Listen to a sample
America Was Hard to Find
- Author
- Kathleen Alcott
- Narrator
- William Hope
- Publisher
- Orion
- Publish Date
- 16 January 2020
- Run Time
- 13 hours 40 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Vietnam War fiction
Not available in your country
We don't have the rights to sell this audiobook where you are. If it's already in your library you can still listen to it in My Books.
What to expect
Vincent Kahn is an astronaut in training, living with his wife in the desert. He will go on to be the first man to walk on the moon.
Fay Fern is 19-years-old and working in a dive bar, having rejected her parents' wealth and conservatism. She will go on to become a violent activist and one of the FBI's most wanted.
The pair's brief but intense love affair will have repercussions that echo through the American century, intersecting with the race to space, the rage against the Vietnam war, and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic.
Critics Review
-
Sixties radicalism and the space program are set in fruitful juxtaposition ... Displays a sure-handed lyricism
The New Yorker
-
Alcott is an impressionistic stylist capable of lovely, luminous effects on the brushstroke level of the sentence ... Alcott is at her best in zero gravity.
Wall Street Journal
-
Readers who value elegant style will savour Alcott's musical sentences and dreamlike pacing ... Readers who enjoy literary fiction have a golden opportunity to not just look, but also to really see. Highly recommended.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
-
A marvel of compression and controlled description ... Fay's ambition, at the start of America Was Hard to Find, is to make life 'happen more deeply inside her.' Alcott's novel is a finely calibrated machine that does the same for us.
BookForum
See more reviews See fewer reviews
-
[Alcott's] prose has a way of finding the cinematic in the personal .... Alcott's narration is penetrating and elegant, but she gives her characters some of the wittiest and most screen-ready dialogue in contemporary fiction.
Paris Review
-
Powerful.... America Was Hard to Find leaves readers wanting more of this story and everything else Alcott has written.
BookPage
-
Like Franzen or DeLillo, Alcott brings awe-inspiring exactitude and lyricism to her dive into three of America's most iconic moments.... In her exquisite and poignant reimagining of historic events, Alcott dissects their impacts in a sweeping yet intimate saga that challenges assumptions and assesses the depths of human frustration.
Booklist
-
Absorbing ... Ambitious ... Shimmering, knife-sharp descriptions of small and often devastating moments of individual experience within those larger histories ... The reader experiences the era's social upheavals and contests of values at their most intimate register.
New York Times Book Review
-
Alcott's is a striking voice, visceral and electric
I paper
-
America Was Hard To Find is an ambitious attempt to capture three turbulent decades of political unrest... Kathleen Alcott is an author to watch
IRISH EXAMINER
User Reviews
No reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Kathleen Alcott
- Narrator
- William Hope
- Duration
- 13 hours 40 minutes
- Release Date
- 16 January 2020
- ISBN
- 9781474614566
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Orion
- Genre
- Vietnam War fiction
Synopsis
Mojave Desert, 1957.Vincent Kahn is an astronaut in training, living with his wife in the desert. He will go on to be the first man to walk on the moon.Fay Fern is 19-years-old and working in a dive bar, having rejected her parents' wealth and conservatism. She will go on to become a violent activist and one of the FBI's most wanted. The pair's brief but intense love affair will have repercussions that echo through the American century, intersecting with the race to space, the rage against the Vietnam war, and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic.
About xigxag
xigxag is an independent, UK-based audiobook platform and the UK's only B Corp certified audiobook company. We offer nearly 150,000 audiobooks, all with professional human narration. No AI-generated voices. xigxag is rated an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks and a top-rated ethical bookshop.
There is no subscription. You buy the audiobooks you want, you own them permanently, and prices start at $13.95. The more you listen over the year, the less you pay per book, and there is always a selection in Listen for Less from $7.95. You can also send audiobooks as gifts using our audiobook gift cards or in-app gifting.
Every audiobook on xigxag has honest reviews covering both the book and the narration, and our community features make it easy to share what you are listening to, discover what others recommend, and find your next listen.
Download or stream on iOS, Android, or in your browser. Browse the full catalogue at xigxag.co.uk.