Euphoria: A Book, and How I Feel About Audiobook Month

Euphoria, by Lily King
(2014, Atlantic Monthly Press / Blackstone Audio)
Format: audio download (read by Simon Vance and Xe Sands)

From Goodreads: "From New England Book Award winner Lily King comes a breathtaking novel about three young anthropologists of the '30s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives.

English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers’ deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell’s poor health, are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe nearby, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone’s control."

June is Audiobook Month! Which means, really, that June is yet another chance for me to tell you people that you should listen to audiobooks, because they are The Best. Case in point: Euphoria.

Back in my college days, I studied a bit of anthropology, and learned a bit about Margaret Mead, but nothing in particular about her personal life. King's novel plays closely with that life, but Nell, Fen, and Bankson are wholly independent of their real-life inspirations. Nell is magnetic, both to the men in her life and to the people she works with - and definitely for the reader. Her voice is broken and strong and intriguing and true. And the vision of her we get through Bankson's eyes highlights her fascinating nature.

Oh, to be an anthropologist studying an anthropologist like her!

The narrative team of Vance and Sands is a dream. I may or may not have raved extensively about them both (okay, I have), and to have them together on this project was magic for me. No wonder this book won the Audie for Literary Fiction last month! It's a gorgeous production. I'm so glad it found its way into my ears.

JUNE!

It's June again! Y'all know what that means, right?

It's audiobook month!

This means (if you're unfamiliar with this, one of my favorite annual obsessions) I'll be focused on audio this month here at Overreader, and especially on the delightful Spoken Freely project, spearheaded by narrator (and smart, sweet woman) Xe Sands.

Since my guests are the best guests, I know y'all will mostly enjoy their appearances here next week, but meanwhile you should check out the other daily offerings. And buy the whole collection!

Survival Lessons

Survival Lessons by Alice Hoffman
(Highbridge Audio, 2013)
Format: audio CD via Audiobook Jukebox (narrated by Xe Sands)

From Goodreads: "Fifteen years ago, Alice Hoffman received a diagnosis that changed everything about the life she'd been living. Most significant aside from the grueling physical ordeal she underwent was the way it changed how she felt inside and what she thought she ought to be doing with her days. Now she has written the book that she needed to read then. In this honest, wise, and upbeat guide, Alice Hoffman provides a road map for the making of one's life into the very best it can be. As she says, "In many ways I wrote this book to remind myself of the beauty of life, something that s all too easy to overlook during the crisis of illness or loss. There were many times when I forgot about roses and starry nights. I forgot that our lives are made up of equal parts sorrow and joy, and that it's impossible to have one without the other. . . . I wrote to remind myself that in the darkest hour the roses still bloom, the stars still come out at night. And to remind myself that, despite everything that was happening to me, there were still some choices I could make."

Good things come in small packages sometimes, and it's very much true in this case. After cancer and treatment and the mental blows that accompanied the physical ones, Hoffman was moved to think deeply about the choices she made with her life. I don't get the impression she was living such a bad life before the diagnosis - certainly her career was already going very strong - but it's not the overall course of things, it's the small decisions and moments that pass without a lot of thought that concern her here. 

Choices, deliberately and thoughtfully made. Choosing friends, pleasures, heroes. Choosing to accept or reject burdens, when that's possible. Choosing to eat brownies. Allowing that deliberate thoughtfulness about so many aspects of your life to strengthen and sustain you, both in fine times and in troubling times. In many ways, these aren't startling or new ideas, but Hoffman is a stylist, accessible and thoughtful and unique. It's a pleasure to have her Survival Lessons compiled like this, and though I teared up frequently listening to her words, I was left feeling peaceful and a bit wiser at the end of this short collection.

Xe Sands is a beautiful narrator for this book. Here's how much I love listening to her voice: there's a section at the end, just a few minutes, giving a knitting pattern. I'm not yarn-adept, it meant nothing to me and I could easily have skipped over it, but there was something soothing about her mellifluous voice. Purl and knit and cast off and so forth - if Sands narrated a book of knitting for dummies, I'd be tempted to learn just to have an excuse for it. 

I recommend the book, and the audiobook. If you follow my advice, you'll need the brownie recipe (and butter, and a double boiler, and possibly some doilies) so I've got it here for you:

Yum!

Masterpieces and the Pursuit of Truth

The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro
(Algonquin, 2012)
Format: audio cds from library (read by Xe Sands)

From Goodreads: "On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art today worth over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.

Making a living reproducing famous artworks for a popular online retailer and desperate to improve her situation, Claire is lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting—a Degas masterpiece stolen from the Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when that very same long-missing Degas painting is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery."


