Why Visit America
(eAudiobook)

Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

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(
    [year] => 2020
    [artist] => Matthew Baker
    [fiction] => 1
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/mcm_9781250755476_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 12663680
    [isbn] => 9781250755476
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => Why Visit America
    [demo] => 
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    [duration] => 14h 5m 0s
    [children] => 
    [artists] => Array
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            [0] => stdClass Object
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                    [name] => Matthew Baker
                    [artistFormal] => Baker, Matthew
                    [relationship] => AUTHOR
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            [1] => stdClass Object
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                    [name] => Peter Ganim
                    [artistFormal] => Ganim, Peter
                    [relationship] => READER
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    [genres] => Array
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            [0] => Drama
            [1] => Sci-Fi & Fantasy
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    [price] => 3.99
    [id] => 12663680
    [edited] => 
    [kind] => AUDIOBOOK
    [active] => 1
    [upc] => 
    [synopsis] => The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s brilliantly illuminating, incisive, and heartbreaking collection Why Visit America.

The audiobook opens with a seemingly traditional story in which the speculative element is extremely minimal - the narrator has a job that doesn’t actually exist - a story that wouldn’t seem much out of place in a collection of literary realism. From there the stories get progressively stranger: A young man breaks the news to his family that he is going to transition - from an analog body to a digital existence. A young woman abducts a child - her own - from a government-run childcare facility. A man returns home after committing a great crime, his sentence being that his memory - his entire life - is wiped clean. 

As the audiobook moves from universe to universe, the stories cross between different American genres: from bildungsroman to rom-com, Western to dystopian, including fantasy, horror, erotica, and a noir detective mystery. Listened to together, these parallel-universe stories create a composite portrait of the true nature of the United States and a Through the Looking-Glass reflection of who we are as a country.
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12663680
    [pa] => 
    [publisher] => Macmillan Audio
    [purchaseModel] => INSTANT
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