Very Cold People cover art

Very Cold People

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Very Cold People

By: Sarah Manguso
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Longlisted for the Wingate Prize

Financial Times Best Debuts

Guardian's Best Fiction of the Year

Once home to the country's most illustrious families, Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is now an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history and how silence often masks a legacy of harm—from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends.

In Very Cold People Sarah Manguso reveals the suffocating constraints of growing up in a very old, and very cold, small town. Here lies a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smouldering rage . . .

©2022 Penguin Random House LLC (P)2022 Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Coming of Age Fiction Women's Fiction
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion cover art
The Trees cover art
Cider with Rosie cover art
Anywhere But Here cover art
We Love Anderson Cooper cover art
Margreete's Harbor cover art
Life Among the Savages cover art

Critic reviews

"I can’t think of a writer, who is at once so formally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso." (Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man)

What listeners say about Very Cold People

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

good book

An investigation into small town living. Enclosed communities and family dynamics that not necessarily create positive relationships with self and others. the effects of trauma. wanting to belong but living with a feeling you can't fit it. Even the life in Waitsfield seem bleak, each story is told in an engaging way and unfolds the effect of living there every chapter at the time.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A restrained story of a society steeped in abuse

I’m glad this book exists and that it addresses difficult stuff but avoids any bum notes. I wish authentic, meaningful writing on these areas of life didn’t have to feel so guarded, so exhausted and radiate such willed stability; but that seems to be where we are as a culture. It is well done and often poetic but its vigilance is painful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Kinda bland

Not sure I fully understood this one. Felt rather bland to me. And I actually gave up which is rare.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!