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FictionAudioHistorical Fiction

The Sweetness of Water

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Actor William DeMeritt’s deep, measured narration enhances the elegant, evocative prose of Nathan Harris’ debut novel, The Sweetness of Water (12 hours). 

In the waning blood-filled days of the Civil War, Georgia farmer George Walker hires formerly enslaved brothers Landry and Prentiss to work his peanut farm—and perhaps to ease his restless soul. When George’s Confederate soldier son, Caleb, unexpectedly returns home, and Caleb’s romantic relationship with another soldier comes to light, tensions between George’s family and the town’s disapproving residents boil over. Only the cool, determined leadership of George’s wife, Isabelle, offers a path to healing.

DeMeritt’s performance of this Southern cast of characters reveals an actor in full control of his range. Particularly for the male roles, DeMeritt narrates with such skill that the listener can envision some of the characters’ faces just by the way their voices sound. Amid this world of unbridled change, DeMeritt illuminates subtle yearnings, quiet dangers and a persistent sense of hope.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of the print edition of The Sweetness of Water.

William DeMeritt performs with such skill that the listener will be able to envision Nathan Harris’ character’s faces just by the way their voices sound.
FictionAudioLiterary Fiction

Light Perpetual

Review by Deborah Mason

One fine day in 1944, a German V-2 rocket hits a South London Woolworths. Among the civilians incinerated by the bomb are five children. But in Light Perpetual (12.5 hours), Francis Spufford explores the tantalizing question: What if? What if these children had been war survivors instead of victims?

With such vibrant characters, all of whom have rich interior lives, Spufford’s novel is perfect for audio. Light Perpetual is an anthem to ordinary life—the joy and sorrow, the triumph and loneliness. Scottish-born actor Imogen Church, known for her performances of Ruth Ware’s audiobooks, gives a wonderful voice to each of the five as they progress from childhood to old age. 

The ending, when the now elderly characters confront their own what-ifs, faces the sorrow of death with true honesty while celebrating love-filled lives. Told with humor, affection and compassion, this audiobook is a powerful reminder that no life is futile.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of the print edition of Light Perpetual.

Featuring vibrant characters, all of whom have rich interior lives, Francis Spufford’s novel is perfect for audio.
Mystery & SuspenseAudioMystery

The Madness of Crowds

Review by Tami Orendain

Louise Penny tackles social unrest in a post-pandemic world in The Madness of Crowds (15 hours), the 17th novel in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. Part whodunit, part cultural commentary, this latest installment finds Gamache at a crossroads between his personal ethics and the requirements of his position.

The audiobook is performed by Robert Bathurst, who has lent his voice to several of the most recent books in the series. Bathurst’s narration is calm and collected yet also earnest, reflecting the blend of emotion and professionalism that Gamache embodies as an investigator. While Bathurst’s voice is subdued, it is also engaging, bringing the story’s mystery, relationships and ethical introspections to life in a straightforward but heartfelt way. He also provides a variety of voices for the wider cast of characters, keeping the plot moving through the flowing cadence of conversations.

Positioned at the intersection of science and humanity, The Madness of Crowds draws in its readers with murder but keeps them listening through its challenging moral conundrums. It’s perfect for listeners seeking both captivating intrigue and insightful reflection.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of the print edition of The Madness of Crowds.

Robert Bathurst’s narration is calm yet earnest, reflecting the blend of emotion and professionalism that Armand Gamache embodies as an investigator.
NonfictionAudioLifestyles

The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less

Review by Norah Piehl

If you think minimalism is a one-size-fits-all lifestyle and aesthetic, you clearly haven’t encountered Christine Platt, known on social media as the Afrominimalist. In her clearly written, approachable guide, The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less (5.5 hours), Platt traces her journey—including plenty of initial resistance and more than a few missteps—toward deliberately choosing to live with fewer objects. The author’s calm, careful narration is both relatable and ressuring, and it’s punctuated by real-life, sometimes humorous anecdotes delivered by a cast of additional narrators. 

Platt’s guidance is enriched by sections titled “For the Culture,” in which she acknowledges how the history of racial oppression and systemic racism has, in many ways, made Black and other historically marginalized people of color more vulnerable to overconsumption and conspicuous consumption. She also notes that the Scandinavian aesthetic that permeates most mainstream minimalist guidebooks doesn’t come close to representing everybody. Platt’s friendly, flexible approach urges listeners to embrace a minimalism that celebrates cultural heritage and comes in all colors.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of print edition of The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less.

Afrominimalist Christine Platt’s calm, careful narration of her journey toward living with less is both relatable and reassuring.
NonfictionAudioEssays

Carry On

Review by G. Robert Frazier

​​You know those motivational posters that hang in your place of work? The ones with the simple messages about teamwork, friendship, success and excellence? Carry On (2.5 hours), the new audiobook from late, great civil rights icon Representative John Lewis, is like that—only better, because his aphorisms are punchy yet never cliched, and you can take his inspirational words with you and play them anytime you need a lift.

