AudioFile’s Most Anticipated Audiobooks of April
The Month in Listening to Literature
Each month, our friends at AudioFile Magazine share a curated list of the best audiobooks for your literary listening pleasure.
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APRIL FICTION
Twist by Colum McCann| Read by Colum McCann
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 8 hrs.]
Author/narrator Colum McCann’s performance is masterful in this audiobook, which tests the delicate fabric of communication in our digital age. McCann never misses a beat in delivering the rising tension.
In lyrical language filled with breathtaking images and perceptive observations, McCann’s storytelling is painful, accurate, and poignant, while the novel’s final twist is stunning. Outstanding listening.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones| Read by Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, Owen Teale
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 15 hrs.]
Listeners don’t just experience a fascinating historical drama—they also become steeped in a bloody gothic Western. Stellar performances are the center of this compelling listening experience. Narrator Marin Ireland fully embodies the beleaguered humanities professor who, while deep diving into the campus archive, discovers the story of her ancestors.
Complete with creative production touches, the result is a dark, satisfying listen.
33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen| Read by Shiromi Arserio, Jilly Bond, Nicholas Boulton, Billie Fulford-Brown, Danielle Cohen, Raphael Corkhill, Joshua Reilly, Matthew Lloyd Davies, James Meunier, Simon Slater
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 11.25 hrs.]
Alice Austen’s debut novel is a small jewel, and the multiple narratives by expert audio actors bring light to each facet. The tenants at 33 Place Brugmann in Brussels just before the Nazi occupation live fascinating, if ordinary, lives.
But as everything changes, intimate individual portraits of the residents, wonderfully performed, move the plot forward, heighten the tension, and illustrate the wartime dangers each character faces.
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie| Read by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sandra Okuboyejo, A’rese Emokpae, Janina Edwards
[Random House Audio | 19 hrs.]
AudioFile Earphones Award
The tone, tempo, and lilting intonation of all four narrators make this listening experience rewarding. This novel—really four connected, finely crafted novellas—simply engages the listener from the start.
Three of the major characters are Nigerian women: a travel writer, a successful lawyer, a powerful business woman—and the fourth, also West African, a maid at a posh hotel. Their stories intertwine.
Show Don’t Tell: Stories by Curtis Sittenfeld| Read by Michael Crouch, Curtis Sittenfeld, George Newbern, Kristen Sieh, Xe Sands, Emily Rankin, Nicole Lewis
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 10.5 hrs.]
Fabulous narrator casting highlights layered human relationships in Curtis Sittenfeld’s twelve short stories, which tackle human complexities. Emily Rankin’s melodic lilt captures the youthful confusion of a college student in the titular story. Michael Crouch’s edgy narration in “Creative Differences” exposes the corporate corruption of creativity.
Seven narrators in total create a cohesive listening experience that amplifies the subtleties of relationships in Sittenfeld’s resonant collection.
APRIL NONFICTION
Syme’s Letter Writer: A Guide to Modern Correspondence About (Almost) Every Imaginable Subject of Daily Life, with Odes to Desktop Ephemera and Selected Letters of Famous Writers by Rachel Syme| Read by Rachel Syme, Rebecca Bact
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 6.5 hrs.]
Rachel Syme is delightful company. Upbeat, witty, informative, and persuasive, her guide to all things epistolary entertains while convincing listeners that letters (preferably hand-scrawled) are some of the best things in life.
Narrating in a cheerful, perky, and crisply enunciated tone, and introduced by romantic music, Syme explores it all: letter-writing history, tales of famous letter writers, how to write a letter or postcard, desktop ephemera, lists of possible correspondence topics, how to find a pen pal, how to write bitchy letters. (Jane Austen excelled, evidently.)
The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World’s Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer| Read by Matthew Lloyd Davies
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 10.5 hrs.]
Listening to this history of the 1850s competition to decipher ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions is like listening to a Jules Verne or Conan Doyle adventure yarn. Narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies clearly relishes what is not a musty story of scholarly reflection, but a cliff-hanger full of surprises and unexpected twists.
This is a story with many layers—and many buried treasures.
Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us by Jennifer Finney Boylan| Read by Gabra Zackman, Jennifer Finney Boylan
[Macmillan Audio | 8.25 hrs.]
More than twenty years after her bestseller, She’s Not There, trans author and activist Jennifer Finney Boylan presents a nuanced view of parenting, gender expectations, and growing older. Gabra Zackman narrates with warmth that makes listening seem like an intimate talk with a friend. Zackman mirrors Boylan’s wit and capacity for deep reflection.
This is a moving performance by a narrator who truly empathizes with the author.
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green| Read by John Green
[Listening Library | 5.5 hrs.]
On a visit to Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone, bestselling author John Green met Henry, a charismatic patient who looks much younger than his age due to the ravages of a tuberculosis infection on his body. They established a friendship, and Green’s interest in the disease grew.
With a down-to-earth unpolished narration, Green presents his own account of visiting with afflicted patients and learning about the challenges they face, particularly in poorer countries.
The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes| Read by Chris Hayes
[Penguin Audio | 9 hrs.]
After MSNBC host Chris Hayes’ easy-listening performance conveys a comfortable command of his emotional tone and engagement with his thinking without underplaying the gravitas of his concerns. He says our attention is becoming a commodity that corporations and political interests are exploiting without our knowledge or consent.
Our involuntary attention to messages that can reach us wherever we carry our smartphones is a threat to our ability to make conscious choices about our lives, our values, and the leaders we follow.
