Author: Isabel Miller
Readers: Janis Ian and Jean Smart

Also available directly from Janis Ian’s webstore.

GRAMMY Award nominated for “Best Spoken Word”

Short Review: Touching lesbian love story, set in early 1800s and read beautifully. The two readers each read the portion of the story told from a single point of view. It really works.

Long Review: Originally self-published in 1969, this love story is set in the early 1800s in New England. It tells the story of the love found by Patience White (maiden aunt and painter) and Sarah Dowling (farmer’s daughter, cast in life as farmer’s son for practicality) in a world that mostly believed such a thing was neither possible nor permissible. The story alternates points of views between Patience and Sarah, to great effect. They are such different people, but you can see where their love comes from. The contrast of their backgrounds, and their expectations for their lives, make the story all the more compelling.

I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but it isn’t hard to assume from the premise that there will be plenty of challenges laid in their paths. It is a story of what it means to both fall in love and *be* in love. We are taken into the hearts of Patience and Sarah, but at the same time given a taste of what their worlds were like. What does it mean to fight for love? When is the fight too much — what is worth sacrifice and what is not?

There are so many other things I loved about this book. I loved seeing painting and color through Patience’s eyes. I loved Sarah’s practicality and straight forwardness. The supporting characters are varied and interesting, the path of the story less predictable then you might expect. The author created a vivid world that I really enjoyed visiting.

Both readers do an amazing job, each giving us a glimpse into their respective character’s mind – as well as providing easy to distinguish voices for the other members of the story. The two SoundCloud clips below give you a small taste of each of the readers and a toe in the water of the story they tell. They both made it so easy to get lost in the story. This is definitely a “find more excuses to keep listening” audio book.

Available from Audible.com

Author: Daniel Woodrell

Reader: Emma Galvin

Short Review: A stark, beautifully written and expertly read novel about an overburdened girl in dire straits.

Long Review: Set in the Ozarks, Winter’s Bone follows Ree Dolly as she tries to locate her missing father, care for her broken family, and save their home. Ree, 16, is the oldest of three children, and her life seems to be made entirely of danger, neglect, and undue responsibility. The Dollys are part of a larger near-tribal community of outlaws bound by strict rules of secrecy, respect, and gender roles. Ree’s one dream is to join the Army so she can escape, but she’s too young to leave, and her father’s disappearance leaves her family with only her to lead them.

Emma Galvin does an amazing job reading the book. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I find it extremely annoying when readers voice teenage girls with breathy, high-pitched, weak voices. The book follows Ree closely, so we have largely her voice throughout the audio book. Galvin’s reading is spot on. Ree sounds strong, and smart, and desperate–exactly as she should. During the descriptive sections, Galvin’s pacing and diction are excellent as she gives voice to Woodrell’s sparse, dense prose. She is thoroughly believable and restrained. As the book progresses, we learn that Ree’s relationship with Gail, her best friend, has grown beyond the bounds of friendship. Galvin’s reading remains true, without any veering towards stereotypical butchness. She doesn’t ask or answer any more questions than the author did.

Woodrell’s style is often referred to as “country noir.” I find that a lot of books set in the South or Appalachia are down-right condescending and inaccurate. I’m certainly no expert on the Ozarks, but I never got the sense that Woodrell used this imagined community for target practice. He shows their faults, but he shows strength as well. He stares right at their poverty, drug problems, feuds, and failures and relates those things without pity or judgment. His characters are engrossing and layered, and Woodrell never gives us too much. Often, I feel like he’s leaving us wanting for information on purpose, knowing it will keep us entranced. Because of my own academic interests, I was particularly intrigued to know more about the roots of Ree’s strange community–are they descended from Travellers, are they the remnants of a charismatic cult? We never know for sure, which is both annoying and brilliant.

As an aside, after listening to the book, I also watched the film adaptation of the story. It’s been very well received by critics, and it has some real strengths. But, as is almost always the case with films made from movies I love, it was lacking. The filmmakers omitted Ree’s sexuality entirely–as people are wont to do with stories like this. A son turns to a daughter, the mysterious origins of Ree’s community are erased–but overall it’s a very good movie.

Wild Decembers

Available from Audible.com

Author: Edna O’Brien

Reader: Suzanne Bertish

Short Review: A beautiful book, poorly served by bad audio quality and frequent mispronunciations.

Long Review: I’m a huge fan of O’Brien’s work, so I was intrigued to find her fantastic novel on Audible’s site. I was warned of the poor audio quality by other reviewers, but I decided to trudge on and see how I reacted to O’Brien’s rich, poetic prose read aloud.

