
Chelsea Girls
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Eileen Myles
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By:
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Eileen Myles
About this listen
In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.
Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young artist's life; and poignant with stories of love, humor, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of a writer's education, and a modern chronicle of how a young female writer shrugged off the chains of a rigid cultural identity meant to define her.
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What listeners say about Chelsea Girls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Tanyel Gerow
- 06-25-18
Amazing I’m 100% hooked
This is a amazing book. It reminds me of beatnik writers. So vividly written. What a incredible mind.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Ellmann Family
- 07-26-18
Difficult to review
She made herself seem like an awful person. I enjoyed her wit and had a great way of describing mannerisms but always in a cruel way, putting people down. The course of events was also disorienting and hard to follow—intentional, but I didn’t care for it
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1 person found this helpful
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Performance
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- Megon J. Walker
- 07-15-16
fascinatingly skanky
What did you love best about Chelsea Girls?
NYC poets in the 1970-90s took too many drugs, smoked too many cigarettes, and enjoyed too much sex. In this novel, Eileen Myles overshares all the details. By the end of the book, I wanted to meet her.
What about Eileen Myles’s performance did you like?
I adore her accent and matter-of-face delivery. Myles reads really shocking things with a flattened affect. (Some of her disclosures would have been better left unwritten, but there is no unwringing the bell.)
Any additional comments?
The chapters were not laid out chronologically. There were childhood chapters that followed adulthood chapters. That makes me want to listen to the entire book again in order to appreciate the early parts now that I have context. Did Myles intend this effect?
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5 people found this helpful
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- Aiq
- 02-25-19
nice.
this is the first none-fiction-novel i have ever completed. usually i find them tedious and basic. this was the complete opposite of that.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tammie
- 12-26-22
Fearlessly Honest
Eileen Myles is the bravest storyteller I can remember. She does not flinch as she recounts her relationships and sexual experiences, both beautiful and harrowing. Her narration is impeccable, and her charm is irresistible.
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