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    Mrs. Ted Bliss
    Mrs. Ted Bliss
    Mrs. Ted Bliss
    Audiobook12 hours

    Mrs. Ted Bliss

    Written by Stanley Elkin

    Narrated by George Guidall

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Miami Beach is the haven of a quirky cast of characters in Stanley Elkin's wry vision of contemporary culture that won the National Book Award. In this Florida, the bright sunlight is shared by drug lords, health food fanatics, wealthy socialites, and refugees from the Midwest. Why are so many men interested in Mrs. Ted Bliss, newly widowed from a Chicago butcher? Is it her smile, her flawless Buick Le Sabre, or her late husband's business connections? She is about to find out, as she embarks on an unconventional new life that lures her from the familiar world of her Jewish family. Stanley Elkin's darkly humorous, sharply perceptive novels have earned him the praise of authors like Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut. You'll love this sprightly story of love and money, deftly narrated by the incomparable George Guidall.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 11, 2011
    ISBN9781456124052
    Author

    Stanley Elkin

    Stanley Elkin (1930–1995) was an award-winning author of novels, short stories, and essays. Born in the Bronx, Elkin received his BA and PhD from the University of Illinois and in 1960 became a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis where he taught until his death. His critically acclaimed works include the National Book Critics Circle Award–winners George Mills (1982) and Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995), as well as the National Book Award finalists The Dick Gibson Show (1972), Searches and Seizures (1974), and The MacGuffin (1991). His book of novellas, Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award.

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    Reviews for Mrs. Ted Bliss

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is one of those books that taught me about writing. Elkin crafts such perfectly formed, well-rounded characters. He also has great love for his characters, but is not afraid to punish them for their actions. It was great to read a book where the elderly were portrayed not as stereotypes or cheap devices to pull at the reader's heart, but as fully-formed, fallible characters who make the same wretched mistakes as other adults.
    • 2/5
      Dorothy Bliss is an elderly Jewish widow, living out her retirement in Miami Beach. The story tells of her coping with old age, her grown children and grandchildren, her brushes with major crime figures and con men, is told in a somewhat amusing, darkly comedic vein. The narration is very Jewish, somewhat in the manner of Philip Roth. Overall, there were bright spots, although I found the story to drag.
    • 4/5
      Another tour through the remarkable imagination of Stanley Elkin; this time we visit with Mrs. Ted Bliss, recently widowed, and what she must endure at a condo complex in Miami filled with retirees. Somehow she becomes entangled with a Colombian drug lord, a gambler who fixes jai-lai matches, and an old business partner of her husband's who hatches ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes by the minute. Mrs. Bliss and her brood and their broods and their entire family histories are revealed through backstory and reminiscences and crazy dialogues. Laugh-out-loud funny, absurd, and often dark--typical Elkin.Mrs. Ted Bliss is just ok compared to the brilliant The Magic Kingdomand The Dick Gibson Show; an ok Stanley Elkin, however, is still excellent.