The audiobook was clearly dubbed from CD to a downloadable file. Some remnants of the CDs remain, such as a direction to change CDs. That I could easily ignore. The hiss, flattened tone, and slubs I can’t. I know enough from hanging out in recording studios to know that someone could have corrected most of the audio problems in this version.

Even more irksome are the repeated mispronunciations of Irish words. I know that Irish is a difficult language to read and pronounce. Oh, how I know. But that’s all the more reason that the reader and editor should have done their homework and made sure to get those words right. Cú Chulainn is as vital to Irish myth as is Odysseus to Greek, and his name just isn’t that hard to say correctly. I could say the same thing of dozens of other words butchered in this audiobook.

Apart from the mispronunciations, Bertish is actually a very good reader, but I found them disconcerting and distracting. I also wondered why an English actress was chose to read such an Irish book. None of the characters who she voices would have her posh accent or diction.

The novel itself is masterful. O’Brien is one of the most important contemporary Irish novelists. Her prose is dense and poetic and beautiful. This exquisite book is set in a small rural town in the West, and it follows the progress of star-crossed lovers and neighbors whose generations’ long feud rattles an entire community. It explores women’s rights and station in 1970s Ireland, changing mores, farming, property rights, legal vagaries, and a hundred other things. I will read it again and again, but I’ll stick to the voices in my own mind henceforth.

Nice To Come Home To

Author: Rebecca Flowers

Reader: Carrington MacDuffie

Short Review: A sweet first novel brought to life by an excellent reader. We meet Prudence Whistler as her life starts to fall apart – but it is easy to find joy in her self-discovery. Romantic and charming, a lovely ‘comfort’ book for a rainy day.

Long Review: I didn’t like Prudence (Pru to her loved ones) for fully the first quarter of the book. She was whiny, judgmental, and set in her ways. Lucky for me, I enjoyed the reader enough to stick with it and see where Flowers was headed. Somewhere before the middle of the book we start to see the real Pru. As her tidy world falls apart, it becomes clear that the version of Pru that we had been introduced to was some ideal proper version of herself. Pru as she thought she was supposed to be.

Pru finds her way the way most real people do – through some mixture of determination, despair, luck and a growing willingness to try a new path. I enjoyed the supporting cast of the story. Often I am puzzled by stories in which our protagonist seems to have only one or two friends. It always makes them seem to be living a very flat life.

I marked this as a romance, but I mean that in a classic fiction sort of way. You will figure out who she is meant to be with fairly early on, but the fun is in the journey. There is a lot of loving and supporting of loved ones in this story – lots of being patient as they struggle to determine what to do next, hoping that they don’t make you crazy before they figure it out.

MacDuffie does a lovely job with the reading. I think it a great compliment to a reader to say that he or she faded into the background. The voices were distinct enough and the overall narration clean and clear. I would cheerfully listen to other books listing MacDuffie as the reader.

I place this firmly in the ‘comfort book’ category. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Author: Diane Setterfield
Readers: Jill Tanner and Bianca Amato

Short Review: A gothic novel of intrigue about family history, fame, women, writing, truth, and secrets. It is read gorgeously by two readers who both have velvety, rich voices and lovely diction.

Long Review: The book opens in the voice of Margaret Lea, a bookseller and amateur biographer, who receives a letter from Vida Winter, a famous (fictional) English author. The pathologically secretive Winter asks Lea to write her biography. Lea has never read Winter’s novels, so she borrows a copy of Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation from her father and discovers that it is one story short of thirteen. Captivated by Winter’s writing, Lea accepts the commission. As the story unfolds, Lea has to dig through fiction upon fiction to reach the truth of Winter’s life story, but also to rehash and reminisce about her own family history. Throughout the novel, the role of speaker switches back and forth between Winter and Lea.

This book is right up my alley. I love the author’s prose, both readers, the setting, the exploration of cultural mores and the roles of women, its bookishness, its pace. I think it’s masterful. I’ve listened to it a couple of times now. The mystery of it isn’t the thing for me anymore, of course. Now I’m looking at the architecture and trimmings, and I still love it.

Short Review: A good but flawed book with two narrators of differing skill.
Long Review: This is another book that I enjoy, but which I’m cautious about recommending to others. Where I wallow happily in references to literature and philosophers and film-makers, many other readers may be annoyed by arguably pretentious chatter.

The book centers on Renee Michelle, a concierge in a lavish apartment building in Paris, and Paloma, a brilliant but morbid daughter in of one of the resident families. Renee and Paloma both hide their immense intelligences for their own reasons, and both suffer their own sadnesses. Each of the main characters goes on at length throughout the book about their personal philosophies and studies, which I think may turn off a number of readers. The book is more about thinking and less about doing. It is constructed largely of interior monologues.

Barbara Rosenblat voices Renee Michelle and Cassandra Morris voices Paloma. I thoroughly enjoyed Rosenblat’s reading, but found Morris’s irksome. She has a high and breathy voice, which veers towards shrillness at times. I understand the choice to pick a deeper voice for the adult and a higher voice for the child, but I think Morris’s reading is too extreme. I know a lot of 12 year old girls, and I think most of them have more depth to their voices when they speak naturally. I’m sure the criticism may sound petty, but I found the affect of Morris’s vocal characterization made Paloma less likeable. At times, Morris uses a voice closer to her natural tone. Once we hear that young-sounding timbre with a natural tone under it, the climb upwards in her register makes Paloma sound, well, bratty. Paloma on paper is not bratty–she is wounded and depressed. Paloma as read by Morris seems false and cutesy. I think paper Paloma would want to avoid audiobook Paloma.

Those criticisms aside, I did truly enjoy this book. I think I prefer the book on paper this time around, but only because I love the Paloma and Renee Michelle my own mind voices so much.

Short Review: An intricate, beautiful, arguably overlong book beautifully read by a very talented narrator. This isn’t a book for everyone, but it was definitely a book for me.

Long Review: I decided to listen to this audiobook as part of 12 books in 12 months, a reading project floating out there in the blogosphere which encourages people to finally read at least a dozen of the books that have been haunting our shelves for ages. This one seemed apt, because I’d originally picked up a paper copy of Possession at the beginning of my graduate school program. At the time, I was too discouraged by how sad the protagonist’s life is at the outset. As a new grad student contemplating a transfer to a more fitting but probably less marketable program, it scared me away, and fast.

The book is very dense and incredibly detailed, and as I listened, I wavered between loving the layered detail and thinking Byatt should have edited out more and simplified the book. Possession follows a frustrated, underemployed, unpublished English Literature graduate student working on the (fictional) poet Randolph Henry Ash, who discovers some heretofore lost drafts of a letter to a woman. Roland becomes obsessed with tracking down the unnamed addressee and discovering the nature of his relationship to the woman Ash addressed. He meets Maud Bailey, a young professor and expert on the under-appreciated (and also fictional) poet Christabel LaMotte. The two contemporary academics studiously pick through letters and poems and search for lost or unknown correspondence, and end up uncovering wonderful connections between the historical writers and developing an interesting relationship of their own.

What’s fascinating about this book is how layered it is, and how much attention it pays to topics that are very dear to my heart. It delves into Breton and Scandinavian mythology, poetry, feminist theory, embroidery and knitting (though only touches of those, sadly), the nature of love, the nature of poetry, the nature of translation and retellings of myths (my nerdy heart sings!) . . . it’s so rich. One could argue that it’s too rich. Byatt gives us stories within stories within stories within stories. We get Ash and LaMotte’s letters to each other, wherein they discuss mythology and poetry. We get their original works, which are of course actually Byatt’s original works. We get so very much detail about the vagaries of modern academia, and the fights between feminist academics and “traditionalists.” It’s all just so very entwined.

Byatt was so brave to write this meta-romance. I honestly don’t know how she pulled it off. The greatest danger in works like this is that the supposed masterworks the characters are studying need to be excellent enough for the characters’ interest in them to seem just. Byatt does manage that, for the most part. As a writer and quasi-academic, I felt Byatt’s role so keenly. She wrote those pieces in a way that seemed so familiar to me. It’s odd to be a writer who works in a form and genre that is essentially lost to most readers. This book turned out to be such a fantastic outlet for many forms of the author’s creativity. I think I love it. I certainly love many aspects of it.

Virginia Leishman’s narration is one of the strongest aspects of the audiobook, and I think she truly saved the book for me. Whenever the details were too intricate or the infighting between the academics came too close to home, Leishman’s honeyed voice coaxed me back into the story. She truly has a gorgeous voice. Her diction is precise, her shifts from character to character are clear but not distracting, and her changes in accent reveal a great deal of acting and vocal skill. I will absolutely seek out more books she has narrated.

Author: Ann Brashares
Reader: Kimberly Farr
Extras: Interview with the author.

Available from Audible.com

Short Review: The summer before high school, three old friends grow, change, and find their way back to themselves.

Long Review: If you read or listened to any of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, then you will be familiar not only with Brashares’s style, but also the universe in which this story takes place. These girls go to the same school as the Sisterhood girls, but are a few years their junior. The social circles overlap just enough to give fans glimpses of favorite characters from the earlier series.

I liked it. I enjoyed the reader. I enjoyed the story. It tackles a number of teen issues, but there is enough actual story that I didn’t feel like I was reading a ‘teen issues’ book. For those of you wondering, it was a mixed bag including divorce, mourning, body image, substance abuse, self-confidence and independence.

Our three protagonists had been best friends for years, their worlds joined back to three trees they planted and tended together. But now they have drifted apart under the looming pressures of high school and the demands of new social circles. This summer pushes each of them on a different solo journey as we wonder if they will ever find their way back to each other and the joys of old friends.

The reader did a nice job with various voices and a nice overall tone. Her narrative voice was pleasant and made me want to listen whenever I had a spare few minutes. I especially enjoyed the interview with the author provided at the end of the book. She shares some of the story behind her creation of 3 Willows, how it ties in to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series and about her writing process in general. A really nice addition to a solid audio book.

Audio sample available online.

Short Review: A beautiful book, but difficult to listen to at times. Dr. Morrison is a wonderful reader in small doses, but perhaps should have handed this book over to a pro to read in its entirety.

Long Review: I’m one of those Morrison devotees, reading and re-reading her work, attending lectures and readings—a general obsessive. I studied her work thoroughly as a student, writing a thesis on Tar Baby and leading a class through Beloved. This is the first of Morrison’s books I’ve listened to, though I’ve read all of her fiction and most of her non-fiction. I love her compression of language, her ability to express intense, layered emotion and thought while writing in the non-standard English of communities that are often unfamiliar to the average reader of literary fiction. Morrison’s writing veers towards poetry again and again in most of her books. Ultimately, I think that’s what makes this book literally better on paper. It’s a fantastic book, but I prefer to read it with my eyes.

I don’t think it’s unusual that there’s a separation between the books I prefer to listen to and the books that I prefer to read on paper. Audiobooks are great for lighter books, and particularly for books with a clear narrative arc, at least for me. But when I want to read non-fiction or very dense fiction, I find that it’s frustrating to listen at someone else’s pace, and to miss that visual play of words on a page. When I read Morrison and other writers who use such a compressed style, I stop frequently to consider the last line or paragraph, re-reading as I go, and making sure I’ve puzzled through it all. That’s pretty tough to do with an audiobook, particularly if you listen on the go like I do.

A Mercy is set in 17th century colonial America. It follows Florens, a young girl born on a Portuguese-owned tobacco plantation who is sold as a young girl to a expunge a debt by her original owner. Separated from her mother, Florens comes into the care of landowner Jacob Vaark, his wife Rebekka, and their Native-American slave Lina. The book delves into the multi-racial slave system in play in the colonies, sexual mores, inter-religious strife, economics, betrayal, family, American history, relationships between women. Like most of Morrison’s books it’s thickly layered and meticulously researched.

Dr. Morrison reads her own work. I’m loathe to say this: I think it was a mistake. I’ve listened to Morrison read many times before, and one of her readings is a thing of wonder. But at a reading, she reads a short portion and then responds to questions, and reads another portion and responds to questions. She doesn’t need to read an entire book at such events, so weaknesses in her delivery don’t rankle. The best audiobook readers are great actors and great technicians of speech and pacing—for all of her genius, Morrison is neither of those things.

Despite my complaints, I love this book. I’m happy to have listened to it, and I did enjoy it. But I feel the audiobook only serves as an addition to the book on paper. I think just listening to the audiobook leaves the reader outside of the real story of A Mercy, and it’s absolutely a story worth reading. If you’re only going to read it once, read it on paper.

Short Review: This is a great book, but the audio version has a flaw that really annoyed me. I want a re-cut, just for me, sans music. I doubt I’ll get it.

Long Review: I love the book itself, perhaps even more than I loved Oryx and Crake. Atwood is one of my favorite authors, and I’m intrigued by the world she is creating in these books. The second book particularly appeals to me because it focuses much more closely on the female characters trapped in this terrible future Earth Atwood considers. As much as I loved the first book, I wanted to throttle the protagonist, in part because he was so dismissive of the women and girls he knew. Campbell Scott’s fantastic narration made me like Jimmy/Snowman in the audiobook much more than I liked him on paper. In this book, following the female characters was less frustrating, but more importantly, it struck closer to home. Women fair differently during revolutions and social collapses, and I can’t help but wonder how the women are doing whenever I read an account of a war or revolution or a dystopia. Atwood scratched that itch for me with this book.