Oh, immersing fiction that puts me in a world I never knew with characters I don't want to leave behind, how I do enjoy you. Shapiro incisively and immediately turned Claire into a reality, a narrative voice I was happy to follow as she navigated the fallout from her past and the pitfalls in her present. There is a sensuous element to this novel, in the descriptions of the painter's art, the supplies and techniques Claire uses, the way she responds to Degas's work. And the mystery of how the stolen Degas made its way to Claire's studio and the basis for her suspicion that it was a forgery were fascinating to me. My immediate trust of Claire as a narrator didn't stop me from distrusting her feelings about and trust in other people, and I cringed a few times at her failure to take a more cynical view of her interlocutors. But she forges on and creates beauty, both in her Degas reproduction and in her original work. I was so moved by her fascination with Degas that I wanted to head off to a museum myself, which isn't my normal milieu. I mean, I like Degas, who doesn't, but now I am a little more in awe of his work. And I'm definitely impressed by Shapiro's facility with language, character, and story.

One of my favorite narrators, Sands gave perfect expression to Claire's voice, by turns impatient, passionate, exasperated, and wry. I loved the flow of her narration and the distinctive character voices which made each person more solid a presence. Between the writing and the narration, this was all-too-often one of those "can't leave my car just yet, still absorbed in this story" audiobook experiences. 

The Intersection of Secrets, Ukrainian Folklore, and a Treadmill

Oh, hello. It's been awful quiet around here. I blame the gym: I got on a rare fitness kick, which ate into my free (blogging) time, and I didn't want to scare it away. (Yet here I am, blogging. That elliptical won't sweat on itself, Mel!)

I'll tell you the best thing about gym time: audiobooks. Although the people around me might wonder why I'm constantly breaking into sudden laughter or tears as I'm working out, I really love listening to an engrossing story to while away my cardio time. Only problem is when I am overtaken by a sob and literally slip off the dang treadmill, like I did when I listened to Xe Sands' narration of Valya Dudycz Lupescu's The Silence of Trees.

The nice people at Audiobook Jukebox provided this title courtesy of the nice people at Iambik Audiobooks (I had issues, they all helped, I am grateful.) It ran a smidgen under 10 hours, and carried me to a world I'd never imagined and people I long to sit with over several long meals.

The heart of the story is Nadya, a Ukrainian who lost her family as a teen during WWII, and has been unable to tell her children and grandchildren the truths about her life before the war. When she left Ukraine, she left knowing that she would have died alongside her parents and sisters if she hadn't snuck out of the house one night to consult a gypsy fortuneteller. And although she lost everyone she loved, she never lost her inclination towards magic, folklore, and tradition, all of which stayed with her as she survived the war years in a German work camp, then moved with her new young family to Chicago. That family grows, and she finds a new Ukrainian community in her new city, but can't ever bear to think about the family and community she'll never see again. Although Nadya is engaged with the 'now,' her daughter and granddaughter in particular see that she uses it to hide from the 'then,' and a series of small but devastating moments begin to crack Nadya's shell for them. The cracks widen, the events get wider (I fall off the treadmill), and finally Nadya's truths begin to emerge. It's devastatingly beautiful. Lupescu puts together gorgeous sentences and scenes, bringing all of Nadya's places - Ukrainian farmhouse and woods, German camp, American ship - to vivid life.

Sands' narration is gorgeous. She imbued a subtle touch of Ukraine into her voice, which always felt true to Nadya's emotions. Poor Nadya was often telling of dread, angst, trepidation, or anguish, in addition to her vast love, pride, and thoughtfulness, and each moment was true without being maudlin. I did know going into this that the narrator had loved the book she was narrating, but it would have been obvious regardless (you should follow @XeSands on twitter if you love words as I do - she's always finding gorgeous language to share.)

My son just noticed I'm still at home blogging instead of at the gym, so my time here appears to be over. I hope to tell you about a couple more audiobooks this week, since June is, as I'm sure you know, Audiobook Month. So download something and start listening (and doing cardio. I'm a huge fan of cardio, I've decided, as long as I can avoid being anywhere near Houston's insane outdoor temps.)

Suspense, Passion, and Evildoers Doing Evil

Through one of my Twitter pals, audiobook narrator Xe Sands, I discovered the oeuvre of Anne Stuart, who writes suspenseful romance, both contemporary and historical. Xe spearheaded a project called Going Public, where people can upload short audio readings, and one of her posts was a snippet from Anne Stuart's On Thin Ice. I was captivated.

