Reservation Road Audiobook By John Burnham Schwartz cover art

Reservation Road

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Reservation Road

By: John Burnham Schwartz
Narrated by: Various
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

“Haunting. . . . A powerful and affecting novel.”–The New York Times

A tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz’s riveting novel RESERVATION ROAD. Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding an unexpected and horrendous death. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to his son. As these two men’s lives unravel, RESERVATION ROAD moves to its startling conclusion. This is an astonishing tale of love and loss, rage and redemption, that is as suspenseful as it is emotionally compelling.©1998 John Burnham Schwartz; (P)2007 Books on Tape Family Life Emotionally Gripping Psychological Suspense Literary Fiction Thriller & Suspense Genre Fiction Exciting

Critic reviews

"This is a shattering book, imagined with startling emotional precision and generosity. And though it begins in catastrophe, Reservation Road turns out to be a kind of map of connectedness: Touch a child here and the whole world trembles out of orbit; everyone bleeds; finally, perhaps, after great pain, everyone heals. John Burnham Schwartz is awfully young to own this much wisdom, but there it is, on every page."
--Rosellen Brown

"A powerful and affecting novel...haunting...highly suspenseful...compelling to read."
--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Spellbinding...a haunting tale"
--Booklist

"A poignant thriller...quietly breathtaking...a suspenseful literary novel"
--Betsey Osborne, Vanity Fair

"A pleasure to read. Suspense is redefined here..."
--Sandra Scofield, Newsday

"A lovely book, full of life and feeling"
--Peter Matthiessen

"One of those rare--very rare--novels that you don't so much read as inhabit...But it's the novel's conclusion, as perfect as it is sudden, shocking and completely unexpected, that will stick in your memory."
--Tom Dehaven, Entertainment Weekly

"A beautiful novel. An important novel"
--David Bowman, New York Observer

"Both a beautiful, wrenching story of redemption, and a novel of exquisite suspense"
--Anne Lamott

"A first-rate work of fiction disguised as a page-turning thriller"
--David Halberstam

"An unexpected pleasure...It will leave the reader entranced as well as moved."
--Erica Noonan, Boston Herald

"A non-stop read...a wonderful writer"
--Ward Just

"A triumph of form, pacing and power...character-driven as it is, it reads like a thrille, swift and complete."
--Kit Reed, New York Times Book Review

"It possesses a conclusion of such power that it would be a literary crime to reveal it."
--Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
All stars
Most relevant
Very dynamic characters -- they jump right off the page; flawless writing; very entertaining story. Can't wait to read the sequel!

Excellent book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I liked the exposition in this novel -- the juxtaposition of the two families who are simultaneously very different yet quite similar. But the ending was, for lack of a better word, lame.

Liked it, but...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I wish the ending was better and not so sad but the book as a whole was good. Having lost a child myself I felt the grief of these parents but was outraged at the ending.

excitment and thriller, but oh so sad.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Story line was interesting from the start. The whole book is written in the first person and deals primarily with what each of the characters is feeling about the hit and run accident which killed Ethan and Grace's 10 year old son Josh. You get a bit of what Josh's sister is feeling as well. The other side of the coin is the guy who hit Josh with his car. All the emotions and guilt that he is going through.
There were 3 different narrators for each of the main characters, so you always know exactly which person is being portrayed at all times. They all did a pretty good job.
The book didn't come together for me at the end as well as it could have. It had the potential of being far more exciting. The author set the scene so it could have ended any number of ways. Personally, it left me feeling blah.
I believe they made a movie out of this book and it is coming out in November 2007. I think I'll wait for it to come out on video. I've spent enough on this one.

It Had Potential

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Not my usual cup of tea, and even dreaded starting it, but the book captivated me from start. All three main characters were intriguingly drawn, and the story had enough suspense to make you want to listen to the next chapter. Only drawback was ending was somewhat predictable.

Enthralling from start to finish

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews