The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, Read by a Full Cast

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.

The performance of Jennifer Egan’s new novel, The Candy House, is exceptional. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile contributor Alan Minskoff discuss this unusual and absorbing audiobook full of interwoven stories. Michael Boatman narrates the opening chapter, capturing the interior life of the enigmatic Bix Boughton who invents a world-altering technology central to the plot. The time-traveling chapters reprise some of the characters from Egan’s award-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, but this novel has a wider timeframe, a greater trajectory, and a more complex plot.

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Today’s episode is sponsored by Naxos AudioBooks. Leighton Pugh narrates The Republic by Plato. In it Socrates is asked the question “What is justice?” In order to answer this, he draws a long and detailed analogy between the individual and the city. AudioFile said: “[The Republic] can be complex, but [Leighton] Pugh’s fine voice, natural pacing and thoughtful expressiveness help keep the meaning clear, and the 19th-century translation is both graceful and lucid. Pugh’s reading demonstrates that philosophy not only can be comprehensible in audio but also enjoyable.” To learn more, visit NaxosAudioBooks.com.