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FictionAudioComing of Age

Interesting Facts About Space

Review by Jessica Peng

Interesting Facts About Space (8.5 hours) is a character study of Enid, a 26-year-old woman whose life might be falling apart. We meet Enid when she begins to suspect she has a stalker. As she tries to differentiate between her paranoia and real signs of threat, Enid simultaneously juggles a constellation of self-esteem issues, convoluted family dynamics, a technological bug at work and a confusing dating life. Natalie Naudus lends an articulate, emphatic voice to the first-person narration, impressively capturing Enid’s varied shades of introspection, from reminiscence to anger to rueful comedy. At the center of this novel is the question of what it is to be normal. Is it an inner feeling or dependent on outside perception? Is it an ideal as distant as outer space, or is it actually achievable?

Read our review of the print edition of Interesting Facts About Space.

Natalie Naudus lends an articulate, emphatic voice to 26-year-old Enid, impressively capturing her varied shades of introspection, from reminiscence to anger to rueful comedy.
Audio

The Fury

Review by Norah Piehl

Alex Michaelides has crafted a superb psychological thriller in The Fury (8 hours), combining classic whodunit elements with contemporary storytelling techniques. Glamorous American actress Lana Farrar invites a small circle of friends (and frenemies) to her private Greek island for a getaway. This includes playwright and consummate hanger-on Elliot Chase, who narrates the story. After one of their number turns up dead, Elliot reveals ever more secrets and lies—including some of his own. Alex Jennings’ reading, with its measured pace and conversational, almost confessional tone, perfectly captures Elliot’s personality, as well as the varied voices of the small cast of characters. Listeners will be loath to press pause on this entirely unpredictable tale.

Read our review of the print edition of The Fury.

Listeners will be loath to press pause on this entirely unpredictable tale of a Greek island getaway gone wrong.
Audio

Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

Review by Deborah Mason

With over 200 short stories by Anton Chekhov to choose from, translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky did a fine job of selecting 30 stories that represent the major stages of his career to include in Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (20.5 hours). Pevear and Volokhonsky, who also translated War and Peace and Doctor Zhivago, are faithful to the rhythm of Chekhov’s prose, making the stories as pleasurable to hear as to read.

Jim Frangione’s reading is sympathetic to Chekhov’s interest in objective observation. His narrative tone is precise and nonjudgmental, laying out clearly the everyday choices that lead Chekhov’s characters to madness, death or isolation. He convincingly endows each character’s voice with the emotion—fear, lust, boredom—that makes these destructive choices inevitable. “Sleepy,” “Ward No. 6” and “The Fiancée” are particularly good examples of Frangione’s technique of creating audible juxtapositions that reflect Chekhov’s subtle and compassionate view of human folly.

Jim Frangione convincingly endows each of Anton Chekhov’s character’s voices with the emotion—fear, lust, boredom—that makes their destructive choices inevitable.
Audio

The Bullet Swallower

Review by Tami Orendain

The Bullet Swallower (10 hours) is a sweeping western dripping with magical realism. The novel recounts the checkered history of the Sonoro family, focusing on two men: Antonio, a thief seeking revenge for his brother’s death in the late 1800s, and Jaime, a 1964 performer whose image is threatened by a book that claims to expose his family history.

The story of the Sonoros sits between reality and fantasy, and Lee Osorio’s narration helps create a world that feels surreal. His tone manages to sustain a wistful seriousness that both captures the fantastic and respects the very real conflicts of colonialism and trauma. The book jumps across times, places and moods, but Osorio’s tone remains steady, making it easy to fall into the rhythm of this otherworldly story.

The Bullet Swallower is a luxurious audiobook, brimming with memorable imagery that’s bound to stay with listeners for a long time.

Read our starred review of the print edition of The Bullet Swallower.

The Bullet Swallower is a luxurious audiobook, brimming with memorable imagery that’s bound to stay with listeners for a long time.
Audio

The Glutton

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Graham Halstead serves up an atmospheric performance in the audiobook of The Glutton (11 hours), A.K. Blakemore’s mesmerizing novel about a peasant boy with a voracious appetite for just about anything.

Tarare is a sickly man close to death, strapped to his hospital bed and watched over by a nun who is terrified by rumors of the many things he has eaten, which include live animals. Tarare attempts to entice her by telling her the story of his fascinating and sordid life. Halstead’s English and French accents immerse the listener in the French Revolution setting, and the smooth quality of his voice paired with Blakemore’s sumptuous descriptions is hypnotic. Tarare’s account of enduring cruelty and extreme poverty elicits sympathetic horror. And yet, the boldness and richness of Halstead’s narration lends a strange beauty to the story.

