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    Eleanor
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    Eleanor
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    Eleanor
    Audiobook12 hours

    Eleanor

    Written by Jason Gurley

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

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    About this audiobook

    Eleanor is the story of choices that ripple through time far beyond the moment they’re made. And what happens when, just sometimes, bonds are so powerful they reach
    beyond this world and into another…

    1962, Anchor Bend, Oregon.

    The sea calls to Eleanor. Like the turn of the waves it beckons her from the heart of the town she’s always known, from her husband Hob and their young daughter, Agnes, to the unfathomable depths of the ocean.

    1985

    Agnes’s daughter Eleanor is six years old. She shares her name with the grandmother she never knew and everything else with her identical twin, Esmerelda. But to Agnes, only Eleanor is a constant reminder of the past.

    1993

    After a dark event leaves her family in tatters, Eleanor, now fourteen, is left caring for her alcoholic mother, whose grief has torn her apart. But when Eleanor’s reality begins to unravel, she starts to lose her grip on time itself, slipping from the present into strange other lands where she’s in danger of losing herself altogether.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 10, 2016
    ISBN9780008132958
    Unavailable
    Eleanor

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    Reviews for Eleanor

    4/5

    156 ratings57 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I received Eleanor as an Early Reviewer from LibraryThing which I really appreciate. This is a difficult book to categorize. You've got three generations of women and a lot of pain. When Eleanor's twin, Esmerelda dies in an accident, it causes an incredible rift, both literally and figuratively within the family. Eleanor's mother hates the sight of her daughter because of the reminder of the daughter she lost. Her father leaves after a few months, leaving Eleanor alone with her mother, Agnes. There is a back story of what happens to Agnes' mother which starts everything that happens. There is a mystical element that I found off setting at first, but I kept going and it became more comfortable for me. I did like this book but I didn't love it. I think it will appeal to a lot of people,though
    • 2/5
      It was an alright read. It was hard for me to stay focused since I didn't feel too connected to any of the characters.
    • 3/5
      I got this novel through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program. Eleanor is the story of a girl who keeps finding herself ripped from her own world with seemingly no explanation. Her family has long ago been torn apart and she struggles to figure out what is happening to her. Personally, I felt like the story jumped around too much between what was happening in several different places. It eventually all came together, but it was exhausting to me to try to follow each storyline before they were connected. I actually ended up being more interested in what was happening in Eleanor's actual life, and didn't like it when she was transported elsewhere. As the story picked up and the reader learned more, these other worlds became more interesting, but for a great deal of the book they felt more like distractions. The ending also bugged me a lot, although I will avoid spoilers. I just wish the mechanics behind what happened were better explained. Anyway, it was a fun read, but I had my issues with it.
    • 5/5
      Full disclosure: I received this book from librarything.com.The story is about a family torn apart by grief, time travel, and dreams. I became confused when the story switched to Efah and Mea. It seemed to come out of nowhere for me. Once I found the flow of the story, I couldn't put it down. I don't usually read fantasy but it works well in this story. One of my favorite books from LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway.
    • 5/5
      I want to say first, I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a strange story filled with generations of grief. However, the fantasy, dreamscapes, and originality all worked together to make this an out-of-this-world (literally) journey to mend a broken family. You must leave your sense of reality on the shelf when you pick up this book. Time will be manipulated and worlds will collide. YA
    • 5/5
      In Eleanor, the reader sees the cause and effect of one horrific event that leads to yet another for a long-suffering family. Part tragedy, part fantasy, this beautifully written novel was one I didn't want to put down.
    • 4/5
      I received Eleanor as an ER here on the Library Thing site. 3 generations of women, twins, tragedy X3, fantasy realm. I wanted very much to love this book, the premise was enthralling but I admit getting a little thrown around by the other world of Mea and what it represented. It reminded me a bit of 11/22/63 in that there might be a possibility to rearrange the past (and the question of whether or not the rearrangement of life events would have a detrimental effect). I am glad I read it but would recommend this as a book to take your time with - not read quickly.
    • 1/5
      i hated this book. i couldn't finish it as i just didn't care about the characters at all. i'm usually a fan of fantasy-like books, but this one was just not good.
    • 4/5
      The summary was strange. 99% of it reads like something from Lifetime or Oprah's book list, until I realized trite phrases like "Eleanor's painful reality begins to unravel" and "Eleanor is torn from her world" are happening literally.Eleanor is the story of three generations of women... mostly making each other miserable. It spans forty years (1962-1996), with a plot that jumps between Eleanor, her daughter Agnes', her daughters Eleanor (II) and Esmeralda, and -- ready for the Scifi? -- a mysterious rift dimension. Oh, and a series of husbands/fathers who don't really help the situation.Extremely similar to the video game Life is Strange -- love, tragedy, time travel, and relationships between women.