Stuart was a new to me author a couple of months ago, but my library had a handy selection, and her House of Rohan books were immediately available. I read a couple, and listened to Susan Ericksen's well-paced and engaging narration of a couple. The series centers around a family of fairly reprobate-y reprobates who bounce around Europe, mostly in the Regency area. (That's loose, as there are generations of bad boys involved.) For the most part, the men are beyond dissolute, and are very eager participants in a sort of elitist underground orgy called the Heavenly Host. But they're jaded, too, and stumbling into their midst comes a lovely innocent of some ilk. The innocent is blackmailed or desperate enough or resigned to being ravished by the rake. As it turns out, the bad boy is hiding his tender heart and the pure maiden is the key to his new outlook on life. Of course, complications ensue, along with occasionally perverse sex, and I know I'm not giving away too much when I say they eventually fight their way to a HEA. (That's a Happily Ever After, folks who don't read romance sites as often as I do.) It's all totally great. Stuart's characters - especially the seemingly powerless women - are very well fleshed out (hubba hubba!) and sympathetic, and the Rohans have pulled me more than once into reading well past my bedtime.

Stuart's contemporary series is the Ice books. This is where On Thin Ice comes in, and as I was lucky enough to win a copy of the audiobook on another book blog's page, I got to hear all of Xe's interpretation and not just the little bit I linked to above. Of course, being the series completest that I am, I tried my best to read the rest of them before I popped in my earbuds, but after the first three I was too impatient to wait for my holds to come in, and jumped ahead. Soooo yummy; my lack of impulse control was totally worth it. These books are set in the current age, and center around operatives for another shadowy (but less orgy-prone) group called The Committee. The operatives are generally deep-cover agents fighting global terrorism, and on the brink of fulfilling a very major and world-saving mission. From the sidelines, in stumbles the unexpected complication of an innocent lovely young woman. The operative should really just kill her immediately, lest she not only foil his chance at a clean, successful mission, but also lay unexpected claim to that cold spot where his heart should be. (He has no heart due to a difficult early life and the aging-before-his-time experiences with the evildoers. The evildoers are bent on global destruction for their own gain as well as the thrill of rape and torture and debasement along the way. And revenge when things get personal, of course.) Now his super-honed alpha-male operative skills will war with her intuitive but effective but delaying beyond all reason tactics. Their innate attraction to each other will help them eventually to trust each other and sacrifice for each other, if need be. After some life-threatening evil plot stuff, along comes the HEA. Yummy yummy yummy, am I right?

I loved Xe Sands's narration of this book. Finn MacGowan's Irish lilt drew me in to start with, but I was beyond impressed when MacGowan was rapid-fire pretending to be South American and British and the narration stayed firmly in MacGowan's voice. She also has a natural storyteller's knack for dramatic tension and creating a vocal atmosphere that paired perfectly with the text. I'm not just saying all of this because she's probably going to retweet the link to this blog - it's some extremely impressive work. (Thanks for all the RTs, Xe - you're so supportive of bloggers!)

Plus, go listen to her voice on any of those Going Public links. I always find it soothing but with a quality that makes me want to sit up and pay close attention, make sure I'm not missing anything. Rather like bedtime story time, in fact, except I'm not acquainted with the kids who would want to hear quite this much graphic detail about how escaping from a kidnapper's jungle prison camp is fraught with natural and man-made peril every two and a half feet.

Hug on your babies!

So in case I don't get sentimental enough around the holidays (ask K how much I cried during the half of It's a  Wonderful Life we caught post-Thanksgiving) - I always like to delve into a few books that have high potential to make me maudlin. This season: kids without parents!

I've been a fan of Lisa Tucker's since her debut, The Song Reader. (My review of it never ran, but it was my first assignment for People, back when I wrote for them.) Her newest is The Winters in Bloom, and, yep, I still love her elegant and lyrical prose, and admire her insight into people. This one is about Kyra and David Winters, a pair of damaged individuals who think they've found that building a life together will allow them to let the sleeping dogs of their pasts lie. But it's a lie, and when their five-year-old, Michael, is kidnapped from their yard, they find themselves separately slammed into the realities of all they'd hoped to leave behind. Michael proceeds through his own dream-reality of the first hours away from his hovering, overprotective parents. Tucker gives his consciousness a chance to grow and observe in a very organic way that feels right for Michael's age.

I was listening to Xe Sands's narration of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein, while reading Tucker's novel, which added a layer to Michael Winter's experiences with his kidnapper. Not that Braunstein didn't include plenty of layers of her own for me to ponder. (Sands is another of those narrators I can listen to read just about anything, and her handling of the voices and tone of Missing Children really wowed me.) This is one of those well-constructed symphonies of a book - each storyline trading off and sometimes vying for prominence but all ultimately working together towards a common tune. In this case, the tune is missing children. Children who were taken, or who have run. Children who long for escape, and some who find it. Children who find that escape isn't all that escapist. It's powerful stuff, and Braunstein handles it deftly. Some POV is from the children, some from the adults, and not every adult or even every child is sympathetic. I'm torn between giving my kids a lecture on stranger danger and interrogating them about their innermost thoughts in order to somehow magically ensure that nothing Braunstein wrote in her debut could ever, in my world, be true.

