The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

(Audible Studios, 2015)

Read by Prentice Onayemi

This title is a nominee in the 2016 Audie Awards: Fiction Category

From Goodreads: “Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, it challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes, but when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.”

The best book I read in 2015. I listened to it twice, forced it on my less-frequent-audio-listening family, and bought the print version so I could highlight my favorite passages. There’s nothing reverent about it, nothing gentle, and nothing held back. If you get through the prologue (our narrator toking up at the Supreme Court, where his trial for becoming a slaveholder and segregationist is getting underway) and aren’t gripped, you probably shouldn’t continue. But if you do, you’ll be rewarded with humor, dazzling prose, and thought-provoking ideas piling up so fast you won’t have time to dissect one before the next one hits you.

Prentice Onayemi clearly loved this novel as much as I did. He mapped his emotions directly to those of the narrator, and approached the text with a light touch that paired well with the book’s intensity. He doesn’t wait for you to catch up – you just have to run alongside him as he delivers Beatty’s biting and often discursive words. And if you do, your heart with race with joy.

The Sellout is my pick for the win in the Audies fiction category. 

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

(Macmillan Audio, 2015)

Read by Polly Stone

This title is a nominee in the 2016 Audie Awards: Fiction Category

From Goodreads: “FRANCE, 1939: In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.”

Vianne and Isabelle are perfectly positioned to give us a unique view of life in France during WWII. Perhaps a little too perfectly positioned – there’s something a tad constructed about this novel. It’s expository and at times reminiscent of a history lesson, and I felt at a remove from every secondary character as well as, often, the protagonists. This was an extremely popular novel across several genres, so it’s entirely possible I was coming at it with elevated expectations.

Polly Stone is a reliably listenable narrator, and I always appreciate her grasp of pace and tone. Her voice is sometimes on the breathy side, but her confidence and cadence outrank any other issues.

Last Bus To Wisdom by Ivan Doig

Last Bus To Wisdom by Ivan Doig

(Recorded Books, 2015) 

Read by David Aaron Baker

This title is a nominee in the 2016 Audie Awards: Fiction Category

From Goodreads: "Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig’s beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old’s imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for “female trouble” in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can’t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate  packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn’t traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way."

I’ve never read Doig before, so I came into this without the predisposition to affection for his characters and community, but it didn’t take long to get on board the bus, as it were. Donal has one of those Forest Gump type journeys, where each of his experiences touches on something iconic from his time and place, and Doig paints each scene with enough verisimilitude to let us believe in each criminal, cowboy, and Kerouac he encounters.

Much as I enjoyed the plot, this isn’t the kind of book that works well in audio for me. It’s too populated with ‘creaky old woman’ and ‘precocious kid’ and ‘people from the old country’ voices, which combine to grate on me over the course of fifteen plus hours. David Aaron Baker does a find job, keeping the pace strong, but it’s a dialogue-heavy story and I’d have preferred a flatter narration or to read this in print.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

(Penguin Audio, 2015) 

Read by Amy Ryan and Michael Stuhlbarg

This title is a nominee in the 2016 Audie Awards: Fiction Category

From Goodreads: "When Lars Thorvald's wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine--and a dashing sommelier--he's left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He's determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter--starting with puréed pork shoulder. As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota. From Scandinavian lutefisk to hydroponic chocolate habaneros, each ingredient represents one part of Eva's journey as she becomes the star chef behind a legendary and secretive pop-up supper club, culminating in an opulent and emotional feast that's a testament to her spirit and resilience.

Each chapter in J. Ryan Stradal's startlingly original debut tells the story of a single dish and character, at once capturing the zeitgeist of the Midwest, the rise of foodie culture, and delving into the ways food creates community and a sense of identity."

Is this for me? I wondered, even as I saw several bookish friends express delight over Stradal’s debut. I’m not much of a foodie, and the structure sounded like it might be forced. Well, my hesitation was ill founded: this novel is for me, and I’d happily recommend it to everyone. The structure worked smoothly – it was loose enough to let the narrative breathe, and each section has it’s own (excuse the pun) flavor.

Amy Ryan and Michael Stuhlbarg, both new-to-me narrators, paired smoothly for this book. I especially enjoyed the undertone of wry humor in Stuhlbarg’s voice. Ryan managed the subtleties of several regional accents well, giving each voice a strong personality.

A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson

A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson
(Little, Brown and Company, 2015) 

Read by Alex Jennings

This title is a nominee in the 2016 Audie Awards: Fiction Category

From Goodreads: "In Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy – would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have."

I was predisposed to adore Teddy by Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life (where he often appears alongside his sister’s stories), and this novel did nothing to change my mind. He's a great lens through which to examine WWII and it's aftermath. Atkinson paints an elegiac portrait of a time even Teddy was a bit too late for, but he never minds being a bit out-of-step. In some ways, he courts it, and those around him are (mostly) glad he does. Lovely, sweet, tragic, laden prose.

Alex Jennings’s plummy storyteller’s voice carries the story with gentle emotion. His voices didn’t

always match what I’d have expected from the character, but they were distinctive and consistent. He never gets in the way of the narrative, which allows Atkinson’s words to take center stage.