
this is for sepidarsystem site - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent job, good experience of reading here. Really enjoyed reading.