Maya Fleischmann

FictionAudioFamily Saga

Return to Valetto

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Edoardo Ballerini’s magnetic performance draws out the beauty and darkness of places and people in Return to Valetto (9 hours), Dominic Smith’s elegant multigenerational family saga set in the splendor of the Italian countryside.

After a two-year absence from Europe, where he studied Italy’s vanishing villages and towns, writer and historian Hugh Fisher returns to Valetto, Italy, for six months. This time, he’s focusing on family matters: namely visiting his aunts and 99-year-old grandmother and tending to the cottage left to him by his late mother, who died a year earlier. With an impeccable Italian accent, Ballerini portrays the tense dynamics as family members bicker over the cottage. After a squatter claims Fisher’s grandfather left it to her family in exchange for sheltering him during World War II, Ballerini’s adroit narration conveys subtle changes in the family that occur as the ensuing investigations unearth troubling secrets involving Hugh’s mother. The smooth effortlessness of Ballerini’s narration immerses readers in this tumultuous family history set against the backdrop of Valetto’s changing landscape.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Return to Valetto.

The smooth effortlessness of Edoardo Ballerini’s narration immerses readers in this tumultuous family history set against the backdrop of a changing Italian village.
Audio

What an Owl Knows

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Author, bird enthusiast and advocate Jennifer Ackerman (The Bird Way) reveals intriguing discoveries about owls in What an Owl Knows (9 hours), as well as how and why they are important. Owls have graced international mythology, art and literature. Now science shows how increasing our understanding of these birds impacts human life and even technology. Studies of how owls’ vision and hearing interact can have implications for human medicine, and studies of their feathers can influence the development of stealth aircraft. Ackerman’s fondness for and fascination with owls is clear in her narration, which is filled with softness and enthusiastic admiration as she describes her observations and interactions with the owls she has encountered in her travels. Ornithologists of all levels are sure to delight in Ackerman’s research and reflections in this book.

Read our starred review of the print edition of What an Owl Knows.

Ornithologists of all levels are sure to delight in What an Owl Knows.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Ghost Music

Review by Maya Fleischmann

“Solitude is tolerable, even enjoyable at times. But when you realise that you’ve given your life to someone, yet you know nothing but his name? That kind of solitude is loneliness. That’s what kills you.”

In An Yu’s ethereal Ghost Music, a woman’s grip on her suffocating life loosens as she is drawn into a surreal world of secrets and ghostly experiences where her deep yearnings can finally resurface and transform her.

Thirty-year-old Song Yan has devoted the past three years to her husband, Bowen. She has also made room in her life for his disgruntled mother, who is recently widowed and now lives with them in their Beijing apartment. Although Song Yan traded her career as a concert pianist to be a dutiful wife, Bowen is more interested in his job as a BMW executive than in having children.

The disquiet between Song Yan and her mother-in-law is temporarily quelled by the mysterious weekly delivery of prized mushrooms, which the women cook together. However, Song Yan becomes increasingly frustrated with and disconnected from Bowen after she learns some information about his past. She turns her attention toward investigating who sent the mushrooms, which leads her down the proverbial rabbit hole to Bai Yu, a famous pianist who vanished a decade earlier. In the process, Song Yan rediscovers an aspect of herself that was also on the verge of disappearing.

Ghost Music, like Yu’s first novel, Braised Pork, is beautifully metaphoric and insightful. Song Yan’s first-person narrative reveals the full richness of her mind and senses, which have been stifled by her fear of shame and the disregard of her husband and mother-in-law. Throughout this haunting social commentary, Yu’s lyrical language and atmospheric descriptions bring out the contrast between Song Yan’s oppressive, superficial reality and the hypnotic world where she converses with fungi. Fans of literary novels with a supernatural edge, such as Jamie Ford’s The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, take note.

In An Yu’s ethereal Ghost Music, a woman’s grip on her suffocating life loosens as she is drawn into a surreal world of unspoken secrets and ghostly experiences.
NonfictionAudioMemoir

Making a Scene

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Actor Constance Wu (known for her lauded roles in “Fresh Off the Boat,” Crazy Rich Asians and Hustlers) narrates her thoughtful and revealing memoir in essays with an endearing blend of passion and playfulness. 