Actor Don Cheadle narrates each of Lewis’ 43 short essays with clarity and passion, knowing just where to put the right amount of emphasis. While Lewis was unable to record the audiobook himself, Cheadle more than succeeds in embodying the congressman’s message of hope.

Ruminating on topics that range from justice and conscience to hobbies and humor, Lewis has blessed us with a timeless collection of wisdom and knowledge from a lifetime of “good trouble” in his nonviolent quest for equality. “A good day,” Lewis tells us, “is waking up and being alive.”

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of the print edition of Carry On.

While John Lewis was unable to record his essays himself, Don Cheadle more than succeeds in embodying the congressman’s message of hope.
NonfictionAudioHumor

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Helen Ellis, author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code, once again unleashes her irreverent outlook on life in a warm and funny collection of essays. In Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light (3 hours), 40-something Ellis’ exuberant narration is cheeky and comedic, powered by a Southern drawl that adds charm to even her most unabashed discussions of sex and toilet habits, as well as her observations on meds, marriage and menopause.

Packed into these 12 essays on living, aging, food and fashion is a lifetime’s worth of lessons on resilience and gratitude. While Ellis' reflections are often outrageous and punchy, they also have a down-to-earth quality that is relatable and touching, especially when describing her longtime, tightknit friendships with women who have unreservedly shouldered each other’s weighty, deeply private experiences, including cancer treatment. 

Ellis’ embracing, uplifting and energetic performance delivers a perfect listening experience for readers who enjoyed How Y’all Doing? by Leslie Jordan and Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling.

Helen Ellis’ energetic narration offers a perfect listening experience for readers who have enjoyed the audiobooks of Leslie Jordan and Mindy Kaling.
NonfictionAudioEssays

You Are Your Best Thing

Review by Autumn Allen

In You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience (6.5 hours), Tarana Burke (creator of the #MeToo movement) and Dr. Brené Brown curate a collection of personal essays by Black writers and activists in an effort to apply Brown’s work on shame, resilience and vulnerability to the Black experience in America. Burke and Brown’s conversational preface feels like an engaging podcast as they explain the process of their collaboration.

The contributors, who include Jason Reynolds, Austin Channing Brown, Kiese Laymon, Laverne Cox and Imani Perry, read their own essays, infusing the listening experience with a range of voices and styles. These performances require the listener to reckon with poignant, often painful experiences that speak to the ways in which white supremacy adds an extra barrier to the process of overcoming shame. By narrating their personal stories, the contributors, along with Brown and Burke, demonstrate what is gained by bringing one’s authentic self to the work of deconstructing oppressive power structures. At the end of each essay, the authors’ biographies are read by actors Mirron Willis, Bahni Turpin, J.D. Jackson or L. Morgan Lee.

The production of this audiobook allows the listener to feel that the political is personal.

Tarana Burke and Brené Brown demonstrate the power of bringing one’s authentic self to the work of deconstructing oppressive power structures.
NonfictionAudioHumor

Yearbook

Review by Anna Zeitlin

In Seth Rogen’s Yearbook (6 hours), the Canadian writer, movie star and ceramicist tells stories only he could tell from a uniquely lived life.

As a comedian and co-writer of such films as Superbad and Pineapple Express, it should come as no surprise that Rogen is a fantastic storyteller. Just how many teenagers get laughs performing stand-up at clubs that they’re too young to enter? In this book he discusses his grandparents, Judaism, summer camp, struggling in Los Angeles and—again, this should come as no surprise—drugs. There’s no shortage of bizarro Hollywood stories, but he shares them in a relatable way, in which he’s on our side, experiencing the absurdity of informing Nicolas Cage that he can’t do that iffy island accent in his film or being invited into Kanye West’s van to listen to his new album. 

This audiobook is a blast, with a long list of guest appearances including Rogen’s parents, Dan Aykroyd, Tommy Chong, Sacha Baron Cohen, Snoop Dogg, Michel Gondry, Billy Idol and Jason Segel.

Seth Rogen’s audiobook is a blast, with guest appearances from Dan Aykroyd, Tommy Chong, Snoop Dogg, Michel Gondry, Billy Idol and more.
Mystery & SuspenseAudioSuspense

The Maidens

Review by Deborah Mason

Grieving the sudden death of her husband, group therapist Mariana Andros drops everything when her niece’s best friend is brutally murdered on the grounds of a quiet Cambridge college. As more young women are slaughtered, Mariana realizes that their deaths are not frenzied acts of madness but rather a coldly calculated and purposeful series of sacrifices, with a charismatic murderer at the center.

