Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
Droll Tales
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Tavia Gilbert, Jonathan Davis, Emily Lawrence
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.00 for first 30 days
Buy Now for £21.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
Witty and surreal tales that transcend rationality and illuminate our world, from America’s most original writer.
Welcome to the world of Droll Tales, in which reality is a mutually agreed-upon illusion and life is painful, paradoxical, beautiful, and brief. With an oddball cast of characters who reappear in various guises throughout these interrelated stories, Smyles reveals an off-kilter world overlapping this one. And in giving us a tour of this enchanted, sometimes absurd place, with its own workings and ways of expression, she gives us a new way to understand our own.
A young suburban woman runs away to Europe to become a living statue; Mallarmé is at long last translated into pig Latin; a house full of surrealists compete for love on a reality TV show; a list of fortune-cookie messages reveals the inner world of the young man employed to write them; and a story of love and betrayal is told through the sentence diagrams on a fifth grader’s grammar test.
Romantic, dark, and ironic, Droll Tales is a book like none you have experienced. It is a joyful interrogation of the paradoxes underpinning life, a cabinet of curiosities, a philosophical vaudeville, a puzzle in 14 pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles’ singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.
More from the same
Love Books? You'll Love Audible.
Transform your day
Replace endless scrolling with endless listening. Chores can be fun.
Listen everywhere
You can’t turn pages while you drive—but you can press play.
Carry your entire Library
Your stories go where you go. Audiobooks don’t weigh a thing.
Listen and learn
Discover stories that can change your mind, your well-being, and your life.
Reach your reading goals
Download titles to listen offline, wherever you are in the world.
Find your niche
WIth thousands of titles to explore, there’s something for everyone.