Based on the legend of the Glutton of Lyon, this fictionalized tale will be especially enthralling for those interested in the French Revolution and fans of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.

Read our starred review of the print edition of The Glutton.

Graham Halstead’s hypnotic narration lends a strange beauty to this story of a peasant boy’s fascinating and sordid life, eliciting both horror and sympathy.
Audio

A Grandmother Begins the Story

Review by Jessica Peng

A fiddle and an apple tree. Tunnels under a prairie, filling with rain. A woman who blurs into a purple finch. Michelle Porter’s A Grandmother Begins the Story (9 hours) is most alluring in its details, as Porter pieces together the stories of five generations of Métis women. Porter creates unique individuals in Carter, Allie, Lucie, Genevieve and Mamé, while situating them in the bittersweet history of the Métis people and their homeland.

This full cast audiobook is an utter delight: lively, gritty and sensitive. Although the rapid switches between points of view can be a little confusing, especially given that there are distinct narrators for not only the women but also the grassland, the buffalo and the dogs, listeners who patiently familiarize themselves with each voice will be rewarded. A Grandmother Begins the Story is a rich study of the ties that bind a family, how they stretch, how they shrink and how they withstand the test of time.

Read our review of the print edition of A Grandmother Begins the Story.

Michelle Porter’s A Grandmother Begins the Story pieces together the stories of five generations of Métis women. This full cast audiobook is an utter delight: lively, gritty and sensitive.
Audio

The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac

Review by Deborah Mason

Each of the stories in Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (7.5 hours) is rooted in the traumas faced by women in modern Ireland. With sharp and lucid prose, Kennedy explores the rippling effects of the “troubles,” the corrosive impact of Ireland’s old abortion laws and the consequences of increased crime and drug use. Lives are often blighted, but there is also beauty in Kennedy’s Ireland.

While the collection is set in a definite time and place, Brid Brennan’s excellent performance underscores just how universal these stories are. Brennan, a Tony award-winning actor from Belfast, gives each story the intimacy and intensity of a dark fairy tale. Her reading enhances the profundity and beauty of Kennedy’s work, and affirms how easily someone can teeter into disaster—or into redemption.

Read our review of the print edition of The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac.

Brid Brennan’s reading enhances the profundity and beauty of Louise Kennedy’s stories, and affirms how easily someone can teeter into disaster—or into redemption.
Audio

Blackouts

Review by Deborah Mason

Through a dialogue between an unnamed young gay man and an older, dying man named Juan Gay, National Book Award-winner Blackouts (Macmillan Audio, 7 hours) explores the suppression of queer history. Interspersed throughout the book are poems constructed by blacking out words from pages of Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, an actual book by queer sex researcher Jan Gay. Its production, and the eventual removal of Gay’s name from the book, form the basis for much of the story.

The audio version reinforces the book’s unique structure by featuring different voice actors for the two main characters: Torian Brackett as the young man and Ozzie Rodriguez as Juan Gay. Brackett and Rodriguez are convincing narrators, and the end of their story is particularly moving. Author Justin Torres himself reads the erasure poems in a quiet and almost whispery voice, affectingly reminding the listener of the act of redaction that is at the heart of Blackouts.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Blackouts.

Torian Brackett and Ozzie Rodriguez are moving narrators, while author Justin Torres reads the erasure poems interspersed throughout the book, reminding the listener of the redaction of queer history that is at the heart of Blackouts.
Audio

The Reformatory

Review by Tami Orendain

Robbie Stephens, Jr. is sent to Gracetown School for Boys after protecting Gloria, his older sister, from a wealthy white boy. At the reformatory, where boys are punished for their “crimes,” students are going missing—and with his ability to see haints, or ghosts, Robbie can uncover the truth behind these disappearances. Dark and terrifying, The Reformatory (21 hours) paints a haunting picture of the Jim Crow South, based partially on author Tananarive Due’s family history.

Joniece Abbott-Pratt gives a multifaceted voice to this audiobook, narrating alternatively with a hushed urgency that adds to the tension and terror of the most gruesome, frightening moments, and a steady, hopeful tone that conveys the Stephenses’ love and perseverance. The Reformatory contains both intensely difficult subject matter and resonant emotional scenes, and Abbott-Pratt’s deft navigation between different moods will keep you listening closely.