Atwood has a chance to flesh out this future Earth more clearly with the second book, and the picture she paints continues to be damn near terrifying. We learn more about people Jimmy knew before the waterless flood occurred, and we see how people are managing to survive. Since we’re following the women of the greater story, we particularly see the nasty conclusion of the erosion of women’s rights–Atwood stuck a pin right into one of my hot-spots with that one.

The main characters of this book are Ren, a young exotic dancer, and Toby, an herbalist. Both are members of God’s Gardeners, an eco-cult, for some portion of their lives, and both manage to survive the “waterless flood” set off in Oryx and Crake. Ren is younger and more innocent, Toby older and more street-wise. Both survive through a combination of luck and intelligence, and both suffer greatly. It’s not light, this book, but it’s thoroughly good.

The narration is good throughout, and I think all three narrators did an excellent job. I was annoyed by the continual mispronunciation of the name “Nuala,” but tried to convince myself that in this terrible future, society had so collapsed that no one knew how to say that beautiful Irish name (which has only two syllables). The readers all pace themselves well, and the three voices work together nicely and help to denote changes in speaker smoothly but clearly.

What made me grit my teeth, though, is the music. The damn ill-considered, inappropriate music. Several sections of the book end with songs. I’m fine with that on paper, but in the audiobook, they’re bad. Really bad. And they’re not bad in an understandable “well, I’ve never been a fan of religious music, but that still makes sense” way. They’re disconnected from the audiobook in a way they just can’t be in the paper book, because the problem is in the arrangements and production. The songs follow sermons for the God’s Gardeners. In the paper book, I think the reader assumes that the songs are sung by the congregation that just listened to the sermon. But as things start to collapse around the world in the book, nothing changes about the arrangements of the songs. Nothing. As electric grids stop functioning and people begin protecting themselves in any way they can, the over-produced soul-less quasi-Christian rock doesn’t alter. WHY? Seriously, what is with that? I decided to skip the horrid, non-diegetic music to make it through the rest of the book, which I otherwise loved.

I’m sure I’ll listen to the book again, but I’m also sure I’ll skip every single song when I do. I wish someone with a truly abiding love of music had given more thought to the inclusion of these songs in the audiobook, because they’re so wrong-headed.

Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Reader: Maggi-Meg Reed
Extras: Introduction and interview with author’s granddaughter, Lena Roy
Available on Audible.com

Short Review: This sweet story of romance and self-discovery is lovely. We join twenty-year-old Elizabeth’s for week of working in a summer theater in 1946. Beautifully read – a nice story for a dreamy afternoon.

Long Review: Madeleine L’Engle wrote this story long before her great success with the Wrinkle in Time series. Published posthumously, this story is semi-autobiographical. She too spent time working in summer theater in the 1940s. The introduction by her granddaughter explains how L’Engle let she and her sister have the manuscript of The Joys of Love to read. Years later, now we all have the chance to share the story.

I love the way this is read. Reed strikes a nice balance between the voice she uses for the narration and the voices she creates for various characters. The portions of the book which are passages from plays are especially nicer to hear than I think they would have been to read.

Geared towards a young adult audience, I still found it charming. If you are a Madeleine L’Engle fan, this book will give you a glimpse of another facet of her life. Before this book, I had no idea that she had been involved in theater and acting. I am not sure why, but getting this sort of private glimpse into the life of someone whose stories colored my childhood was really special. It is not a complicated story, but the characters ring true and the story stayed with me long after the last CD ended.

Audio sample available online.

Short Review: Shallow beach-read sort of book. Estranged best friends reunited by twenty-year high school reunion. You probably already know if you would hate it based on this description.

Long Review: The reason this book got three stars is that the reader somehow manages to make you care just enough to keep you listening. This is not a book that will be in my ‘listen again’ pile, nor is it one that made me scheme reasons to be back in my car so I could listen to it more – but it was pleasant enough. I am not certain I could have finished it on paper. I am more likely to seek out other audio books read by Cassidy than I am to seek out Harbison’s other works as an author.

Allie and Olivia are each at turning points in their lives as they face that dreaded social challenge: the twenty-year high school reunion. This novel touches a wide range of chick-lit standard subjects: love, parents, loneliness, childhood, and best friends. ‘Hope in a Jar’ frames the story with brand references to beauty products – mostly classics from the late 80s like Lip Smackers, Sun-In and Love’s Baby Soft.

The characters are mostly like-able and the conclusion satisfying, if predictable. A solid choice for a lazy summer listen, just don’t set your expectations too high.

Audio sample available online.