Garbo Laughs Audiobook

Quotes

• A novel so subtle and so wonderfully layered that it resembles a black-and-white movie of a certain era, full of elegance, aura and wit. . . . Brilliant. . . . Breathtaking.

  — Globe and Mail

• From start to finish, this book is perfect, and as lovely to behold as it is beautifully written.

  — The Guardian (UK)

• Outstanding—deft and compassionate and bittersweet. . . . About community, in all its guises; about family, old friends, and cherished foes.

  — Bill Richardson “Fully alive with people you want in your life. . . . Occasionally a novel comes along with a flavour so unique and beguiling that a reader thinks, ‘This one is unforgettable—I’ll have it forever.’ . . . That’s Garbo Laughs.

• Think Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo meets Dorothy Parker as channelled by John Irving.

  — NOW (four-star review)

• Elizabeth Hay’s novel is an anatomy of all kinds of love. . . . Full of Hay’s off-centre wisdom and bull’s-eye psychological accuracy.

  — Katherine Ashenburg

• Dreamy, moving, frequently hilarious novel. . . . Startlingly original.

  — Maclean’s

• A sparkling demonstration of Hollywood’s hold on our fantasies—and its awkward fit with our earthbound selves.

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• Sophisticated and intelligent, fresh and endlessly inventive.

  — Quill & Quire (starred review)

• [Hay] has a delightful deadpan wit, the kind that sneaks up on you.

  — New York Times Book Review

• Thumbs up for Garbo Laughs! Four-star novel celebrates love, film, and love of film.

  — Ottawa Citizen

• Innovative in its reach and a stylistic delight, Garbo Laughs is endlessly engaging. Oscar for Best Novel.

  — Terry Griggs

• Imaginative, droll, and incisive, Hay’s profound tale of attempted escape and accepted responsibility, of found joy and dreaded sorrow, deftly explores the dangers and benefits of fantasy.

  — Booklist (starred review)

• A beautiful story of love and loss. With wit and sympathy, Elizabeth Hay superimposes the world of film perfectly on the life of Harriet Browning. A novel that should be read and re-read.

  — Jury citation, Governor General’s Award

• A gracefully written novel, mapping out the patterns of tensions and release in a family whose members are best able to express their love and disappointment through the films of the past.

  — Publishers Weekly

• Garbo Laughs, written in Hay’s by now distinctively understated voice, gives us her literary talent in full, extravagant bloom. . . . [It] finds a pitch-perfect balance between comedy and sadness.

  — Vue Weekly (Edmonton)

• Thoughtful, smart, sardonically funny.

  — Toronto Star

• You don’t have to be a film buff to appreciate this finely crafted, poignant and emotionally resonant novel. . . . Absolutely delightful.

  — Kitchener-Waterloo Record

• With meticulous language and subtle comedy, Elizabeth Hay creates a humane portrait of people whose passionate nostalgia for the fictions of the silver screen both cushion and illumine their lives.

  — Joan Barfoot

• Hay’s forte is creating character and then establishing fierce but understated bonds between them. . . . This could easily become a Canadian classic.

  — Catherine Gildiner

• Garbo Laughs is a summer house of a novel, one through which we move with languid ease and pleasure, never wanting the season to end.

  — Raleigh News & Observer