Throughout her career, Wu has learned that life is a series of scenes that shape us; we don’t shape the scenes. She shares memories of people and events that have influenced who she is, including humorous and heartwarming tales of her parents’ assimilation into American culture, humbling mistakes she’s made in love and work, an unexpectedly touching goodbye to her black Toyota Prius and insightful commentary on technology, American culture and Asian diaspora.

Evocative, provocative and always heartfelt, Making a Scene (8 hours) is worthy of an encore. It’s a great match for fans of Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart.

Evocative, provocative and always heartfelt, Constance Wu’s Making a Scene is worthy of an encore.
RomanceContemporary Romance

The Key to My Heart

Review by Maya Fleischmann

A sweet and touching portrayal of friendship, heartbreak and healing, The Key to My Heart by Lia Louis is a poignant romance with astute observations about life after loss.

It’s been two years since her husband, Russ, died, and 32-year-old Natalie Fincher is still grieving. She’s lost her passion for the dreamy cottage she lives in, and she’s lost the chance to be part of the musical she wrote. She finds comfort talking to her friend Shauna, a motherly figure who owns a coffee shop at London’s St. Pancras railway station where Natalie has been playing the public piano. Although she is not interested in dating, Natalie placates her best friends, who are desperate to reignite her love life, by approaching handsome, good-natured Tom during a night out and asking him to pretend they’re starting a fling. Tom quickly becomes a friend, and when someone starts leaving Natalie sheet music in the piano bench, he attempts to help her find her anonymous music angel. 

Louis (Eight Perfect Hours) portrays life transitions with tender credibility. She immerses readers in Natalie’s past with well-placed memories of her life with Russ, which are triggered in the present by constant bittersweet reminders, such as their cottage that she still lives in. Natalie is a likable protagonist, trying to balance her grief and self-doubt with the expectations of her friends and family. Some of the repartee between Natalie and her best friends, especially about her sex life, can feel overly sophomorish and superficial, especially given the depth of Natalie’s first-person narration. But it also highlights her friends’ uncertainty and discomfort with addressing Natalie’s loss—and their own eventual growth. 

The Key to My Heart is an enticing and moving portrayal of the heart’s power to heal after the loss of a loved one. 

The Key to My Heart by Lia Louis is a poignant romance with astute observations about life after the loss.
NonfictionAudioScience

The Milky Way

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Astrophysicist Moiya McTier gives a stellar performance of her book The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy (6.5 hours), a thoroughly entertaining and mind-expanding exploration of our galaxy as told in the first-person voice of the Milky Way itself. McTier’s unique portrayal is refreshing, engaging and funny as she imbues the galaxy with a sassy, grandiose tone—rightly so, given its galactic grandness. 

McTier’s love affair with the universe began when she was a child, and this early appreciation of celestial aesthetics developed into a lifelong devotion to the logical data-driven science of astronomy. McTier’s down-to-earth style makes this science approachable, giving listeners the opportunity to experience a cognitive shift—to form their own romance with the galaxy.

The Milky Way is an out-of-this-world listening experience for anyone who has ever looked up at the sky with wonder.

Moiya McTier

How did an ancient galaxy pen its own autobiography? The Milky Way explains, as dictated to Dr. McTier.

Moiya McTier’s down-to-earth style makes science approachable, giving listeners the opportunity to form their own romance with the Milky Way.
Mystery & SuspenseAudio

The Woman in the Library

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Sulari Gentill’s novel The Woman in the Library (9 hours) is an intriguing mystery-within-a-mystery, performed with a measured sense of menace by voice actor Katherine Littrell.

Winifred Kincaid, an Australian on a scholarship, is at the Boston Public Library when she hears a woman’s scream. Winifred’s life becomes inextricably tied to three other strangers who are present for the discovery of a body. But this crime is actually the plot of a book being written by Hannah, an Australian who exchanges letters with Leo, an American writer who critiques her work and points out cultural idiosyncrasies.

Littrell combines restraint and a modulated pitch to convey Hannah’s characters’ growing uncertainty and fear as they suspect one another of the woman’s murder. Similarly, Littrell’s portrayal of Hannah brings out her anxiety and suspicion about Leo, who is becoming obsessed with Hannah’s novel and starts sending her crime scene photos to inspire her. Many listeners will appreciate Littrell’s accents, which highlight the cultural differences between America and Australia.

