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NonfictionAudioHumor

Quietly Hostile

Review by Norah Piehl

Humorist Samantha Irby’s fourth collection of essays, Quietly Hostile (9.5 hours), delivers another winning blend of hilarious observations and emotional insights, combined with a charming aura of disbelief over no longer being just a humble blogger. According to hate mail from angry fans, she’s now ruining the “Sex and the City” reboot as one of its newest writers. 

In 17 short essays, Irby addresses topics that range from her unapologetic love for the Cheesecake Factory and the Dave Matthews Band to her misadventures in pandemic pet adoption. Some essays—especially those focused on her parents and her estranged brother—are emotionally affecting, while others (such as one essay consisting of her descriptions of various porn video tags, or another structured as an FAQ about bathroom etiquette) are gleefully crude. Regardless of the mood of each piece, Irby’s narration, with matter-of-fact delivery and flawless comic timing, amps up the intended effect, making the listener feel like they’re just having a nice long hang with their funniest friend.

Read our review of the print edition of Quietly Hostile.

Samantha Irby’s narration, with matter-of-fact delivery and flawless comic timing, makes listeners of her fourth essay collection feel like they’re having a nice long hang with their funniest friend.
NonfictionAudioFood & Drink

Raw Dog

Review by Maya Fleischmann

There’s a conversational charm to Jamie Loftus’ narration of her book, Raw Dog (9.5 hours), in which she shares the results of her travels around the United States, one hot dog at a time.

The history of the hot dog is rich and filled with surprises, from its European roots as wienerschnitzel to its iconic status at Coney Island and baseball games. Loftus gives advance warning about the book’s discussion of slaughterhouses and how hot dogs are made, but even with such unsavory topics, there’s something terribly irresistible about her narration, which is often incredibly funny. In addition to offering a unique glimpse at the hot dog’s impact on Americana, Loftus provides much food for thought about the people and places that have contributed to its ability to transcend socioeconomic levels, as its appeal ranges from affordable meal to gourmet delicacy. 

This is an ideal listen for those who enjoy the frank food truths of Mark Bittman’s Animal, Vegetable, Junk and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.

Read our review of the print edition of Raw Dog.

Even when discussing unsavory hot dog-related topics, there’s something irresistible about Jamie Loftus’ narration, which is often incredibly funny.
Mystery & SuspenseAudioThriller

The Eden Test

Review by Maya Fleischmann

Narrator Carlotta Brentan performs an engrossing story of marital mind games in the audiobook of Adam Sternbergh’s taut thriller The Eden Test (10.5 hours). Daisy, an actor with questionable intentions, wants to save her marriage, so she surprises her husband, Craig, with a couple’s retreat. But the Eden Test isn’t just a getaway; it’s a marriage therapy program that promises “Seven Days, Seven Questions, Forever Changed.” Brentan solidly captures Craig’s vacillating feelings about Daisy as he heads out to meet her at a remote, idyllic cabin in upstate New York, all the while considering how to make time for his mistress. As secrets surface, Brentan’s narration takes on a certain breathlessness, which helps to sustain the story’s edginess all the way through to its tidy finale.

Read our review of the print edition of The Eden Test.

Carlotta Brentan narrates Adam Sternbergh’s thriller with a certain breathlessness, which helps to sustain the story’s edginess.
FictionAudioHistorical Fiction

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece

Review by Anna Zeitlin

Tom Hanks’ first novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece (16 hours), is an appropriately star-studded audiobook. Hanks narrates most of the story, with additional narration provided by actors Rita Wilson, Holland Taylor, Ego Nwodim, Nasim Pedrad and more.

The novel tells the story of the troubled present-day production of a new superhero film, going back to the 1970s comics that inspired the movie, and then further back to the World War II-era source material that led to the comics. As someone who’s worked on about a hundred movies (but ironically, no superhero films) as an actor, producer, writer and director, Hanks has insider knowledge of the film industry that makes him perfectly equipped to write about it in a cynical but loving way. His narration is ideally suited to the stylized dialogue; he sounds like a folksy dad pretending to be a noir detective.

Read our review of the print edition of The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.

As someone who’s worked on about a hundred movies as an actor, producer, writer and director, Tom Hanks has insider knowledge of the film industry that makes him perfectly equipped to write about it in a cynical but loving way.
NonfictionAudioMemoir

This Isn’t Going to End Well

Review by Deborah Mason

Daniel Wallace (Big Fish) idolized his brother-in-law, William Nealy—an artist, author, outdoorsman and renegade—until the day he died by a meticulously planned suicide in July 2001. In This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew (6.5 hours), Wallace paints a double portrait of his friend: the heroic mask he presented to the world, and the traumatized, troubled man behind it.

