Mrs. Ted Bliss
Written by Stanley Elkin
Narrated by George Guidall
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
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
22 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This 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.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Dorothy 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another 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.