In The Maidens (9.5 hours), Alex Michaelides draws heavily upon Greek mythology to create an absorbing thriller with more twists than the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The audiobook is narrated primarily by actor Louise Brealey, who has given life to complex female characters in the audio editions of The Girl on the Train and The Silent Patient, Michaelides’ first novel. Here, she does an excellent job of conveying Mariana’s confusion, courage and determination to solve the mystery at any cost. Actor Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s nuanced performance as the killer reminds us that monsters are made, not born, and that within even the most heinous murderer is a shattered, lonely child.

 Read our review of the print edition of The Maidens.

Actors Louise Brealey and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith narrate as an investigator and a killer in The Maidens, a thriller with more twists than the Minotaur’s labyrinth.
NonfictionAudioEssays

The Anthropocene Reviewed

Review by Anna Zeitlin

Based on John Green’s podcast of the same name, The Anthropocene Reviewed (10 hours) is a collection of essays structured as reviews of the human experience. Known for such young adult novels as The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down, this is Green’s first nonfiction book for adults but hopefully not his last. From sublime sunsets to the unbearable feeling of mortification to odd fascinations like the Hall of Presidents and Piggly Wiggly, he makes even the most obscure topics compelling. 

With storytelling skills from years as a podcaster and YouTuber, Green makes for a fantastic narrator. This is a truly gratifying listening experience; only the audiobook edition offers the opportunity to be part of a melancholy World War I singalong. 

No matter how you know of Green, whether from his previous books, podcast, vlogs or as a YouTube world history teacher, you’ll find something to enjoy in this audiobook.

With storytelling skills from years as a podcaster and YouTuber, John Green makes even the most obscure topics compelling in his audiobook.
NonfictionAudioBlack History

How the Word Is Passed

Review by Autumn Allen

Writer, poet and educator Clint Smith narrates the audio edition of How the Word Is Passed (10 hours), a timely reckoning with America’s past dependence on the cruel institution of chattel slavery. Smith brings the listener on a tour of locations with fraught ties to the transatlantic slave trade, from his hometown of New Orleans to Senegal. He reads his smooth, journalistic prose in a weighty, measured cadence. Listeners will find themselves paying closer attention and appreciating the author’s perspective even more because of how Smith’s narration lends gravity to his experiences and purpose to their telling.

Those who appreciate a good documentary will feel most at home with this audiobook. The content is heavy, at times nearly overwhelming, but Smith’s factual storytelling voice, with fitting but muted inflection throughout, models the courage and fortitude required to take it all in. This book is a generous gift to a nation struggling to define itself.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: From a Louisiana native to a D.C. high school teacher to a Harvard Ph.D. candidate to a staff writer for The Atlantic—Clint Smith shares the journey that led to his brilliant nonfiction debut.

Clint Smith’s narration of How the Word Is Passed models the courage and fortitude required to face this timely reckoning with America’s past.
NonfictionAudioBlack History

We Are Each Other’s Harvest

Review by Mari Carlson

The audiobook of Natalie Baszile’s We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy (13.5 hours) explores farming by Black Americans, past and present, through essays, interviews and poetry from farmers and historians, wordsmiths and activists. The expansive project, born out of Baszile’s extensive research for her 2014 novel, Queen Sugar, is bookended by the author’s own words about her family and her creative process. In between, we learn about the Black community’s enduring connection to the land despite slavery’s disenfranchisement and northern and urban migration, among other factors.

Tina Lifford, an actor in the TV adaptation of Queen Sugar as well as the series “Parenthood” and “South Central,” captures the book’s soulful tone through her deep voice, slow delivery and an array of accents. Her performance pays tribute to the Black community’s oral history tradition, which is referenced throughout the book. 

With rich descriptions of crops, recipes, family meals and current efforts to revitalize Black farming and land ownership, this audiobook inspires, empowers and enlightens through the spoken word.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of the print version of We Are Each Other’s Harvest.

With rich descriptions of crops, recipes, family meals and more, this audiobook inspires, empowers and enlightens through spoken word.
NonfictionAudioEssays

The Wreckage of My Presence

Review by Anna Zeitlin

You may know Casey Wilson from her brief stint as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” from her role on the beloved sitcom “Happy Endings” or maybe from her podcast on the Real Housewives, “Bitch Sesh.” But if you’re not familiar with her, you’ll certainly want to be after listening to her collection of essays, The Wreckage of My Presence (6.5 hours). As author and narrator, Wilson touches on all these projects, but you don’t have to be a pop culture devotee to find something relatable in her essays. 

Each story is moving and hilarious, whether she’s trying to get out of an awkward dinner party, processing the death of her mother or recounting all the ways “people don’t know how to act.” Listening to Wilson’s narration is like getting good gossip from one of your funniest friends. She’s grounded but oh-so-hilarious, a combination that makes this audiobook a must-listen.

Read our review of the print version of The Wreckage of My Presence.

Listening to Casey Wilson’s essay collection is like getting good gossip from one of your funniest friends.

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