This audiobook collection of stories by the critically acclaimed Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza is experimental in nature, with some enigmatic works straddling the line between reality and surreality. The 23 stories, written over the course of more than 30 years, have themes ranging from love to immigration to the search for meaning. An ensemble of seven talented narrators divides up the reading to varying effect. In the more nonlinear works, such as the two Pripyat stories, the narrators have tried to inject some additional drama with the effect coming off as overdone, distracting, and even gravelly. The stories with a more traditional structure are handled capably by the narrators, with appropriate tone and cadence.
Pub Date: 2022
Duration: 7 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9798212181884
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
American colleges are favorable locales for ghastly event and hair-tearing circumstance. There is, for instance, a good deal of pleasure to be had out of professor and past-prodigy Grady Tripp's awful life, as portrayed by Michael Chabon in WONDER BOYS. There is a certain amount of slapstick here, but it's balanced by Chabon's superb portrait of a gale-force mid-life crisis, a soul-destroying albatross of an unfinished novel and the mind-numbing inconsequence of writers' conferences. David Colacci sounds a little starved for oxygen in his reading, but that's not exactly out of keeping with Grady Tripp's personal gestalt.
Pub Date:
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
As a group of men bring their own emotional baggage to their football-obsessed reunion, R.C. Bray delivers his usual solid narration. He shifts his tones slightly but enough to put the listener in the motel with the men, revealing their foibles as the story progresses. The narrator's role in this book is a descriptive one, and Bray is a good guide. His narration becomes extra important because this is a rare instance when there almost isn't a protagonist. The author's well-written story--which alternates between serious and laugh-out-loud funny--uses quarterback Joe Theismann's 1985 injury, a broken leg, as a McGuffin.
Pub Date:
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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