This story is painful. The audiobook begins with information on how to contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), and listeners should be prepared for a frank exploration of Nealy’s lifetime of suicidal ideation. But Wallace’s tale of loss, anger and absolution is also redemptive and beautiful, and Audie Award winner Michael Crouch’s sensitive and convincing narration gently leads the reader toward Wallace’s reconciliation with his beloved friend.

Daniel Wallace shares more about his discovery that writing a memoir is “very, very, very hard.”

Daniel Wallace’s tale of loss, anger and absolution is painful yet redemptive, and Audie Award winner Michael Crouch’s sensitive and convincing narration gently leads the reader toward Wallace’s reconciliation with a beloved friend.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

A Little Like Waking

Review by Norah Piehl

Zelda lives in the kind of quaint, upbeat town worthy of a montage. People greet her by name, wish her good luck on her geography test and loan her a bike when she’s running late. But after a close call on that bike with a car and a disappearing boy, Zelda starts to question her perfect town. Why does that geography test—which she’s pretty sure she also took yesterday—make no sense? Why does the town laundromat sport its own creepy clown? And why has her dead cat, Patches, shown up . . . talking?

Zelda starts to suspect that she’s actually inhabiting a dream, even more so once she reencounters that mysterious boy, Langston. But whose dream is she in? And what if the dreamer wakes up? Will they all just cease to exist?

To find out, Zelda, Langston and Patches head toward the limits of the known dream world. What they discover includes a robot house, an ice cream vendor who speaks in rhymes and the four gym teachers of the apocalypse, all of which are depicted in black-and-white illustrations by author Adam Rex. If this sounds kind of silly, it is. Those familiar with Rex’s books for younger readers will recognize his zany humor here as well, but even as the absurdity is pushed to extremes, A Little Like Waking maintains a level of seriousness as well.

The dreamscape is influenced by personal history and often tinged with tragedy. At every turn, the characters consider big questions: “Do you want to grow up? Do you want a life that’s easy or a life that’s real?” Zelda must confront the fact that if she’s not the dreamer, she’s not the star she once assumed. As she puts it, “Growing up is realizing you’re not the main character. Or everyone else is, too.”

A Little Like Waking is sneaky like that, planting nuggets of philosophical and moral truths alongside carnival rides that sprout from the earth like giant vegetation. It’s also romantic and a little sad, with moments of quiet, bittersweet loveliness that stand out in high relief from the near-constant backdrop of hilarity. Rex’s quest narrative is like none other, sure to leave readers marveling at the wonder of dreams and the power of imagination.

A Little Like Waking plants nuggets of philosophical and moral truths alongside carnival rides that sprout from the earth like giant vegetation.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

A Warning About Swans

Review by Mariel Fechik

Hilde, a part-swan, part-human daughter of Odin, ferries souls along the silver road in the sky to the Other Wood. She envies her five sisters’ brighter gifts, but Odin chose her for this duty because of her strength, so she continues this melancholy work—until she meets the equally lonely Baron Maximilian von Richter on the shore of a lake.

From within his crumbling and solitary Bavarian castle, Richter dreams of a bigger life for himself, one filled with jewels and notoriety. When he invites Hilde into the glittering world of his imaginings, she trades her wings to become more human, eagerly learning the complicated waltz steps of 19th-century Europe. But when Richter proves to be more captor than liberator, Hilde begins to seek an escape. Allied with Franz Mendelsohn, a kind and talented artist who seems to see the truth of her magic, Hilde searches to reclaim the wings she once sought to give up forever.

With feather-light precision, R.M. Romero’s YA novel-in-verse A Warning About Swans (Peachtree, $18.99, 9781682634837) walks the thin line between fairy tale and allegory, selfhood and love, dreams and reality. This winding fable about living myths, set in postindustrial Europe, softens the tale of Odin’s daughters—known in many versions of mythology as the Valkyries—while respecting its origins.

As in her previous novel, The Ghosts of Rose Hill, Romero writes in clear, lovely verse. Unlike novels-in-verse that fail to demonstrate a strong understanding of poetry, A Warning About Swans lends itself perfectly to the form, maintaining a spare beauty and creating fully formed characters within the limited confines of a shorter text. Richter is believable as a terrifying representation of what men with unchecked power often do, while Hilde and Franz’s burgeoning love story feels multidimensional and authentic.

A Warning About Swans soars in its exploration of myths: their power, their failings and how they change alongside humanity yet stay with us throughout millennia. Romero provides a lovely example of how across all of time, some lessons stay true.

