Lungfish by Meghan Gilliss, Read by Devon Sorvari

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

Devon Sorvari gives a stunning performance of Meghan Gilliss’s timely and powerfully affecting audiobook, Lungfish, about a young family in dire circumstances. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss a novel told in a poetic style that builds tension around the delicacy of struggling and living on the edge. Tuck; her husband, Paul; and their young daughter, Agnes, squat in her late grandmother’s home on a remote Maine island. Paul is depleting the family’s meager funds, as he’s addicted to an herbal opiate, and the family receives little help. Sorvari wonderfully mines the resilience and bravery of the one-of-a-kind Tuck. This provocative and harrowing audiobook is essential listening.

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