Read our starred review of the print edition of The Reformatory.

Dark and terrifying, The Reformatory paints a haunting picture of the Jim Crow South, based partially on author Tananarive Due’s family history.
Audio

The Wonderful World of James Herriot

Review by Tami Orendain

The Wonderful World of James Herriot (12 hours) collects James Herriot’s classic tales into a warm, welcoming audiobook. Based on his work as a veterinarian for farming communities, Herriot’s writing captures a humor and a gentleness that makes for a delightful listen.

While the audio version misses out on the print edition’s illustrations, it gains a comforting resemblance to the experience of hearing bedtime stories read aloud. The introduction is read by Herriot’s daughter, Rosie Page, and the stories by narrators Anna Madeley and Nicholas Ralph, who also star in “All Creatures Great and Small,” the TV show based on Herriot’s work. Madeley and Ralph deliver each character and scene in bright, vivid tones that match the charm of Herriot’s writing.

The Wonderful World of James Herriot gives listeners a peek into Herriot’s life, tracing parallels between his time on rural homesteads and his well-loved tales. This collection invites listeners to sit back, relax and reminisce about more peaceful times.

Read our literary gifts feature on the print edition of The Wonderful World of James Herriot.

This collection of James Herriot’s classic tales invites listeners to sit back, relax and reminisce about more peaceful times.
Audio

The Last Love Note

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Leeanna Walsman’s moving performance in the audiobook of Emma Grey’s The Last Love Note (11 hours) conveys the myriad of complex emotions an Australian woman experiences after her husband’s unexpectedly early death. This uplifting story about grief, love and joy after a loss may be especially appealing to fans of Cecelia Ahren and Jojo Moyes.

Two years after her husband’s death from early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Kate Whittaker is still afflicted by confusion and angst as she tries to move on. Walsman’s pitch-perfect narration captures Kate’s fluctuating emotional and mental states throughout an engaging blend of drama and light moments, like when Kate must contend with her guilty attraction to her new neighbor or the bossiness of her micromanaging mother. The sound effect used for telephone conversations and Walsman’s fitting Australian accent add to the dynamic nature of this audio production.

The Last Love Note is an uplifting story about grief, love and joy after death that may be especially appealing to fans of Cecelia Ahren and Jojo Moyes.
Audio

Death Valley

Review by Tami Orendain

A woman seeks refuge in the hot California desert, far away from the pressures of her sick husband and dying father. On a hike, she finds a large cactus with a hole big enough to walk through—which she does, taking her first steps on an adventure of reflection, grief and spirituality. Full of dark humor and self awareness, Death Valley (5 hours) traces one woman’s surreal desert experience as she faces the hard truths she’s been running from.

Author Melissa Broder narrates the audiobook herself, starting the story with a dry tone that matches the protagonist’s straightforward voice. But her inner world runs deep, and Broder captures the subtleties of the character and her changes, embodying both her surface-level distance and her turbulent emotions underneath. In a story that blurs the line between the real and the spiritual, Broder gives a voice to the rawness of being a living, transforming, growing human.

 

Death Valley is a grueling journey, but it’s also sharp and insightful. It does not present easy solutions. Instead, it explores how one woman learns to see herself as part of a larger whole that celebrates pain and pleasure, restraint and intimacy, death and life.

Full of dark humor and self awareness, Death Valley traces one woman’s surreal desert experience as she faces the hard truths she’s been running from.
Audio

Wellness

Review by Norah Piehl

Following Jack and Elizabeth from their meet cute as alt rock-loving college students in 1990s Chicago to their contemplation of a move to the suburbs in the early 21st century, the audiobook of Nathan Hill’s second novel Wellness (19 hours) chronicles not only the couple’s evolving love story but also the ever-shifting wellness culture that forms its partial backdrop. Even though the audio version of this expansive novel stretches to almost 19 hours, Ari Fliakos’s warm, intelligent narration sustains listeners’ interest. Fliakos, who also read Hill’s (even longer) debut, The Nix, excels at differentiating among a dozen or more primary and secondary characters of different genders and ages, making the dialogue sections especially engaging. With wry humor and pathos, this Gen X coming-of-(middle)-age novel makes for a profoundly emotional and humanistic listening experience.

Read our starred review of the print edition of Wellness.

With wry humor and pathos, this coming-of-(middle)-age novel makes for a profoundly emotional and humanistic listening experience.

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