R.M. Romero’s winding fable of postindustrial Europe walks the thin line between fairy tale and allegory, selfhood and love, dreams and reality.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Abeni’s Song

Review by Ralph Harris

Fantasy author P. Djèlí Clark’s first middle grade novel tells the story of a girl named Abeni in three clear acts: a discovery, a journey and a confrontation. It all begins on the day of the Harvest Festival, when Abeni’s village is attacked. A mysterious army razes the village and captures all of the villagers, while a strange man wearing a mask with goat horns plays a flute melody that enchants the children into following him. These terrifying forces serve the Witch Priest, who has started a war so that he may rule over all the lands.

Abeni alone is saved by a very old witch named Asha, who has watched over the village for many generations, although no one heeded her warnings of danger. Asha takes Abeni to live in her magical hut that’s larger on the inside than the outside, and Asha begins to discover new truths about the world and herself. She even learns little bits of magic and how to wield a staff.

Between facing the loss of her family and discovering a world of magic and mystery previously unknown to her, Abeni also takes on new responsibilities when Asha is struck down by a shadow being—another one of the Witch Priest’s servants—and reborn as a young girl. It turns out that Asha is not a witch but an ancient spirit who serves as a protector of the land and its people. Now she must grow into her power again.

Asha’s transformation reverses the two characters’ roles. Overwhelmed by both the duty of protecting Asha and a desire to find her people, Abeni sets off to find Asha’s sister. Abeni hopes to pawn off Asha once the sister is found and then chase down her family and rescue them from the forces of the Witch Priest. She soon discovers that fate has a different plan in store.

There are few surprises in the plot, but readers might find themselves sniffling—or outright turning on the waterworks—at several moments when these adolescent characters team up and grow to truly care for each other. Rooting for Abeni and Asha comes naturally, and Abeni is particularly charming. She cannot help her curiosity and speaks rashly, but she is also open to learning about herself and the reality in which she lives. With the help of spirits and friends she meets along the way, Abeni builds the skills, courage and wisdom to face her evil adversary: the part-goat, part-man kidnapper of children.

As with most of the books Clark has written, Abeni’s Song does a fantastic job building a world full of deep lore. Readers are clearly being set up for a series, so not all mysteries are solved nor everyone saved, but the nature of spirits and magic, and the secrets of allies and enemies all plant a firm vision for a future installment.

Fantasy author P. Djèlí Clark’s first middle grade novel follows Abeni as she builds the skills, courage and wisdom to face her evil adversary: a part-goat, part-man kidnapper of children.
FictionFamily Drama

All-Night Pharmacy

Review by Matthew Jackson

A Los Angeles dive bar packed with personalities. A sibling dynamic that runs the gamut from nourishing to obliterating. A mysterious woman who promises to be a kind of guru to a narrator on the brink of self-destruction. All this and more can be found in Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel, an exploded view of a conflicted young woman’s brain that delivers page after page of witty, often heartbreaking narration.

The unnamed protagonist of All-Night Pharmacy is a teenage girl just out of high school who’s swept up in the life and adventures of her older sister, Debbie, a stripper and party girl who encourages her younger sibling to go out and live, no matter the consequences. But in between swallowing random pills and taking shots at a local bar called Salvation, the narrator begins to wonder if Debbie is anything more than a master manipulator and chaos agent. When their clash of personalities turns bloody, Debbie disappears, but this is only the beginning of the narrator’s search for meaning and understanding. 

With her sister gone, the narrator turns to Sasha, a charming and spellbinding woman who offers spiritual and psychic guidance—an appealing offer for the narrator, whose life has become a wormhole of pills, bad decisions and confusion about her sister’s disappearance. Together Sasha and the narrator embark on a sexual, psychological and emotional awakening.

The tensions of the narrator’s life and the persistent sense of searching that permeates her brain make All-Night Pharmacy hum with energy from the very first page, imbuing Madievsky’s narrative with a sense of darkly comic unpredictability that never overwhelms the emotional beats of her character’s journey. Along the way, the novel touches on the scar tissue of growing up in the former Soviet Union, the trauma of European Jews in the 20th century and the calculated risks that come with opioid addiction and selling drugs. Madievsky is also a poet, and her knack for crafting imagery is on full display, merging the mundane and the profound to ensure her novel is thrilling all the way down to a sentence level.

Madievsky displays tremendous storytelling range, capturing all that is bitter and hilarious, heartbreaking and enlightening, wise and foolish within the well-developed mind of a single central character.