    • 2/5
      I had a hard time getting into this novel beyond the first section. The story itself is decently written, and the multiple POVs were easy enough to keep tack of. However, I didn't like reading the sections dealing with Mea and The Keeper. They're confusing, the mystical settings bizarre and not at all well rendered. Eleanor's story was interesting but also lost me at times. Some parts are unnecessarily repetitious. Mostly I felt like I was slogging through this book and in the end I was unsatisfied. Would not recommend.
    • 4/5
      Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book as part of LibraryThing Early Reviewers, in response for an honest review.Eleanor reminds me of the recent horror film The Babadook. Both pieces are trying to talk about something real and very complicated that remains largely unspoken of in "polite society" and treated as if it doesn't exist, often with devastating consequences. Both pieces couch their examination in a fantastical, genre-bending story that allows viewers to experience the issue from a different perspective, and both - in my opinion, at least - get a little bit too caught up in the finer points of their fantasy world when we're all sitting there going, "Yes, yes. I've figured it out already. Get a move on." The Babadook is explicitly about postpartum depression, but it's also a scary horror movie about a demon that invades the home of a single mother and her child, and when it starts to strain credulity is when it decides it needs to wrap the horror movie up in a nice tidy bow. It pulls out all the stops to go through all the horror movie/posession tropes, most of which - frankly - aren't really necessary. There's a perfectly decent (if rather bleak) ending point where the film should, by all rights, simply stop. Eleanor follows a very similar pattern. Jason Gurley has written a very strong scenario around something that goes beyond "simple" postpartum: his mothers, it is implied, never wanted to be mothers in the first place, and in large part, that's because of the guilt left behind by the actions of their own mothers. It's cyclical, and he's dealing at different points with three generations of young women: first Eleanor, then her daughter Agnes, and then her daughter Eleanor. This most recent Eleanor is the focus as she attempts to navigate her mother's alcoholism and her father's ineffectuality, both the results of a terrible car accident that claimed the life of her twin sister, Esmeralda. We quickly learn that another intelligent force can pull Eleanor out of own life and into different times and realities. The results are often brutal; she will disappear for days, weeks, or months at a time, and when she reappears, she is often naked, physically bruised or even horribly injured. I will leave it to you to draw your own metaphors.Other reviewers have commented that a problem with Eleanor is watching Eleanor react so passively to the events that happen to her. I agree: the longer the book goes on, the harder it becomes to watch her get yanked out of her own timeline again, watch her get beaten about again, watch her re-emerge as the human equivalent of a broken toy again. I think, though, that's probably part of the point. When she finally does act, it's in a way that can't really be anything but catastrophic. What's more troubling for me is that Gurley does an awful lot of implying without being especially definite. He just lets the metaphor continue spinning out, and you're left to make of it what you will - which is certainly trusting in his audience's intelligence, but by the end of the story, it would be nice to have...I don't know...one or two fairly concrete things nailed down about how this situation will (or won't!) solve itself.That's not what Gurley does, though. What Gurley does - and here's where I return to my comparison to The Babadook - is let the last quarter of his novel or so just explode in symbolism. We do get a few concrete answers to "mysteries" - but frankly, these are mysteries that any reader with a reasonably sharp mind figured out a long, long while earlier. (I did, and I'm notoriously awful at figuring out any sort of mystery.) Gurley just hammers them home too hard, perhaps because he didn't really intend them to be mysteries in the first place. (Without giving it away, let's just say - he doesn't have that many characters in the novel. Options are limited as to "whodunnit," so to speak.) The last portion of the book is totally caught up in bringing his fantasy metaphor full circle, ticking off all the boxes, and tying it all up in a nice, pretty bow. As a reader, this feels tedious to me, not least of all because I've figured out so much on my own. I want to know what these characters are going to do, not who or what they are or how they all fit together in the big jigsaw puzzle. How is the crisis going to be solved? Gurley's solution just isn't satisfying on anything except, perhaps, a rather superficial emotional level. There was a point at which the book could have ended that still wouldn't have given me closure, but it would, at least, have let me work out my own interpretation of Gurley's fantastical world - and that, I think, would have been better. By needing to check off all the entries on a list of "how these kinds of stories work" instead of focusing on the core issue, Gurley cheats himself out of a lot of good will on the part of the reader. His initial setup is excellent. His actual writing style is extremely engaging. He just makes the mistake of creating a very complicated problem for his characters without knowing how to really get them back out of it - or, alternatively, having the courage to leave them and us stuck in it with our own shock.
    • 4/5