Many listeners of The Woman in the Library will appreciate Katherine Littrell's accents, which highlight the cultural differences between America and Australia.
Audio

The Angel of Rome

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Voice actors Edoardo Ballerini and Julia Whelan deliver exquisite performances in the audiobook for The Angel of Rome and Other Stories (8 hours), Jess Walter’s gratifying collection of vignettes about human connection and the twists of faith and fate.

Ballerini is masterful and controlled in his portrayal of ordinary people who experience something extraordinary. In “Fran’s Friend Has Cancer,” his expert pacing balances humor and darkness as Max bickers with his wife and realizes that an eavesdropper is recording their conversation. In the title story, Ballerini brings out 21-year-old Jack’s reluctance to study Latin in Rome—until the young man stumbles upon a higher cause, the actor Angelina Amadio.

Whelan’s crisp narration takes on humorous undertones in “Famous Actor” to portray an astute woman observing the absurdities of a self-absorbed actor. And in “Mr. Voice,” Whelan highlights the vulnerabilities of a girl raised by a stepfather who’s known for his popular radio personality, but whose big heart matters most at the end of the day.

Ballerini and Whelan infuse these engaging stories with warmth and surprise, making The Angel of Rome an ideal audiobook for readers who enjoyed Flights by Olga Tokarczuk and Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

Read our starred review of the print edition.

Edoardo Ballerini and Julia Whelan infuse Jess Walter's engaging, heartwarming stories with warmth and surprise.
FictionAudio

Tracy Flick Can’t Win

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Tracy Flick, Tom Perrotta’s protagonist from his darkly humorous novel Election, returns in Tracy Flick Can’t Win (6 hours), an engrossing story of retrospection, regret and self-fulfillment. Now the vice principal at a suburban New Jersey high school, Tracy is vying for the principal gig, which means navigating school politics and the sophomoric behavior of the adults around her.

Award-winning actor Lucy Liu’s sensitive performance of Tracy captures every moment of confidence and frustration. Her controlled tones highlight the loneliness, self-doubt and disappointment that Tracy feels after sidelining her political aspirations to take care of her mother and raise her daughter. “Better Call Saul” actor Dennis Boutsikaris’ entertaining performance of retiring principal Jack Weede’s misguided masculine mindset is sprinkled with guilt and shame. Other superb cast members (Jeremy Bobb, Ramona Young, Ali Andre Ali and Pete Simonelli) are equally impressive, conveying the nuances of strained personal and professional relationships while delivering quietly compelling reactions to the story’s climatic ending.

Read our review of the print edition of Tracy Flick Can’t Win.

Actor Lucy Liu’s sensitive performance of Tracy Flick captures every moment of confidence and frustration in Tom Perrotta's engrossing novel of retrospection, regret and self-fulfillment.
FictionHistorical FictionFamily Saga

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

Review by Maya Fleischmann

The bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet returns with another spellbinding tale of memory’s power to bind us together. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy connects women who are generations and worlds apart. 

Dorothy Moy lives in Seattle in 2045. A depressive and anxious 31-year-old poet, Dorothy experiences flashbacks, but not of her own experiences; she sees people and places that are unfamiliar to her. Then Dorothy’s 5-year-old daughter, Annabel, begins to exhibit peculiar behavior, describing visions she’s seen and talking about a boy looking for her. Hoping to spare her daughter a life of perpetual disquiet, Dorothy turns to epigenetics, the study of how behavior and trauma can be passed down through generations. She begins experimental therapy to discover the origins of her mysterious memories.

Ford’s writing is seductive as he intertwines the lives of Dorothy, Annabel and their ancestors within a rich swirl of history and imagination. We meet Afong, inspired by the first Chinese woman to immigrate to the U.S. in 1834, who tours the country as a spectacle for theatergoers; Lai King Moy, a young girl living through the bubonic plague outbreak in early 1900s San Francisco; Faye Moy, a nurse in her 50s who’s serving with the Flying Tigers, a combat air squadron, to fight against the Japanese during World War II; Zoe Moy, a student at an unconventional boarding school in 1927 England; and Greta Moy, a single woman in 2014 who develops a dating app just for women. 

As Ford unravels the intriguing stories behind Dorothy’s recollections, he leads readers through her process of reconciling inherited memory with her present reality. The unfurling of ancestry and the passage of time are masterfully controlled and poetic, sumptuous and stark. Each time period is as expansive as the next, and within these eras, Ford plumbs the different sociocultural views and the changing roles and expectations of women, all while highlighting his strong characterization. 

