Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Boatbuilder
    The Boatbuilder
    The Boatbuilder
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Boatbuilder

    Written by Daniel Gumbiner

    Narrated by Shawn Compton

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award in Fiction



    At twenty-eight years old, Eli "Berg" Koenigsberg has never encountered a challenge he couldn't push through, until a head injury leaves him with lingering headaches and a weakness for opiates. Berg moves to a remote Northern California town, seeking space and time to recover, but soon finds himself breaking into homes in search of pills. Addled by addiction and chronic pain, Berg meets Alejandro, a reclusive, master boatbuilder, and begins to see a path forward. Alejandro offers Berg honest labor, but more than this, he offers him a new approach to his suffering, a template for survival amid intense pain. Nurtured by his friendship with Alejandro and aided, too, by the comradeship of many in Talinas, Berg begins to return to himself. Written in gleaming prose, this is a story about resilience, community, and what it takes to win back your soul.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateDec 18, 2018
    ISBN9781684419388

    Related to The Boatbuilder

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: C Pam Zhang

      Dec 11, 2019

      It was the last year of my third decade on this earth, and it seems with every passing year I grow increasingly alien to that earth, or it to me. The post A Year in Reading: C Pam Zhang appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      10 Best Books By Irish Authors To Celebrate St Patrick’s Day

      Mar 9, 2021

      It’s St Patrick’s Day on 17 March and what better way to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland than by reading a book by an Irish author? Ireland has a population of just under five million, but despite its size it has produced some of the finest and

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ask A Literary Consultant

      Sep 3, 2020

      Ask A Literary Consultant
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      KeaNu Wtf

      Dec 2, 2021

      KeaNu Wtf
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How We Made An Angel At My Table

      Oct 11, 2020

      Jane Campion read To the Is-land in 1982 while a film student in Sydney. Her mother, Edith, sent her a copy. She’d loved Frame’s books since reading Owls Do Cry as a teenager. She cried. She had an idea. Back in New Zealand for Christmas, she asked h

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      LeTteR Bocks

      Aug 4, 2022

      ◻PLEASE find attached this trademark from a box of eggs, which appears to show a chicken lifting its leg to crack off an eggy one. Susan Butcher, Australia ◻FORMER Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for meeting an ex-KGB agent without h

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      “Really?”

      Jun 2, 2022

      “Really?”
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On Loss

      Apr 17, 2023

      On Loss
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Lost Prayer

      Feb 2, 2023

      A Lost Prayer
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nugrybauti

      Apr 24, 2019

      Nugrybauti
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Poetry No. 116

      Mar 19, 2024

      The Art of Poetry No. 116
      32 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Life After Death

      May 27, 2022

      Life After Death
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Glove

      Mar 4, 2024

      The Glove
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Green Ticket To Ride

      Feb 19, 2024

      Green Ticket To Ride
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      THE God father

      Jan 23, 2020

      THE God father
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Gore Blimey

      Jul 22, 2024

      Gore Blimey
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      His Brilliant Career

      Mar 19, 2023

      His Brilliant Career
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Year Of The Goat

      Mar 18, 2021

      Year Of The Goat
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Club

      Nov 9, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Good Books Make Good Fuel

      Sep 21, 2022

      Is it time to burn my books? My wife has already told me she is getting rid of the lot the moment I go. So, given the cost-of-living crisis and the rocketing price of fuel, is this the year for me to clear the grate and set a match to all my treasure

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      NEW ENGLAND By The BOOK

      Sep 10, 2021

      SHORTLY AFTER I met my wife, she told me she hoped to one day visit Emily Dickinson’s house in New England. She was working at a publishing house in Paris’s 14th Arrondissement, across the street from Montparnasse Cemetery, where some of France’s mos

      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Boatbuilder

    4/5

    26 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      What a sweet story of forgiveness, understanding and finding your way in between stations.
    • 4/5
      This is a work of fiction that puts you in the shoes of an addict. For the first time, I thought I could begin to imagine what struggling with an addiction was like, and how easy it is to slip back from sobriety. Great book, very interesting and sympathetic characters.
    • 5/5
      Berg has struggled with drug and alcohol addiction and looks to find a job. He ends up getting one with a man who builds custom boats for clients some of which are involved in illegal activities. His boss Alejandro loves his craft and brings some stability and wisdom into Berg's life. He meets many unique people in the local community. This is a great debut novel with fully developed characters and a very realistic slice of life plot.
    • 4/5
      I only heard of this when it was longlisted for the National Book Award. The library queue was quite long (largely due to the few copies available).It was worth the wait. I can't believe I have not seen/read more hype for this book. Berg is a 20-something sales guy (or a programmer?) at a tech startup in San Francisco. After suffering a significant concussion, the doctors hand him Rx opioids. And there his real problems begin. He tries rehab, it doesn't work. So he leaves town. His girlfriend has a friend who needs a housesitter while she is out of the country, and Berg goes. To the small coastal town of Talinas (a stand-in for Bolinas?). He finds a job at a yacht club, and then becomes an apprentice to Alejandro, a local boatmaker. Alejandro is very smart, clever, and wise. He teaches Berg about boatbuilding, meditation, acceptance, and more. Berg makes friends and learns more about taking things as they come and asking for/accepting help.This is one of those open-ended books that just stops, without any conclusion. Usually that drives me crazy, but somehow it works here. I can imagine the characters going on in their lives--with ups and downs, setbacks in work and play, and huge successes as well.
    • 4/5
      This is a sweet, good-natured novel in which nothing much happens, but I enjoyed the ride very much. It follows a year or so in the life of a feckless but decent young man grappling with an opioid habit and figuring out what his next steps in life are. The protagonist, Berg, is a bit lost, but he's also a good guy whom you sense will be OK, when his instincts lead him to boat-building and a tight little community as a way to keep himself afloat (zero pun intended, honestly) you can't help but root for him. Ultimately the book is a gentle tribute to the qualities of working with one's hands, learning a craft, talking to your neighbors, and taking your time with what you do. And you can't really argue with that, especially when a book is as nicely written and affable as this one.
    • 4/5
      Consider this novel a Northern Exposure (American television series) type of read where the characters are unique and the location of Talinas, California is like an island unto itself. A small town, where everyone seems to know each other. It is an escape people seem to gravitate to in order to start over, heal or simply get lost. "Berg", the novel's main character, arrives in Talinas as an out of work, out of rehab Millenial who believes getting away from the big city will defuse his addiction to opiates. Yet, his appetite persists and it's through the soulful guidance of his employer, Alejandro, that he finds his life's calling. Well, his life's calling at the moment, for it seems the book is a reflection on the fact that life is a journey. Whether searching for happiness, safety, love, for purpose, we all need to find our way. At the conclusion, eight year old Tess hopes to "have things figured out" by the age of 28. Yet, that's not always the case. Everyone has a different timeline and obstacles abound to steer one away from the anticipated goal forcing one to forge a new and unanticipated road. It's a heavy thought, brought to you by this quiet and gentle read where not much seems to happen but the undertow, though not heavy handed, is engaging.