      The imagery in Eleanor is absolute poetry. I could see every scene unfolding vividly before me. The way Gurley put words together, a character didn't just have a feeling, they had an experience, which I could share with that character.This is my highest praise for Eleanor. I also liked that the book takes place in Oregon. The theme of water, the ocean in particular, is an appropriate allegory in this interesting story.This isn't just a story about one character, but three generations. This is a story about family, pain, and healing. I found myself often underlining phrases not only for their beauty, but for the thoughts they provoked. There is the sense that Jason Gurley understands life and time and love in a way that most people never grasp, and this is shown in "the Rift."I very much cared for the main protagonist, was protective of her even. But what I found the most incredible was watching all the strange things come together and begin to make sense. Everything continued to click into place one after the other until it all came to an and. Beautiful story about ripping apart time to save a family.
    • 3/5
      The story begins, with Eleanor, a haunted young woman, disappearing into the ocean. It then picks up with, her grand-daughters, identical twins, Eleanor and Esmerelda. They are involved in a tragic accident and their young lives are ripped apart. One leaves and one stays to pick up the pieces. This is a tale, with bursts of magical realism, dealing with grief and separation, as we follow Eleanor's quest to heal her family and to discover her unusual connection with her grandmother.Despite, it being well-written and nicely atmospheric, I had a hard time connecting with it. The fantastical elements bogged the story down for me. Many readers loved this book, so it might just have just hit me wrong. If it sounds good, give it a try.The audio by Cassandra Campbell was excellent.
    • 4/5
      Eleanor was a bit of a hard start for me; the writing is clear and quick, but at first the novel felt disjointed - like it was put together a touch too hastily, leaving threads dangling behind.This cleared up about a quarter of the way though, though, and I found myself eagerly awaiting my next few furtively found seconds. Luckily, this book is chunked into such nice little pieces! Reading in snatched bits of time was perfectly reasonable. The story is heartfelt, though sometimes seems a little flat. There is an immense tragedy at the beginning, and while you see how the family has been flattened by The Event, I never actually felt it. You know, in-your-bones, I'm gonna cry kind of felt. I had to imagine that I felt it, and I kept wishing the the book would just go that little bit deeper.That said, I really did dig the story as a whole. The speculative part of the novel is quite interesting and original, and I find myself thinking about Mea and Efah often. They are undeveloped characters, really - but I think that could be by choice rather than by chance.The novel makes a circle, and thus it's satisfying. Maybe not the perfect happy ending, but, in the end: hope. I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program. Neither that nor the fact that it's based in neck of the woods has impacted the substance of my review! (But, really: Pacific NW go team!)
    • 4/5
      I thought that this book was really well done. It was an emotional read that broke my heart more than once. I felt so much for Eleanor and her family and believe that nobody should have to go through the things that they do in this story. I really liked the way that this book dealt with pain, grief, depression and didn’t shy away from showing the ugly side of these emotions. I found this to be a very touching story.The book opens with Eleanor. Eleanor is married to a man that she loves and has a little girl. She doesn’t seem completely happy though but she finds that it helps to swim so she takes to the ocean on a daily basis. Eleanor’s little girl, Agnes, grows up to be the mother of twin girls named Eleanor and Esmerelda. On the way to pick up the girls’ father, the family gets into a terrible wreck and Esmerelda doesn’t survive. Eleanor’s mother deals with the loss with a bottle and essentially stops mothering her remaining child. Her father ends up leaving when the marriage falls apart but remains an active part of Eleanor’s life.I liked the way that magical realism is worked into the story. Eleanor is thrust into these alternate and sometimes dream worlds where time moves very differently. She had no control of where or went she is pulled into these alternate dimensions and she struggles with how to explain everything to those in her life. The characters we meet in the alternate dimension do play an important role and I liked how everything came together in the end.Cassandra Campbell does a wonderful job with the narration of this novel. I liked all of the different voices that she used for the characters in this story. I thought that she added a lot of emotion into her reading and was able to take this book to the next level. I believe that her narration added to my overall enjoyment of the book.I would recommend this book to others. I found this to be a very well-written novel that deals with some horrible situations. I wouldn’t hesitate to read more of this author’s work in the future.I received a digital review copy of this book from Crown Publishing via NetGalley and purchased a copy of the audiobook.
    • 3/5
      Eleanor's twin sister, Esmerelda, died in a tragic car accident that nearly broke her family. Her mother, Agnes, lost her mother at a young age, and the loss of another family member may very well have proved too much. But when Eleanor begins to experience strange moments where she is transported to mysterious places, an already unstable situation appears like it might only get worse. But the force behind all of this is one that Eleanor never would have expected. And it just might lead to a solution from across time that can help heal her family and make it whole once again.