Debut novelist Ruth Madievsky displays tremendous storytelling range, capturing all that is bitter and hilarious, heartbreaking and enlightening, wise and foolish within the well-developed mind of a single central character.
NonfictionLiteratureBiographyArts & Culture

August Wilson

Review by Robert Weibezahl

Patti Hartigan’s August Wilson: A Life is the first comprehensive biography of the great American playwright, who died 18 years ago at the age of 60. Hartigan, a theater critic and arts reporter who knew Wilson professionally, has done her homework in parsing Wilson’s complicated story from many layers of half-truths and myths, some of which were propagated by the legendary raconteur himself during his lifetime. The result is an even-handed and absorbing exploration of a sui generis artist who followed his own rules both in the theater and in his personal life.

An autodidact who learned to read by age 4, Wilson was born Freddy Kittel and grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the largely Black neighborhood that he would immortalize in his plays. Wilson’s father was white—and for complex psychological reasons still left largely unexplored in this book, Wilson spent his life convinced he had a different white father than his siblings. However, Wilson identified exclusively as Black. His mother arranged the best education she could for her brilliant son, but he repeatedly faced skepticism and racism, and he never finished high school. Aspiring to be a poet, Wilson dove into the nascent Black arts scene in Pittsburgh, where his writing talents were put to use in local theater productions. Confident in his abilities and focused on his ambitions, he began sending unwieldy scripts to the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

When he was finally accepted with what was at the time a four-and-a-half-hour version of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Wilson quickly took the theater world by storm. Just a few years later, he was on Broadway and had won the first of two Pulitzer Prizes. The playwright, known for his powerful and poetic monologues, soon embarked on a daunting project: a 10-play cycle that would hold a mirror up to the experiences of Black people in 20th century America, decade by decade. He finished the last play just months before his premature death.

In her five-year-long excavation of August Wilson’s family history, Patti Hartigan found spine-tingling similarities between the stories the celebrated playwright created and the actual past he never fully knew. 

The man Hartigan profiles is a fascinating bundle of contradictions: a generous, congenial companion who could at times seethe with rage; a lover of women who often gave them short shrift in his plays; a storytelling seer who made well-drawn specifics of the Black experience speak to audiences across racial barriers. August Wilson: A Life is a worthy and overdue first biography that will trigger new conversations about a magnificent playwright and the origins of his talent.

August Wilson: A Life is an even-handed and absorbing exploration of a sui generis artist who followed his own rules both in the theater and in his personal life.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Bellies

Review by Laura Sackton

Nicola Dinan’s debut novel is the best kind of queer love story: not a dramatic tragedy but an expansive exploration of intimacy, desire and queer family-making. Dinan refuses to adhere to the expected beats of mainstream narratives about straight relationships, but she also also brashly and bravely rejects the standards of moral perfection that queer and transgender characters in fiction are too often required to live up to. Instead, she honors what is uncomfortable and hard about trans life right alongside what is sacred.

Tom and Ming meet in their early 20s at a drag show put on by their university and immediately hit it off. Tom is a white Brit whose good-natured cheerfulness masks his insecurity. Ming is an aspiring playwright who has come to England from Malaysia; her mother died when she was a teenager, and she’s still looking for a place or a group of people that feel like home. Tom and Ming fall in love easily, but their relationship is thrown into turmoil when Ming decides to transition. The narrative switches between their two perspectives as they navigate their changing relationships to each other and to themselves. 

Ming finds freedom, relief and joy in finally being herself, but being a nonwhite trans woman in the U.K. also brings new challenges. Tom struggles to accept that while his love for Ming hasn’t changed, his desire for her has. They are both grieving imagined versions of themselves and their futures. This kind of heartbreak, which is as much a part of queer and trans life as anything else, is not something that queer fiction often makes space for. 

Bellies is fraught with all the messes of growing up and into identity. Dinan’s prose is fresh and immediate and full of tension. There’s drunken revelry, heart-pounding fights, tender moments between lovers, strained long-distance phone calls with family and awkward support group meetings. Every page of this novel feels alive and thrumming; even the introspective sections have a momentum that pulls the reader along. Ming, Tom and their group of friends have quirks and flaws that make them immediately recognizable. They are selfish and petty, confused and clueless, loving and impatient. Sometimes they love one another generously, but sometimes they fail to love one another at all.

This is a vulnerable, moving, riotously funny and deeply honest book about trans life, first love, art-making, friendship, grief and the hard, slow process of building a home—in a new country, with another person and inside yourself. Bellies celebrates a hundred different kinds of transformation and, like the very best novels, has the power to transform its readers in unexpected ways.

Nicola Dinan’s debut novel is a vulnerable, moving, riotously funny and deeply honest story about trans life, first love, art-making, friendship, grief and the hard, slow process of building a home—in a new country, with another person and inside yourself.

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