Exploring the bonds that transcend physical space, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an enthralling, centuries-spanning tale, a masterful saga that’s perfect for fans of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain.

Jamie Ford’s writing is seductive as he intertwines the lives of Dorothy, Annabel and their ancestors within a rich swirl of history and imagination.
NonfictionAudioBiography

The Palace Papers

Review by Maya Fleischmann

In the audiobook recording of The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil (18 hours), English author and journalist Tina Brown gives an energetic and engrossing performance as she shares juicy details about the strife and scandal that have surrounded the British monarchy for decades. Even before Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’ sordid phone conversation, before Princess Diana won the hearts of people around the world, the royal family had long been the subject of rumors and shocking news, such as the abdication of King Edward VIII following his love affair with American divorc’e Wallis Simpson. As Brown explains, after the public’s obsession with Diana, the royal family sought to ensure that no family member would ever garner such superstar status again. And then came Meghan Markle.

In this scintillating listening experience, Brown tempers her ironic, scathing observations with straightforward, reverent tones. Anglophiles will easily succumb to this fascinating book, which is ideal for readers who enjoyed Diana: Her True Story—in Her Own Words by Andrew Morton and Meghan and Harry: The Real Story by Lady Colin Campbell.

English author and journalist Tina Brown gives an energetic and engrossing performance as she shares juicy details about the strife and scandal that has surrounded the British monarchy for decades.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Hawk Mountain

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Conner Habib, host of the podcast “Against Everyone With Conner Habib,” brings his curiosity about psychology and philosophy to fiction with Hawk Mountain, his mesmerizing debut novel about the intricacies of the human psyche and the effect of destructive behavior on love.

Thirty-three-year-old Todd Nasca is sitting on a New England beach while his son, Anthony, plays nearby. A man approaches the boy. Todd recognizes him as Jack Gates, whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years. Back then, Jack tormented Todd. Now seemingly amiable, Jack inserts himself into Todd’s life, bonding with Anthony, confronting Todd’s estranged ex-wife and making himself welcome in Todd’s home, while Todd drowns in memories and trauma, self-doubt and confusion.

The narrative’s uneasy edginess is supplemented by flashbacks to Todd and Jack’s adolescence, including a transformative field trip to Hawk Mountain in their senior year of high school. Additional perspectives from other characters build backstory and ramp up the precariousness of Todd’s relationships and sense of reality. Tension spirals as Habib leads the reader to wonder what the truth really is, who is telling it and who is believing it. 

Habib’s unique examination of his flawed and fascinating characters as the victims and sources of violence is both disturbing and insightful. His exploration of the tangled web of human desire, emotions and abuse, and how it becomes a legacy passed down through generations, is gritty and chilling. With haunting prose and deeply atmospheric descriptions, Hawk Mountain is a disturbing descent into the convulsions of the human mind and heart.

With haunting prose and deeply atmospheric descriptions, Conner Habib’s Hawk Mountain is a disturbing descent into the convulsions of the human mind and heart.
FictionAudio

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Author Mohsin Hamid’s haunting performance of his powerful 2007 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, leaves listeners with much to ponder about their own visceral reactions to the story’s balancing act between peace and paranoia, pensiveness and fear.

Changez is the charming, mannered yet disquieting Pakistani narrator of this first-person story. He’s dining with an unnamed American at a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan, and over the course of the evening, Changez acknowledges and sympathizes with the American’s discomfort at being in a foreign setting—and at having Changez for an uninvited dinner guest.

Changez tells the American about how he left Lahore for the promises of the United States, graduated from Princeton University, landed a job at a highly respected firm and began to feel like he belonged to his adopted country. But after 9/11, fueled by xenophobic rhetoric and misunderstanding, many Americans began to question Changez’s identity and loyalty.

Hamid’s narration marries a sense of calm with the possibility of ill will that begins to crescendo over the course of the novel. Is Changez a threat to the American? By wondering this, are we, the listener, responding in an unfairly distrustful and shameful manner? What is the danger, and how are we participating in it? Hamid’s enlightening new recording highlights the lasting relevance of this provocative novel.

Read our interview with Mohsin Hamid on his “one-man play.”

Mohsin Hamid’s enlightening new recording of The Reluctant Fundamentalist highlights the lasting relevance of his provocative 2007 novel.

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