      The story here is honestly a bit surreal and comes across as a bit strange at first. But as things move forward, the connections between the various characters--those named and those unnamed--starts to become clear. And the power of grief and love to transcend the impossible is illustrated in some unexpected ways.

      [Disclaimer: This review is based on a copy of the book received from the publisher via the Blogging for Books program.]
    • 5/5
      This books is insanely good! I had no idea how incredible it was going to be based off the summary. It has great detail and elaborate writing. Very imaginative!
    • 5/5
      Wow. I was not expecting this. Dreamlike, compelling, and honest. So many adjective that could be used. I know once I entered the world of Eleanor I was reading something special -- something that doesn't come along often.
      I didn't want the story to end, and yet when I reached the last page, I felt fulfilled, completed, whole.
      Easily one of the best books of 2014.

      I received an early copy of this book via Jason Gurley’s The Movement Newsletter

    • 5/5
      At first, I found this novel to be a tad bit slow. It kept flitting between different times and places and I didn't really understand what was going on. But pushing through was worth it. A good deal of the story was full of sadness, as the author establishes the effects of the tragedy of Esmeralda's death. However, the story truly picks up when Eleanor keeps getting removed from her world and put somewhere else. I loved the journey that the story took me on and when everything was revealed, the pieces fit together beautifully. This novel is deep and definitely makes you think about what could happen if just one thing in life was changed. I really really hope you will give this novel a chance to win your heart, because I am CONFIDENT that it will!
    • 5/5
      I read this book months ago and have kept it sitting on my kitchen table while I debated what to write about it. I know I chose it from the Early Reviewer books because of the description, "Eleanor and Esmerelda are identical twins, inseparable until a terrible accident claims Esme's life." Twins, an accident, family relationships--right up my alley. But this book was much more than a routine story about family loss and tragedy. I have wanted to recommend it to bookish friends, but wasn't sure if they would consider it as fascinating as I did or just a bunch of New Age goofiness ("Eleanor has been ripped out of time..."). "Eleanor" by Jason Gurley pulls you in right away and takes you all kinds of places you never expected. I reveled in this book while reading it and encourage others to take a look at the work of this creative author.
    • 3/5
      This book has so many layers- loss, grief , anger, dysfunctional family relationships and time travel I struggled with this because at times it was confusing as to what reality the protagonist was in. I wanted to like it more I really did
    • 5/5

      This is one of those books that it's easier to review by writing about what it is not, than what it is.

