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How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague

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How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?

A Novel

by Anna Montague

Narrator Cynthia Nixon

This audiobook uses AI narration.

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Length 8 hours 57 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“In turns heartbreaking and humorous, this novel follows a 70-year old woman on a road trip with her best friend’s ashes. Along the way, she confronts her grief and her sexuality, demonstrating that honesty and connection are there, if we are brave enough to reach for them. Cynthia Nixon’s narration perfectly expresses the humor and poignancy of the text. ”
— Colleen • Read Between The Lynes

Bookseller recommendation

“Magda Eklund is a loner, struggling to deal with the death of her long-time best friend. After finding a notebook with her friend's musings about taking a road trip with Magda to a set of meaningful places from their past, Magda packs up and takes leave from her job to make the road trip herself. Along the way, her tangled personal relationships with family and friends are illuminated and she learns just how strong these ties are. Magda is also facing retirement, which brings up another set of complicated emotions. The audio version of this book is lovely, with the talented Cynthia Nixon performing the book with great sensitivity.”
— Camille • Completely Booked

Bookseller recommendation

“Magda sets off on an unplanned road trip with an unusual companion. Along the way, she begins to examine her life, eventually arriving at new hope and happiness. We travel along with her, journeying through her memories and emotions, in this warm and insightful look at one woman’s life. ”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

#34 in Bestselling LGBTQIA+ Fiction Audiobooks

For fans of Less and Remarkably Bright Creatures comes a funny and moving novel about love, loss, and new beginnings found on an unlikely road trip

Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She’s mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara’s prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sara’s possessions. She’s fine.

But in going through Sara’s old journal, Magda discovers her friend’s last directive: plans for a road trip they would take together in celebration of Magda’s upcoming seventieth birthday. So, with Sara’s urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encountering a cast of memorable characters—including her sister, from whom she’s been keeping secrets. Along the way she stumbles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women’s retreat meant to “unleash one’s divine feminine energy” in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself—and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara.

As the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexuality and identity she thought she had long put to rest. And as she soon learns, it’s never too late to start your next journey.

Fiction LGBTQIA+ Fiction Fiction - Literary

Anna Montague is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is her first novel.

Cynthia Nixon has been working professionally in film, television, and onstage since the age of twelve. Her best known role is Miranda on Sex and the City for which she received an Emmy^® nomination and three consecutive Golden Globe nominations. She lives in New York with her two children: Samantha and Charlie.