CategoryAudiobook Reviews

I read JacquiWine’s take on this 1988 book that was only recently translated from Japanese into English. She was drawn by the haunting and enigmatic story of a young woman’s barely remembered childhood. Yayoi was in an apparently happy family with loving parents and a slightly younger brother Tetsuo. One day out of the blue she has a vision of having had a sister and comes to realize...

Having admired The Boy in the Field, I was excited to read Margot Livesey’s new book that was published in February. It is the story of Lizzie Craig, from her childhood in rural Scotland in the 1880s and 1890s to her adulthood in Glasgow and Fife, near Edinburgh. She was cared for by her grandparents as her parents had died when she was very young. When she was 10, she learned she had an...

Interest in Joseph O’Neill’s new book that will be published in June reminded me that I had not read his much-loved Netherland from 2008. It worked as an audiobook despite roving over time from 2001 to 2006 in an apparently random way. Because much of the joy of this book is its focus on the love of the game of cricket and a largely mysterious character named Chuck Ramkissoon, this...

The story of this family is distinguished by the focus on two aspects of their lives:  the daughters are red-haired twins and words are very important to them, toys when they are children, central to their lives as adults. Each chapter begins with a definition from Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. The twins are brilliant, have their own language, and begin communicating wittily while still in...

Ah yes, another delightful book by the author of The President’s Hat, Vintage 1954, and The Red Notebook. This one connects the historical figure, Guillaume le Gentil, Louis XV’s astronomer, to a fictional Parisian real estate agent in 2012. Before I began the book, I read Wikipedia’s entry about the astronomer and wonder if it is a spoiler to tell the true story of his life. If...

I listened to this one after I recommended a friend read Clare Pooley’s Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting and discovered this one was available through our library. It’s been a fine audiobook for me. An elderly eccentric artist in London named Julian writes about himself in a notebook and leaves it in a cafe, inviting others to write about themselves and to get to know their...

This is my fourth Graham Greene book; I am enthusiastic about two and not-so-much about two. This falls into the not-so-much category. It was written in 1955 and set at the end of the era of French colonial control of Vietnam as told by a cynical British reporter. Thomas Fowler has lived in Saigon for some years, happy to be away from his wife in Britain who refuses him a divorce. He lives with...