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Title details for Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos - Available

Language Arts

by Stephanie Kallos
Tavia Gilbert
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Charles Marlow is a Seattle English teacher who instructs his students to expand their worlds through language. Lately, however, with one child off to college and the pressure from his ex-wife to make plans for their severely autistic son, who's about to age out of the system, he prefers the company of the ghosts he turns up in the storage boxes in his crawl space. There he finds the totems that betray the darker moments of his youth-memories that were buried for decades when he met the ambitious and sparkling Alison LeFevre. But the complications of parenthood proved fatal to their marriage, and Charles has been stagnant ever since. Language Arts is a wise and perceptive novel about how accumulated guilt and fear can embalm us in middle age and how one man who lost his way in life and love regains both. Kallos' previous novels include Broken for You and Sing Them Home.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 9, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781490642635
      • File size: 355810 KB
      • Duration: 12:21:16

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Tavia Gilbert provides a superb performance of this movingly introspective novel. Charles Marlow is a high school English teacher whose unruffled facade conceals deep heartache as well as devotion. As the artful narrative conveys Marlow's story, Gilbert also voices the lingering tenderness and bitterness of Marlow's ex-wife and the earnestness of his college-age daughter. She's masterful at voicing the Italian outbursts of Sister Giorgia, using cadence and emotion to reveal meaning behind her otherwise senseless declarations. Even the single-syllable grunts of Marlow's severely autistic son are given expression in Gilbert's delivery. The surprising common thread of Palmer penmanship weaves these richly drawn characters together as each struggles to communicate in his or her own way. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      October 15, 2015

      Charles Marlow and his ex-wife need to make decisions concerning the best institutional care for their severely autistic son. Through flashbacks to earlier times, including Charles's upbringing, his learning the Palmer method of penmanship in grade school, and meeting his wife after college and their joint experience of autism in their firstborn, listeners begin to understand how major and minor influences combined to make Charles the lonely, isolated high school language arts teacher he became. Tavia Gilbert does an excellent job providing characterizations, accents, and personalities for the many characters in the story, and Kallos allows the listener to discover potential parallels between autism, Alzheimer's disease, and dementia and to compare past and present acceptance and treatment of mentally and behaviorally challenged people. VERDICT This thought-provoking novel is recommended for adult audio collections. ["A starkly realistic depiction of parenting a child with autism, as well an exploration of memory, loss, and forgiveness": LJ 2/1/15 review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]--Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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