Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • With or Without You

  • A Memoir
  • By: Domenica Ruta
  • Narrated by: Domenica Ruta
  • Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)

£0.00 for first 30 days

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.

With or Without You

By: Domenica Ruta
Narrated by: Domenica Ruta
Try for £0.00

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

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

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.

Summary

A haunting, unforgettable mother-daughter story for a new generation - the debut of a blazing new lyrical voice

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving Italian town north of Boston where in the seventeenth century women were hanged as witches. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in this hardscrabble place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites. And yet she managed, despite the chaos she created, to instill in her daughter the idea that art - via a classic film or a classical education - could transcend this life of undying grudges, self-inflicted misfortune, and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by. With or Without You is the story of Domenica’s unconventional coming of age - a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit ’90s childhood and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. In a brilliant stylistic feat, Domenica Ruta has penned a powerful, inspiring, pause-resisting, and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.

©2013 Domenica Ruta (P)2013 Random House Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

How to Cook Your Daughter cover art
Tucker's Way cover art
The Poisonwood Bible cover art
True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness cover art
I'm Just Happy to Be Here: A Memoir of Renegade Mothering cover art
The Kite Runner cover art
Loud in the House of Myself cover art
Heft cover art
Secrets of a Charmed Life cover art
Hey Nostradamus! cover art
Still Alice cover art
Orphan Train: A Novel cover art
Sex Object cover art
A Stolen Life cover art
I Swear I'll Make It Up to You cover art
The Sound of Gravel cover art

Critic reviews

“In the world of memoir, Mary Karr’s and Geoffrey Wolff’s exceptional books burn and brighten, like actual stars among strings of tinsel. With or Without You is like that. I will read whatever Domenica Ruta writes.” (Amy Bloom)
“ ‘Make it new,’ Ezra Pound directed, and Domenica Ruta has. Difficult childhoods are plentiful, the talent to transform adversity into art in short supply. Unflinching in its regard, forgiving in its humor, With or Without You is that rare thing, a story you think you know transformed into one you have to read to the end.” (Kathryn Harrison)
“Freakishly brilliant, brilliantly freakish, this is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Domenica Ruta has done something every artist with a failed family must do: She has created herself.” (Gary Shteyngart)

What listeners say about With or Without You

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

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