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    Centuries of June: A Novel
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    Centuries of June: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Centuries of June: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Centuries of June: A Novel

    Written by Keith Donohue

    Narrated by Mark Bramhall

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Keith Donohue has been praised for his vivid imagination and for evoking "the otherworldly with humor and the ordinary with wonder" (Audrey Niffenegger). His first novel, The Stolen Child, was a national bestseller, and his second novel, Angels of Destruction, was hailed as "a magical tale of love and redemption that is as wonderfully written as it is captivating" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Centuries of June is a bold departure, a work of dazzling breadth and technical virtuosity.

    Set in the bathroom of an old house just before dawn on a night in June, Centuries of June is a black comedy about a man who is attempting to tell the story of how he ended up on the floor with a hole in his head. But he keeps getting interrupted by a series of suspects-eight women lying in the bedroom just down the hall. Each woman tells a story drawn from five centuries of American myth and legend in a wild medley of styles and voices.

    Centuries of June     is a romp through history, a madcap murder mystery, an existential ghost story, and a stunning tour de force at once ingenious, sexy, inspiring, and ultimately deeply moving.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 31, 2011
    ISBN9780307932624
    Unavailable
    Centuries of June: A Novel
    Author

    Keith Donohue

    Keith Donohue is the national bestselling author of the novels The Stolen Child, The Angels of Destruction, and Centuries of June. His work has been translated in two dozen languages, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. A graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Donohue also holds a Ph.D. in English from The Catholic University of America. He lives in Wheaton, Maryland.

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    Reviews for Centuries of June

    3.5/5

    18 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A unique premise full of meaning and mystery that will make your treasure every one of your days.
    • 3/5
      I don't like to give 1/2 looks, but this one demanded it. Falling past 3 looks, but just short of 4, this was a book that held my attention, but seemed to take a long time for me to read.

      The book opens with Jack having a terrible blow to the head, and while he is lying on the bathroom floor feeling the blood seeping my his body, things being to get kind of weird. Visited by seven women, from different time periods and various backgrounds, each tells a story of their lives and lost loves.

      Most of the action takes place in the bathroom of Jack's home.
      There is also a mystery man who resembles Jack's father, or perhaps he is author Samuel Beckett; Jack can't be sure. There is also the mystery of an eighth woman lying on the bed in Jack's bedroom. He finds her vaguely familiar, but she keeps her back to him, and he can't quite remember why he should know her. And that cat which always seems to show up...

      The title is clever in that it doesn't really draw on the characters or story, but instead embraces a feeling that we have all experienced:

      That is what I longed for, what I needed. Another June, another eternal summer stretching out before me and a chance to recover. Centuries of June, life by life, bring the primrose of another beginning.

      Recommended.
    • 4/5
      I was pleasantly surprised by Centuries of June, since I had some doubts if I would enjoy it based on the description. The protagonist of the novel wakes up in his bathroom with a hole in his head and is subsequently visited by seven women from centuries past. Each woman has a story to share.I was intrigued by each woman' s story, and found myself impatiently reading through the interludes to get to the next woman's tale. Thinking back, I felt like I was watching Quantum Leap, always curious to see in which period of time the characters would end up next.Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Summary: Centuries of June opens with our narrator, in the wee hours of a June night, falling to bathroom floor with a massive blow to the head. His attempts to figure out what have happened, however, keep getting waylaid by a series of visits from each of eight women that were laying in bed down the hall. Each woman seems initially bent on killing him, and each has their story to tell, starting with the Native American woman who married a bear, and moving through time and space and American folklore.Review: Keith Donohue is an interesting writer. I don't say that because I always love his books. Neither The Stolen Child nor Angels of Destruction wound up on my shelf of all-time favorites, and Centuries of June isn't going to, either. But even so, Keith Donohue's books are always fascinating, always have something to say, and always are the sort that I'll find myself still thinking about months after I've turned the last page.Centuries of June is no exception. I generally like the stories-within-a-story set-up, and each woman's story was completely fascinating, memorable, and true to its unique voice. (It was very similar in structure - although not at all in tone - to Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle.) I had more of a problem with the interstitial segments. It was clear that the story had something to say, but I wasn't always entirely clear on what that was, and I found the narrator's story much less accessible than the women's parts. I'm not a big one for existentialism; I made it through Waiting for Godot (which actually figures heavily in Centuries of June) just fine back in high school, but I haven't had overwhelming luck with modern novels that rely heavily on self-aware, self-reflective existential quirkiness, no matter how well they're written. (See: The Ghost in Love, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.) Centuries of June had an interesting idea, and was well-written, but the tone of its overarching story was just not my cup of tea. So, while I wound up feeling disconnected from the main character's story, I really enjoyed the individual short stories it contained, which left the book as a whole with a slight off-kilter feeling... but at least off-kilter in an interesting and thought-provoking kind of way. 3.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Although it's not my favorite of Donohue's books, I think Centuries of June would be worth reading for anyone who enjoys the story-within-a-story format, especially if they like their fiction literary, abstract, and a touch bizarre.