Ann Patchett's State of Wonder (which I started out reading but had to return to the library, and finished up by listening to as read by the engaging Hope Davis) is - well, wonderful. One of my top ten of the year. (And it looks like I'll end the year at about 300 books, so that's a pretty tight percentage there.) Patchett is another author I'm always excited to see on the new titles lists - I presume every one of you has read Bel Canto already, right? If not, go away and get it immediately. Now! Go! Okay, so this one moves between Minnesotan research labs and the Brazilian rain forest, as Dr. Marina Singh fulfills a promise to the widow of her research partner, Dr. Anders Eckman. Anders died while chasing up the elusive Dr. Anneck Swenson, who had been Marina's inattentive but brilliant mentor in med school. Anneck does her best to stay elusive while Marina, who already has a bit of an identity push-pull thanks to her Minnesota-India heritage, finds unimagined facets of herself in the Amazon. Meanwhile she struggles with her obligation to Anders's widow and his three sons, to find out what really happened to him, and the purview from her boss to examine the state of Anneck's research, not to mention Marina's memories of the incident that drove her to leave medicine for research. The drugs being developed could enormously enlarge a woman's window for pregnancy, which niggles at the mind of forty-ish, single, childless workaholic Marina. It's all a rainbow of imagination-stretching elements, and in Marina, Patchett has created a prism through which to refract it back at the reader. Heady, engrossing, thoughtful stuff.

Also, there were those three fatherless boys, and the orphan child Marina befriends in Brazil, plus the losses and near-losses in the other books. So what I'm getting at here is, oh, I'm so glad I haven't lost my babies, or been lost to them. And hey, kids, you can laugh at the way holiday movies make me cry any old time.

Two Successes, a Failure, and a Treat

A few books of note from this month.

I finally got to finish Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy, with the audioproducton of Monsters of Men. It is probably not a good thing to be driving down the freeway yelling, "Fucking bastard!" at the CD player, but that is what Ness, via the conniving Mayor Prentiss, forced me to do. I mean, I'm a fairly tolerant person, and not quick to take offense, in real life or by fictional characters. But Prentiss is just so evil and controlling, and I've been attached to Todd from page one of book one of the trilogy, so seeing him caught in the Mayor's web and in the middle of  the Mayor's war was excruciating. It's a good thing I was listening to this instead of reading it to my son, as I did with the first two books, because I would have had trouble controlling my reactions, and let's face it, probably I shouldn't use that kind of language around him. Listening was also great because I so enjoyed the narrators, Nick Podehl, Angela Dawe, and MacLeod Andrews. Frankly, though, I'm going to have trouble with the next book I hear narrated by Dawe, because so much of her own natural voice informed the voice she used for Mistress Coyle, and I was cringing at her treatment of Viola and the people she led almost as much as Prentiss's treatment of Todd.

Another highlight of the month for me was Farthing by Jo Walton. This is not as dystopian as Ness's world (where things were so messed up on Earth that a faction left the planet to settle on New World, which is where all the problems between the Prentiss and Coyle and all them began.) Walton's 1950s Britain is just like our 1950s Britain, except that the British negotiated a truce with Hitler in 1941 that ceded pretty much the rest of Europe to him while they retained self-rule and everyone just put on blinders about the genocide and work camps. Walton stages a murder in the middle of a political house party, brings in an intellectual Scotland Yard detective along with the plodding local police, shines the suspect spotlight on the Jewish husband of the rebellious politico's daughter, and throws in some adultery and communists and train schedules to give it all direction and misdirection. I was so happy to discover this book, and so absorbed in the plot and characters and style. It's book as sustenance, and I am replete.

Contrast that to A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin. In short (as nothing else about it is), I gave up about half-way through and went to the web to find out how it would end. I think three and a half of the Fire and Ice books is a pretty good showing, don't you? (I also used that wiki to find out what happens in the fifth book.)

Now, for those of you who either already love audio or are skeptical about my love of audio, go here. Be sure you have your tissues handy. The narrator Xe Sands started a project to publish short readings of public domain texts, which you can find about with the #goingpublic hashtag if you're on Twitter. (Follow me! I'm dakiMel.) The link above is for Margery Williams's The Velveteen Rabbit, which Sands imbues with such feeling and love that I defy you to read the text yourself without being (positively) informed by her narration. Also at Going Public is my audiocrush Simon Vance, so you can hear why I love him and then believe me and go listen to the dozens of hours of Aubrey-Maturin stories or wherever else you care to find him.