      It's not Neil Gaiman (but it's almost that good), it's not typically YA (despite the teenage protagonists), it's not easily categorised (it's somewhere between metaphysics, magic and uhh, time travel, along with a really vivid depiction of a family failing to deal with grief and completely falling apart).

      And it is very, very, very good.

      If I  had access to physical copies of this book, I would probably be that annoying friend going around pressing it into everyone's hands going "you HAVE to read this".

      Be warned, for the first four or five chapters, I thought the blurb was for an entirely different book heh. It's not. Bear with it.

      Oh yes, there's some magic stuff too. And dreams walking and time travel and dinosaurs and love and loss and grief and pain and redemption, all wrapped up in one hell of a read.

      Longer but no less gushing review @ Booklikes

    • 5/5
      I read this one at the beginning of the year, but never got around to the review and it deserves a little fanfare! This one doesn't comfortably fit into just one genre. It is a story of family and love. Of loss and loyalty. Of siblings and time travel. Wait. What?! But it's true. Eleanor randomly, and against her will, leaves her body behind and finds herself in alternate realities. It is her curse, but also her gift because only she can repair the schism that grief has ripped in her family. Wildly creative, written beautifully, this one is truly memorable.
    • 4/5
      Listening to the CD I had to just keep going although I considered stopping after about three disks. The story sort of all hung together with the back and forth of the characters but at the end---isn't there a thought about changing one tiny thing back in time changes everything in the future? In this case, we are only talking about one family. It's definitely a different sort of book for me and this was one were you sort of had to keep going to see what would happen, even though I wasn't being mentally pulled forward to find out---just sort of plowing ahead anyway......Cassandra Campbell as the reader really helped!
    • 4/5
      It took me a little while to get invested in this story, but by the time I did, it was wonderful. It was an interesting story about dysfunctional people trying to get through their lives, but also fantastic in so many ways that didn't naturally fit the story line but added extra dimensions to the story and characters. I thought I had guessed the twist early on, but it turned out there were several other twists I didn't see coming, which is always fun.
    • 4/5
      Oh. My. Goodness. I loved this book. The plot was wonderful and the character were round. It might be tough to get through at some points, but it's worth it.
    • 3/5
      This novel explores a broken family, how grief can hollow you out from the inside, how love and the absence of it can destroy. It's not a bad book- the writing is vivid, the characters realistic- but the river of emotional and physical pain is easy to drown in. I cannot recall any point where I genuinely laughed or even smiled, and there is so much tragedy in one shape or another that I could not easily recommend this book to anyone I know.
    • 4/5
      When Eleanor’s twin, Esmerelda is killed in a car accident, Eleanor’s family spiral’s out of control. Her parents separate, her mother hits the bottle, and she is left to fend for herself. One day, the world seems to shimmer, and Eleanor walks through a doorway and finds herself in an odd landscape. This happens several times throughout her life, until she realizes that Esmerelda is trying to contact her.This was an odd, yet fascinating book. I just couldn’t put it down. The afterlife was portrayed in a unique way. Eleanor’s relationships with those around her were interesting and compelling. Overall, well worth picking up.
    • 5/5
      A magical story about love, loss, and recovery. So creative and mesmerizing. Absolutely loved it!!
    • 3/5
      Eleanor repeatedly visits alternate universes where she experiences different outcomes in her mostly tragic life. I found the story to be sad, almost depressing. At the same time, it was beautifully written; a very dreamlike, haunting tale.It was not at all what I was expecting. The first half was good, but as the story progressed the plot became more convoluted and difficult to follow. An additional problem for me was that I didn’t like most of the characters. And poor Eleanor — her entire life was one tragic event after another as we went through many ‘what-ifs’.As I’ve said before, fantasy can be hit or miss with me, and this one missed. I’m glad I stuck it out to the end, though, because the story does wrap up and the reader finally understands what’s happening. I’m probably in the minority here as I’ve seen many glowing reviews, so if you enjoy magical realism or fantasy, give this a try.Audio productionThe book was beautifully read by Cassandra Campbell, and probably the reason I was able to continue to the end even though I was losing interest in the story. Her narration conveyed the dreamlike, haunting atmosphere that prevailed throughout the story.